So many wishes in one heart lay dormant. Ready to explode any moment into a tsunami……The strong urge to love and get loved…… the craving for a better living…...the desire to get noticed among the crowd invade the mind and I close my eyes to feel myself……..The clouds sail across the sky and the moon beams through them. A leaf falls from a tree and I stand under it. My eyes are closed and the leaf touches my forehead…..the falling leaf reaches my neck, then my shoulder and at last lands on the ground skipping the rest of my body. A gust of wind carries the leaf away from me but I remember and will ever remember the nearness and warmth of being under a tree in a moonlit night. I open my eyes and the pleasant sky smiles upon me. Now I love the sky for teaching me the beauty of expansion and limitlessness. I stand with Nature in oneness. Like the leaf under the influence of wind I have drifted a lot but tonight I stand firmly anchored to the earth like a tree. I am rooted in nature so I feel strong and soon I will be green with thousands of new leaves. Wind will blow, the leaves will rustle and a cuckoo will sing a song of life sitting on it. Om Santi Santi Santi!

Yesterday,today and tomorrow....

Like ‘Yesterday’, ‘Today’ came and passed away. And the time that I dreamed as ‘tomorrow’ showed a glimpse of its silvery face. But before I could recognize the bright ‘tomorrow ‘, it is going to show me its back, it is going to cheat me with empty promises and dashed hopes. It is, I mean, TIME, is going to cheat me like an unfaithful lover.

I had heard that time flies but it flies over my head every day mockingly. I surely know not what to do but I still dream of another tomorrow till my dreams become alive. I will…….I will……..   

`20 did not make any sense because the small shop was shut.

His feeble legs were nothing but two slender bones covered by wrinkled skin. And those trembling legs weakly supported his old frail body. A torn shirt and a piece of cloth were his only possessions apart from the iron axe that he was carrying. His old age and physical weakness had told upon his walking. He was too weak to walk properly but he carried the iron axe and pulled himself towards the jungle. He had to collect some fire wood for his subsistence. A day’s hard labour would fetch him a head load of wood and a head load of wood would fetch him `20. The old man feebly walked away and vanished in the jungle.

The evening approached. The CFL-lit glittering market did not make much sense to that poor old man who had `20 by that time. But a small shop which was crowded by some rickshaw pullers and rag-pickers sold him some basic items like rice, dal and onion for the evening. The old man left the shop with a happy feeling that the day was about to pass and he was still alive.

Throughout his life he had fought a hard battle to survive. And till now he had to sell his labour regardless of his age, infirmity and time because life still lingered in him.

Next day the sun appeared brilliantly in the sky and sat in the west as usual. The old man after a day’s hard toil could collect the same fixed `20 by selling his wood to a wealthy household. He went to his known small shop but the shutter of the shop was closed. All the shops of that kind had closed their shutters because The Govt Had called for FDI in the retail sector. `20 did not make any sense because the small shop was shut.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

The mid-winter cold wave had not stilled the village so much as the call for strike by the Naxals ( A terrorist group active in some states of India) had hushed up normal life in that village. All shops remained closed. The roads looked deserted without any traffic. And in the evening when the villagers came out of their houses and gathered in the streets in small groups, most of them talked about the acts of violence that had broken out in last two days. A cloud of fear gripped everywhere.

Both print and electronic media corroborated that a young village chief was dragged out of his home and was killed by some sharp weapon. The family members cried and the police remained holed up as usual. The public preferred silence because in India, which is the biggest democracy of the world, people are good at living like sheep. The leaders slumber in Air Conditioned chambers with Z+ security while the common man lives his life in a state of lawlessness surrounded by many man-eating greedy wolves. Still life goes on….

When the disappointed and terribly perturbed citizens open the TV hoping for a little concern from the so called leaders, they see that the vehicles of their leaders speed past a group of helpless people who have been the victims of a recent explosion. The cries of the wounded people for help cannot pierce the closed glass windows of the leaders’ moving vehicles. Still life goes on and the ruling party prepares for the next election even if one of the wounded dies prematurely.

Why should not the hopeless public stand with ANNA or RAMDEV? After all, they are the few who stand with us in the gutter but still look at the stars in the sky.

Result Analysis.......

The first period of college! The principal enters the class with the result sheet of Pre-test Exam. He scolds, rebukes, warns and then mellows his voice and attempts to pursue and convince the students for a better result. But his mellowed voice no longer continues. Something queer happens. Silence pervades the class. He pauses for a moment. Then he calls the name of a Pankaj Mallick. He points out that he is short of attendance and that he is lurching at the bottom of the result sheet. In response to his announcement a boy sitting on the back bench rises up and swallows all the bitter words with his face downward. 

The boy stands up putting up a grim face but a clear red rose gets visible on his bosom. The rose was a prominent sticker pasted on the front pocket of the college uniform shirt. The result analysis now takes a new direction. The red red rose attracts both anger and contempt from the principal. He shouts at the top of his voice. He shouts because he thinks the college uniform is tarnished by the display of such love symbol by a teenager. One of the lecturer who had accompanied the Principal into the classroom now goes one step further and plucks the flower from the boy’s shirt. The boy instantly loses both his identity as a student and his identity as a lover of beauty. 

Like a whirlwind the squad of the teachers leaves the class. And the result of RESULT ANALYSIS is an intimidated class that learns to be blind to a Red Red Rose.