The Thursday Think Tank #67 - Rain

The clouds are still grey and dark,
and all is bathed by monsoon gloom.
Though life is thriving and greenery stark
an air of bored impatience looms.

All is bathed by monsoon gloom;
Rain was once a welcome visitor.
But an air of bored impatience looms:
Nature has had enough of her!

Rain was once a welcome visitor.
Now her musty presence is liked by none:
Nature has had enough of her!
All what she wants is a bit of Sun.

I'll Emerge Victorious

Oh Death!
When you come
i'll raise my face to you;
i'll not cower like a coward.

You will take delight in
engulfing me into
your deep dark void,
and time will
conspire with you;
she'll fill the vacuum.

Your needle-feathered wings
will puncture my body,
and like a leech
you will suck my soul.

But some of it will escape;
a river of my soul
will flow like
ink onto paper.

And my thoughts will remain
a dark red stain in Memory.

So i'll defy you, Death,
and i'll emerge victorious.

Shadorma

Why are we
bound by ideals
of freedom?
Freedom in
fetters is greater freedom
than freedom itself.

The Thursday Think Tank #66 - Glass Houses

My karma* is my glass house
and my actions are the stones.

*Karma- the consequences of actions is one meaning, duty is another.

The Thursday Think Tank #65 - Windows

The cramped classroom
can barely accommodate
forty-seven students.
It is smothering stuffy,
but of course it has windows!
Their grills look like the bars of a jail.

In the confines of jail,
in the cramped classroom,
we grudgingly open the windows
of tolerance. We have to accommodate
every unreasonably stuffy
teacher with 'respect', like good students.

Like good students
we adapt to jail.
We don't complain about stuffy
air or the shoe-box like classroom;
it can at least accommodate
forty seven. It also has windows.

At least it has windows!
Grateful are we students
to the sarkari* circus for accommodating
windows in the grand jail
drama. They're needed or else the classroom
will become deadly stuffy.

Our minds have become stuffy
and unimaginative. The windows
let in minimal knowledge but the classroom's
walls need to be broken down. We, students,
should break free from jail in jail.
We should not just 'accommodate'

We should not just accommodate
formidable knowledge in the stuffy
confines of the mind. In jail,
knowledge is useless. The window
lets in facts but what goes in should go out. We students
know all about ventilation: it's lacking in the classroom.

In jail, we just accommodate
stuffy classroom facts.
Students can only look longingly out of windows.

*Sarkari- of the government in Hindi.

Unlearning

A quake will destroy 

the blessings of harsh penance.

A quake will uproot

lessons of painful learning.

Knowledge acquired 

will become useless rubble.

Unlearning will be 

the only way of learning more:

rebirth always follows death. 

Worldly duties

whisk me away 

from penance.