The guava tree
Leaves drop by numbers
Mostly yellow, sometimes red and green,
Not only in the autumn,
But the whole year round.
Days and months fly by,
Paving the way for new arrivals;
Small colourful birds,
Weave a resting place
Amidst the mesh of leaves and
Twigs, pecks at the sweet
And sour ripe fruits;
Birds of different hues and size
Flock together, chirp mirthfully
And leap from one branch to another
Treating the whole tree a playground;
Somewhere atop, a kite
Gets entangled after being dethroned
From the high sky, and
Flutter with clipped wings;
Mouth-watering glances of the
Children on street prompts
Them to hurl stones
Pointing at the luscious fruits,
And run away when challenged
Often without the prize;
Beneath the full-grown Guava tree
I sit as though huddled
Into the lap of nature,
Learning the secrets of life
Like a Buddha
Under the Banyan tree;
The guava tree has transformed
Itself into a Bodhi Tree
Graciously, for me!
Rakesh Chandra
The hollow world
The hollow world in which we live,
Teaches us to live with silly stereotypes.
Imprinted in the deepest corners of our mind; and expresses our inner weaknesses
during the time of stress.
In generating hatred against one another,
And inflicting cruelty towards the helpless and defenseless others.
It teaches us to remain divided throughout our life; to kill one another mercilessly.
While they could harvest the benefits of all our shortcomings,
For their personal long term gain.
The hollow world in which we live,
Teaches us to be stupid.
Blinded by the megalomania of the rich and powerful
It dictates us to show absolute obedience,
It directs our mind to follow with no
questions raised,
It teaches us to dedicate ourselves to wrong ideologies; and it tricks us to fail in
differentiating right from wrong
Our mindless deeds and meaningless
struggles are slowly uprooting
our own subtle existence.
We are failing to realise how we are living as pawns; concealed in the freezing depths of our dark and hollow world.
The hollow world in which we live,
Programs our minds to be controlled.
Our minds are plugged and cluttered
Our blood and spirits are poisoned.
Our inner self completely possessed
And our self esteem totally destroyed.
We just work as extended limbs of our handlers, as emotionless robots,
In the direction in which they want us to move; towards the path of self destruction.
The hollow world in which we live,
Has seen several mindless bloodsheds and feuds; neighbours killing neighbours
Brothers raping their helpless sisters,
Fathers killing their defenseless daughters and sons
Angry men torching the ghostly houses,
And crushing the frightened and yelling baby against the stone wall.
But yet the hollow world teaches us
To keep our eyes shut, ears plugged and tongues rolled back.
As if nothing has happened to our world
We continue our hollow existence,
With no questions coming to our mind.
Our ethics and morality hiding themselves
In the darkest corners of the city gutters
And yet we say hello to the other person next door one more time
Hiding our deep hatred under the veil of our civilized hollow smile.
It seems that the hollow world has forgot to transform,
And will remain in its cocoon
Metamorphosing for ages to come.
And our sufferings created through our own evil deeds will continue to haunt us
Falsely surviving on the flesh and blood of the helpless and defenseless others.
While humanity knocks at our door,
We hide ourselves from the first ray of sun
And suggest in our hollow voice that “…all things are bright and beautiful”..
Saikat Kumar Basu