March 24th
Stay at Home
If you can
For a moment
Put your anthropocentrism
On hold and
Think of it as
Gaia
Shrugging off a virus
Then the ones who
Disrupted her processes the most
Have had their processes
Disrupted the most
No other creatures are affected
The trees can breathe easier
Alas for us
She has learnt the concept of
Collateral damage from us:
Some of us will suffer terribly
But in the main
An elegant solution:
Stay at home
Until we realise
The truth of the matter
Gaia is our only home
April 6th
Before and After
As I wake to
The drone of the bees
And look out of
Our bedroom window
And see the Paradise Flycatcher
Darting about
It is hard to imagine
The hustle and bustle
Of the world out there
As I wake to
The call of the brain fever bird
And look out of
Our bedroom window
And see the raucous babblers
On the guava tree
It is hard to imagine
The hush
Of a world in lockdown out there
April 11th
Cohabitation
We will try anything
To defeat this virus
Wear masks
To stop it in its tracks
Not wear masks
So that
The doctors fighting on our behalf
Can use them
Hijack others’ shipments
Of masks
To our country
Bang pots and pans
To chase it away
Pool all our efforts to
Develop a cure
Compete with others
To develop the first cure
The first vaccine
Use cures for other diseases
To see what happens
Hope that the vaccine
For another disease
Will mitigate the effects
Of this virus
Light lamps
To dispel the darkness
Pray to God
Allah-hu-Akbar
But not in a group
Pay a pied piper
To lead the virus away
But it may be
That in the end
We will have to accept
That human and virus
Will cohabit this earth
Which is for both
Our Only Home
April 22nd
Dignity
Sitting comfortably at home
I whine
That my coffee podi has run out
That without my daily fix
I cannot write poetry
On the road
Thousands of my countrymen
Without their daily fix of khana
Without bemoaning their fate
Are picking up their bags and walking
Thousands of miles
Home
Millions of man-miles
But there is no
Johns Hopkins tracker
Monitoring this number
May 6th
There is No Alternative
If you thought that
A field of rotting tomatoes
Was the limit of the horror
Think again
Picture this:
You hear that the lockdown has eased
And work all evening till dark
With your wife and kids
Harvesting what is possible
Picking and choosing the best
To sell
(The slightly bruised or damaged
Will do for yourself and friends)
You negotiate with the driver
To leave at one in the morning
To beat the crowd of sellers
You reach the mandi
Only to find
That too many others
Have thought like you
There Is No Alternative
To leaving
Three hundred kilos of tomatoes
On the roadside
To fend for themselves
Surely all of us are complicit
In this horror story
Peculiar to our times
May 17th
The Pangolin’s Sneeze
The Chinese have it that
When a blade of grass is plucked
The earth moves
Modern scientific minds
Smile knowingly
Speak of Newton’s Action and Reaction
And say, Yes, yes it moves
But by an immeasurably small distance
What is the weight of the virus, I wonder
What the weight of a viral load
Surely, less than a blade of grass
Surely, an immeasurably small number
Yet
When the pangolin sneezed
The whole world ground to a halt
Action and Reaction: Equal and Opposite?
Not on your life!
May 19th
Imagine
I imagine I am
A thousand miles from home
My wife calls to tell me
My son is ill
I start to walk home
To Begusarai from Delhi
No food to eat
Blisters on my feet
I walk for three days
Praying
When I hear the news
Of my son’s death
I am Rampukar Pandit
I imagine I am
Waiting for the trains to start
Waiting waiting waiting
Along with my friends who are also
Waiting waiting waiting
We realise that
The trains are not going to start for us
And so we begin our journey
On foot
Along the tracks
So that we don’t lose our way
Sleep every night between the rails
Wake every morning and
Walk walk walk
Sleep every night between the rails
Until one day
The trains do start
And mow us down
I am Pradeep Singh Gond
I imagine I am
A twelve year old girl
Working in the chilli fields
Far away from home
When the lockdown deprives me of my job
And I start walking home
Walking walking walking
Hungry
All the time
Until
I fall down dead
I am Jamlo Madkam
I imagine I am a poem
A thousand verses long
Each verse ending in death and disaster
I collapse with the weight of this
Unbearable grief
I am Mother India
May 25th
Dreams
Their dreams are not
Earthshaking
They don’t dream of their children
In Ivy League colleges
In suited booted jobs
They know that
Hindi film endings
Do not happen
In real life
They struggle on
Dreaming
That their struggles
Will ensure
A slightly better deal
For their children
Than they themselves have got
That their endless struggles
Will mean
A slightly better life
For their children
This waking nightmare
Has shattered
Even these
Pitiful fragile dreams
Now they just
Hope
Pray
Struggle
Dream
To get home
Alive
May 26th
Migrant Labour
Everyone is wearing masks these days
But actually the masks are all off
And the ugly faces are being revealed
The chasm between
The haves and the have-nots
Is being further widened
The poor who have no belts
Will have to tighten them
The fat cats will purr
At the government handouts to
Those too big to fail
So many fault lines
So many fissures
So many fractures
One wonders
Will the poor just fall through the cracks?
Will our country just fall apart?
Or, given the immense labour pains
Will something new be born?
May 30th
Two Bows
I bow in appreciation
Of the science, the technology, the skill
That inserts two lenses
Small and plastic
Into my eyes
And restores
Half a lifetime of
Living life soft-focus
To 20/20 vision
I bow my head in shame
At what I see
With this newfound clarity:
An endless stream of the dispossessed
Suffering
Suffering unimaginable sufferings
Just to go home
The uncaring looking away
The sympathetic overwhelmed
The government flailing about
The dispossessed suffering
Suffering unimaginable sufferings
Suffering
Just to go home
The new lens of the virus has
Revealed clearly
What has always been:
They have always lived their lives
One day away from destitution
Two days away from starvation
Performing acrobatics on the trapeze
For our benefit
Without a safety net
The virus has revealed
Even to those with the faultiest vision
The starkness of their reality
They have always only ever filled
The crevices of our lives
Invisible
Until now
When they are all
Visible
And how
Just wanting to go
Home
Sunder underwent a cataract operation during the lockdown.
June 10th
Bubbles, Boats, Boxes (A Metaphor Bhurji)
Living in comfortable bubbles
Of our own devising
We feel that nothing will ever
Rock the boat
But the unthinkable
Does happen sometime
And we find ourselves
Boxed in
By the virus
Now is the time
To think out of the box
To burst the bubbles
To burn our boats
To be the change
And to know that
A new world
A better world
Is always possible