My Country Needs Me Better

By Mohit Sharma

Translated by: Srishti Mudaliar

Near the streets of dirty, dingy hovels,

Lay the street lights teasing the afternoon sun,

Next to the hungry mewling kids with empty bowels,

The stalls promoting the food chain program make my fun.

A child with his work at a shop as his only task,

Teases my helplessness and my privileges, 

The ringtone of the city lad’s cell phone shouts to ask

Why my letters cannot reach far the flung villages?

A toll of forced laborers sinks everyday,

But only a few rich celebrities matter,

Looking at all that happens here each day,

I feel that my country needs me better!

This is a little creation of my buddy Mohit Sharma from his book "Long  Live Inquilaad' (original poetry available at: http://mohitness.blogspot.in/) . I translated it for the use of some non Indian readers. Hope you enjoy the sarcastic approach of the poetry!

Indian Society

By Ms. Srishti Mudaliar

Here, you can piss in public but kissing in public to the austerer society is as a sin as a crime,

Choose here you cannot a spouce of your choice, to suit your caste, one, the society chooses.

States and regions, religions, cults, castes,  races are numerous, Orthodoxy being of all the prime.

System of education is though vocational, a bulk of unemplyed every year the country oozes.

Lack of labour makes none poor, but to lack of its dignity in the society, the individual looses,

Streets are well laid, pollute them the cattle dung, smoky vehicles and a billion crawling ants,

Law is not one, social system is corrupt, upon the stolen and bribed the rich society boozes.

Rejected food to eat, hovels of untrusted strength to live, to wear we have only two pairs of pants.

Males multiply in number every year here, half the females born in India the society decants.

The new year comes every month, so do the festivals of light, colors, harvests and merry chants,

Appareled in bright colors of varied languages, thoughts, skins, the Indian society is colorful,

Preserved natural beauty is the north, preserved antiquity of the our west upon the west rants,

The art of the south of preserving culture, and eastern patrons of age old art seem wonderful!!

Variety is in the food, clothing, lifestyle, weather, the country of the Indians is very beautiful.

Kins here are affectionate, life partners here mean two people that’d be together for lifetime,

Parents still care the offsprings like humans, values make Indian society friendly and helpful,

Old people share not at old age home, but at their’s, the experiences worth many a thousand dime.

Too varied, too magnanimous, too giagantic this society is, to fit a scheme of many a rhyme!!

Indian society is not one, Indian society is but one, it is same at other, it is but varied at time.

Rich live here poor live here, men of God lived here, angels live here, lives here the devil,

Braves live here, cowards live here, different people come and go everybody lives for some time.

Blend of many cultures, blend of patchy mud and tar streets, India is a blend of all good and evil.

These many regions and many states of our own did not suffice our nation’s glory and the cavil,

So the French ruled, the Mughals and the British ruled, several others came and left us their trails.

Lessons of life were left to us by great poets and the martyrs who for the society put life to peril,

We respect our animals, do not keep to hunt but to love our fishes, lions, lizards and quails.

Come people, find the socialities of the whole world here, in the Indian heads and Indian tails.

A Sonnet: To a Husband from a Wife

By Ms. Srishti Mudaliar

01/07/2012

Every night you drive my carriage somewhere, nowhere,                                    

Amidst the chasing sprites and the winds ever famished,                         

You then hand me out on a road pitch black, unblemished,                                

And we follow the glowworms to tap round the flowers bare.                

The bright moon-beams upon a clear stream alongside glisten,               

And the stars sparkle in the calm, clear, merry, navy blue sky,                

Between them is our shikara and are candles and is music shy,              

And only you and I to this unsung merry note can sing and listen.                        

Since the day you stole me from my home and myself and brought me,   

To this unknown not so suffocating city, called my new home,                

In this little house and its little room fixed not so commodiously,             

Every morning when I wake up for a day ahead, not so wholesome,                  

This dream of mine breaks up into fragments and then again it I see,       

Reunites besides me, on you and I live it again, not so vicariously.      
               

The Wailing Fair of Jalliyanwallah Baag

By Mohit Sharma

Translated by: Srishti Mudaliar

Thy deep, dark, black abyss,

That devoured our mother’s kiss,

Selfish, wretch, appareled in red walls,

Jalliyanwallah, thy tyranny with weight upon us falls!!

The chaotic streets of the kids are now vacant,

Blackened the doorsteps the white skinned tyrant.

The patient, nimble morning ears that heeded to thy voice,

In the evening were silenced and turned cold as ice.

For the freedom to be born their hopes waited for years and more,

To see it alive none succeeded to flee from thy captivity’s door.

A revolt so peaceful, the devil would melt,

The white queen let it honored with the cannon balls pelt.

Seas of the emotions could flood enough with the pain,

In vain were those heavy showers of trickles of rain.

The sleepless insomniac nights restless,

Long and long of nightmares endless.

Under the siege of the curfew the trampled crowd,

Vultures covered their fallen kins before the shroud.

Those waiting to reach the Baisakhi’s tavern,

To their destination would never reach and return.

The woman you jilted was our mother,

Her truth you concealed under thy tanned leather,

Wait for a while if you dare to bother, look how those holes the little hearts smother!!

A Bird Leaving Nest

Published in: The Hislopian Journal, Hislop College, Nagpur

Srishti Mudaliar

On my way home,
Saw a bird leaving its nest.
And thought how it does feel!

