Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
FEED
Jernail S Aanand
The small fish who are gobbled up
By the large,
Do not carry in their heads
The philosophy of death.
Whether or not to die
How to die
When to die?
Die or not die?
They ARE for a moment,
And know NOT when
In their safest move
They will land
In the mouth of a whale
And then,
BE no more
The vegetables are our feed,
So are water
And the fish in it,
Do we spare the gnats
If they fall in our nostrils
Or in our hot tea?
I feel the only game is
Feed and get fed.
Why I get up? To start working
Why I work?
The game is out
To feed myself and these kids
And this wife
Who is so vocal
Three times we eat
And …what else ?
Feed. It disturbs me.
Grain, flowers, fruits, flour,
Dals, …everything
I feed on.
Then suddenly a shocking thought
Disturbs me
Everything is food for somebody
And I felt something
Gnawing at my bones,
Cutting into my heart,
Biting at my mind
And consuming me
All the time.
Do you know who gobbled up
My innocence, and is now nibbling at my youth?
THE SIMPLE QUESTION
Jernail S Aanand
God asked me one simple question.
Are you a good human being.
I was dumbfounded.
I had prayed a lot, but only for myself.
I had worked a lot,
But again, only for myself
I was not good to my kids
Whose time I pilfered
Nor to my parents when they needed me
Was I good to my wife?
Ask her if you want to listen
To the broken narrative
I did not do any good to society.
I had money which instead of sharing,
I preferred to stash in banks
I had landed property
On which poor workers worked,
I only cornered the wealth.
They made me an Officer
Now the law was on my side,
And I always on the other side of my duties
I slanted my head downwards.
No. I said.
And was directed to the earth again.
THE THIRD PARTY
Jernail S Aanand
The world that we have inherited
And shared in the making,
Is anything but good.
All the players who made
And spoiled the soup
Share the blame
You and me, who accepted things
And did not utter a word
Cannot exonerate ourselves
We were not shocked by the weird
And never expressed dismay
When kings digressed from reason
We are the silenced majority
Trained in self-inflicted torture
Look! do you find any trouble
The system has taught us
To tolerate, suppress,
And show up the hand in approval.
We have turned approvers
In the follies and fouls being committed
In our full knowledge.
When someone speaks out,
We are among the voices
Trying to shout him down.
If the things have gone wrong
Kings share the blame,
And I am the third party.
It was I who elected the doctor
And selected the clinic,
And signed the medical papers.
FLAM – BOUYANT
Jernail S Aanand
I leaped at the flame
So bewitched I was
With joyful dance
Of fiery waves
I felt it must have been
Wonderful to be close
To it, (embrace it)
Who dreamed of the heat?
It had to save itself
From darkness
Every one it fears
Comes to quench it
How great was the price
It had to burn itself down
To propel darkness away.
And peep into the dark unknown.
And the light that it produced
Made it possible
To look into the darkness
Spreading all-around.
It had set the darkness on fire
Not for nothing
It wanted to meet its face
And this passion was suicidal.
