The Man with the Hoe

This poem by Edwin Markham was part of my ISC syllabus. This came to mind when I kept looking at the headlines everyday about the Maoist attrocities being reported. I do not justify their actions, but I feel this poem does hit the right chord...the reason why many have taken up this stand.

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this —
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed —
More filled with signs and portents for the soul —
More fraught with menace to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in the aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world.
A protest that is also a prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream,
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
After the silence of the centuries?

A letter from yesterday

Its amazing what cleaning old stuff can lead to! Every time I start cleaning my room (trust me it’s a rarity!) I always end up finding something or the other from my past. This last time I found a letter. One which I had forgotten to send. Or maybe I had decided later that I didn’t have to. Whatever it was, I don’t even remember the occasion on which I had written the letter. It however sheds some light on my past…and the reason why my life shaped out to the way it did. So here it is…

N.B: The handwriting is hardly legible and gives the impression that it is written by a trembling hand…

Ami kichu parchi na. Kichu bujhte parchi na. U weren’t wanting to talk over the phone. But I feel I cant stay without talking to you. So I am writing down everything I am thinking of…everything that is coming to mind. Amar mone hoche je I am not enjoying my life. I am always engrossed in you. Just try sometimes to do other things. But I am always thinking about u at the back of my mind. Earlier the time I had for u was u alone, and after meeting up with u, I found just as much interest in my studies. Now I have no ninterests. I am not happy in life. I have lost my will to do things. I am no longer the passionate one u fell in love with. I am not blaming you. Just need ur help. Scold me more often. Don’t push me away but tell me where I should stop. I need to be happy about not ONLY making u happy. There are loads of other things in life that I wanna do. Make me enjoy them. Like I did before. Sorry for asking SO much. But I feel somewhere down the line, you grew up much faster then I did. Help me grow up now please. So that I can catch up with u. Na hole hobe na. Ami pagol and frustrated hoye jabo. Puro frustrated.
I feel better now after talking to you.

Confession

Broken pencils and lost toys
Make way for broken hearts and lost love.
Tiny rivulets of joy,
Long washed away by floods of despair,
The fear of telling a lie,
Smothered by the fear of facing the truth.
Rain, wash away my years,
I just want to be pure again.

Relief

The black ants scurried about. Scurried like they were on fire. Though the sun had been engulfed by the mighty clouds, the ground was still hot from the grilling it had faced all day. The sky was a smoky hue with dashes of faint blue. The air wasn’t still anymore like it was a few minutes ago. There was a breeze now. And the trees swayed gently to the light breeze. Cool and soothing…unlike the heat waves that had tormented throughout the day. And sometimes when there was a burst of wind, the coconut leaves rustled. Rustled like the waves caressing a distant shore. In the distance I could hear the shouts of glee of fellowmen. They had been silenced by the heat before. Now they summoned the gods of rain with renewed passion in their voices. And they were gleeful. On the roof of a nearby home, a lady draped in red, her hair unsettled from the deep sleep she had been in a moment ago, was busily running about gathering up the clothes she had let out to dry. A little girl, with open hair floating in the wind pranced around at her heels. I looked down at my faded jeans, the lower part of which I had rolled up in the heat. And my Converse lay beside me, one on top of the other. And the socks rolled up a little farther away. I ran my fingers through my hair…to let my forehead feel some of the air. And there was the smell. The smell of freedom. The smell of relief. The smell that could wash all my grief away. The smell that cleansed my soul. The smell that made me love my life like never before. The smell that made me want to live. It was the smell of rain. It made me tingle within. I looked up at the sky. There was no blazing sun to blind my eyes. And I closed my eyes…I saw some shapes…a man… a girl…running…orange…and then yellow…with an outline of green…and suddenly it all melted like wax…no no like ice cream…in to nothingness…a blur of faint orange…then slowly it darkened…and there were dots…dots zoomed around…Brownian motion ( hehe!)…random motion…zoomed here and there…hit each other…dodged away…came towards me and vanished…it made me dizzy…and I loved it! Then I felt something on my nose…something cool…and then again on my right eye…I stuck my tongue out for it…and then it came pouring down…little drops of heaven…it rained!

Glimpses of the past

It was so familiar. Like I was here only a month ago. Yet so much had changed. I felt like I was a fifty year old man visiting his college after many years to get his kid enlisted or something. It took me some time to realize that nothing had changed physically except maybe that Milan da’s wasn’t there anymore. It was just that the faces had changed. The familiar faces. Familiar faces whose names I didn’t know…hell I didn’t even know what they studied…I just knew them. I knew that they were always there. And they knew me…they knew that I was always there. That was how it was with the place. The little open space outside the Worldview Bookstore. The “lobby”…that’s what they call it I think. I never used to so I don’t really know.

It was the same whitewashed walls, the same dirty floors smeared with coffee and the coffee cups strewn all around. The glass doors…the strange metallic rail…on all sides. I remember playing “kumir danga” there…the rails were the toughest yet coolest “danga”s to take refuge on. And oh yeah…Souvik…the perpetual “Kumir”! It was amazing how he always managed to get caught and have to become the “kumir” and then spend the entire game like that! And of course there was Gorai jumping around like a hyperactive squirrel! And I always used to be the one composing rules to make the game more exciting…and Shruti, she was always looking out for whether I was cheating in any way! Once we were playing quite late into the evening and we had people we never knew joining us in the game! And us dashing around always got the idlers pissed…generally the stupid gals wearing too much make up and giggling around…and the boys who always hung out with them and made stupid jokes. None of us gave a damn about them though…we played our hearts out!

Well I stopped at the same old metallic rails…there was a lot more that had changed. The bookstore…the same old guy was there. I don’t know if he recognized me or was he just being cordial but he gave me a smile…and when I smiled back he asked me where I had been for so long ( I don’t really think he knew HOW long though). “Just busy”…that’s what I said.

Coming back after almost 2 years, I was supposed to feel quite at home wasn’t I? After all 2 years isn’t too much of a gap…besides, I often passed by…just that I never bothered to stop and sit down. And whenever I had passed by, it had always seemed the same. But now that I was sitting there…on the rail to the right of the bookstore, I felt I was in an all new place. I knew no one. Except the guy from the bookstore. Most people I knew were still in college…in the last year of their courses. But I saw nobody…and it was a normal working day. There was no dirthe of people…but I knew none of them. It was weird. I recalled how I always used to run into someone I knew in the past. Be it 10 a.m or 7 p.m, there was always somebody there if not everybody! Debayan, Ria, Arunopol, Maitreyee, Rupsha, Toko, Ayesha, Deb, Priyanka…someone was ALWAYS there! But now? Nobody! Not even anybody I knew just by face!!! That’s when I felt a little strange…like I didn’t belong there.

Its funny how a place that was so close to my heart refused to accept me now. I remember spending some of the best moments of my college life there. That was perhaps the place I used to be most comfortable at times. I always hung out there. And I always felt welcome there. And now it was so different…I got up and I went over to the ledge on the 1st floor of the Arts Deprtment. I still had about half an hour that I had to wait out.