Thought of the hardships,
It might have gone through.
Collecting for its nest hundreds of
Small twigs,
Old reeds,
And cotton balls to soften.
The gentle care,
It offered to its offspring,
Feeding it the softest worm,
Grew it up,
Coaxed it to fly,
Taught it to try,
And learn.
On God’s behest,
Did its best.

On my way home,
Saw a bird leaving its nest.
And thought how it does feel!

Thought then of the day when,
I made my little house.
After piling for years hundreds of
Stones,
Concrete,
And bricks.
Nurtured my son
Offered him education,
Grew him up,
Coaxed him to live,
Taught him to believe,
And learn.
On God’s behest,
Did my best.

On my way off home,
When I see the little gate,
Thought what I would feel or do!

Cry, holding the memories that I don’t wish to have
Or linger in a complete oblivion that I don’t wish to have?
Receive a melancholic sadness that I don’t wish to have
Or the happiness and content that I don’t wish to have?

A Woman

A Woman : As pblished in
Insight, The Hitavada

Srishti Mudaliar

Lives like a penny clenched,
By the insular fetters flinched,
Enjoys the prerogative of gestating,
Virgin or a harlot, she keeps begetting.
Preceded by none of her kind,
She is unique and her state of mind.
Mother, sister, daughter, granny
Relationships she lives many.
Tad tacky commands she obeys and follows,
Surrenders, toils and blows her bellows.
Sweeps, washes and clears the ashes,
Fighting vermin, in the house she lashes.
Entireties she makes on behalf of others,
Nuances of emotions silently she utters.
Prudence she lacks or it’s her endurance?
A woman survives with great perseverance.
Symbol of beauty she is, grace is her dance,
Blue oceans are her gestures of romance.
Humility is the garment she wears,
Festooned by the pearls of tears.
Her lashes, the colored nails and lips she flaunts,
The bootylicious babe that every man wants.
Smart and clever, she stands blur behind the mist,
Struggles to maintain her identity and grit.
Sometimes totally messed up she seems,
In her shell retreats, when intense are the beams.
Vexed by the unwanted cantonments in her terrain,
Stubborn and egoistic appears the siren.
Deception of fame she bears sometimes,
Taciturn appears, but actually mimes.
Falls prey to the constant pursuits of flattery,
Diagnose she cannot a plot of treachery.
Elfin she is, to her beaux addicted,
Gluttony she forgives and is always convicted.
Frail, fragile, the ultimate the seductress,
Deceitful, spiteful, jealous or a lurid traitress.
Delegate in the annals of valiance and bravery,
Won has she and brought the world under slavery.
Upon the celebrations and feats her feet soften,
The vermouth of obsequies she enjoys often.
Testatrix of the values, she is well equipped,
Benefactress she dies and she is worshipped.
Mistress or ruler with an approach inflexible,
Like a colossal gust of wind sometimes intolerable.
Sheaf of livid and pestered souls a hundred,
Testament to myths, she is immortal or undead.
And the form her which’s the most ubiquitous,
A dreamer, with a hope, uncertain and ambiguous,
That all her dreams would one day come true,
That leaves her either glorified or all alone to rue.

A Jiffy

Srishti Mudaliar
What tasks could
Be accomplished
In a “jiffy”?

A pair of eyes could blink,
A bird on its wings could swing,
A honeybee could suck a drop of nectar,
Or a trivial tear could be dropped.

In a jiffy,
A clock makes a movement,
A walk gets its step.
A wish is made,
In a jiffy.

In a jiffy,
A star appears,
Or it disappears into a ‘blackhole’.
Thousands of flowers bloom,
In a jiffy.

A life is born,
In a jiffy.
A life is lost,
In a jiffy.
Victory happens,
In a jiffy.
Failure takes,
Only a jiffy.

In a jiffy,
Everything could be lost.
In a jiffy could appear,
A new “cosmos”!!

A Keepsake

Srishti Mudaliar

The force of the air is sweeping me away,
From my land, it’s environs, under siege of these fences,
Then why the same air does bring to sway,
The sweet smell of the soil, over my senses?

The memories are all that would be accompanying me,
As I move, though much more was that I hoarded,
Of the same land that supported me, while I ran upon the monsoon spree,
And a blur memo that the same gave my survival all that it needed.

My land is not so arid, but is trying to conceal the pain,
The pain, similar to that in my heart,
It needs me, but makes no effort vain,
To stop me, as I proceed to part.

This mighty land has got my words and acts,
The stupendous figures that I carved on the rocks of it,
That would kindle into its heart, the percept of those beautiful feuds and pacts,
That’s why it smartly scuttles begging for time, more a bit.

The “memories” I carry would vanish as soon,
As I get lost into another element,
But, this coarse land doesn’t whither to place, upon me its dusty boon,
Nor does this air agree to get stacked into my perpetual garment.

A delicate urge I play on my fiddle,
Le’mme scrape a bit out of this hardened landscape,
Gi’mme a club or a dagger li’l,
Let me dig out an eternal lump, a “keepsake”.

A Promise

Srishti Mudaliar
A promise is like an answer to a prayer,
It’s just another form of Hope,
A word given to us from someone with care,
Next to the god, to whom, we give the scope.

A promise is a symbol of faith,
That we have upon someone, who made it,
And again upon us the same faith,
Of someone, to whom we made it.

I’ve known people, each of them known as pal,
The people, whose promises I failed to keep,
Yet by them, ‘was forgiven for time and all,
For the mutual understanding was so deep.

A promise to you, my friends I make today,
The only one that could bring a smile to thee,
That I’d try to be some one better each day
For all you want is a perfect me!!