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.