You say it all When you say nothing at all

To whom this may concern.
You say it all
When you pay
that migrant's train fare home.
You said it all when you were seen

concerned at the Vizag gas leak.
You say it all when you sit with them

in their villages over a kullad of chai.
Or when you ride that local train home.
Not in that enclosure
Where drones of flying footwear chastise
the chaste utterance of good sense..
You say it all
When you are the microphone
To Raghuram Rajan, Abhijit Banerjee
and other elevated minds

that slipped through their sieve.
That's when your voice comes shining through.

You're not you when you say it like him

And the other fellow. And the other.
Giving tit for ratatatat.
When you dribble clever lines dipped in vitriol

that can never match his.
Not because you cannot. No.
Because vitriol doesn't sit well on your tongue.

It doesn’t. That’s not you.
Stop forcing your tongue into his mouth.
Not nice. Not you.
Hold that tongue instead
In your hands
that reach out.
Put that tongue into your heart
Which we think is in the right place.
Stick that tongue on your feet.
Walk their talk as they say.
Good to have talkative feet.

You must know.
You're not Duryodhana's mace.
You're Krishna's flute.
You're not Goliath of loud voice,
            heavy armor, sword and shield.
You're David the shepherd boy
With your harp and lute.
And that innocent little thing called a sling
With those nice smooth stones
Of compassion, empathy, insight, earnestness, grit
That brought Goliath down.
Take aim with those nice smooth stones.
And then fling.

Don't step down
as some say you should..
Step up. And up. And even higher
Not to the throne. Not the pedestal.

Step up to the halo.
Like your mother did
When she refused the kingly crown.
Be the halo
round a good head
Democratically picked.
From all those fine minds.
You have many

With fiscal abracadabra beyond the charlatans of now.

Arjunas to your Krishna.

Young lions rarin to go.

Those with the gift of the gabardine tongue.

Those who are possessed of the DNA

Of a body we respect.
.
Forget the one that flew over
to a wishful gain.
Set up pedestals for those who  stayed.

Do it soon. Do it now.
Before this dusk turns to dark.

Corona Castor Oil

SILLY SONNET SEQUENCE

Corona Castor Oil 1

Mama Gaia is giving it to me
Not one table spoon as it used to be.
But aerosoled straight into nose and lung
Till that mournful requiem for me is sung.

Stay home, she says for all the world now fears
The flatulence from all those sinful years.
Let then, the privy of your conscience be
Privy now to yesterday's gluttony,

Greedily going after the golden grain
Now being flushed down that commodious drain.
And the carbon footprint you left behind
Is sure hurting where it should -- your behind..

Go gaga-google get that 5-G goo.
The Groaning Green now gifts those groans to you.

****

Corona Castor Oil 2

Is CCO working in unholy haste ?
Flushing out excess: keeping what we need:
A slimmer wallet and a thinner waist.
The purging of all venality and greed.

Is CCO singing that sweet ole song
"Mid pleasures and palaces you may roam,"
Keeping you locked indoors for just as long
As for you to know: there's no place like home!

And as you jaywalk on the streets today,
You make the highway your promenade.
All fossil fuels and fumes on holiday.
Keeping those promises you never made.

And when the price of crude cries down to zero,
It's not you but CoVid 19 the hero.

****

Corona Castor Oil 3

I'm counting now my days of purgatry.
Evacuating putrid poetry.
Will the bowels of my advertising days
Be ever cleansed by Gaia's ruthless ways.

Will Corona clean up all that gory
Thrust and parry that found its rightful place
In Capitalism's hoary story:
The bloody motions of the market place.

Will competition give way to courtship now?
Wooing target lover, not fighting foe.
That's what you're doing  under lockdown now.
Your brand' s now making love not war you know?

And if this be bullshit and upon me proved.
Ivan never writ. Shakespeare never loved.

Sacred Mischief

Crown of thorns.

Plays hopscotch on the map

To my peekaboo.

Masochist me

Chained to my immunity

Says it's okay.

Feels good, somehow.

Scourge me more.

It's okay.

See.

Blue skies up there.

Down here I see forever.

Look! paradise flycatcher!

Peacock on my bonnet.

Lion caressing asphalt.

Nice game He's playing, uh?

Sacred mischief.

Game or lesson?

We're learning.

Now The lotus speaks.

Shawl-wrapped utterance

Soft as the voice of an angel.

Lend me your weeks.

And then.

Some more of that please.

May Three Twenty Twenty.

Commanding mendicant begs.

Some more weeks.

And yet some more.

Masochist me.

More's okay.

See.

My man's on his knees.

Not on his qwerty.

Swabbing. Not jobbing.

Yippee!

Is Forever here now?

No milk today.

Spending's ending.

Ending spending.

Credit card sleeps.

The jingle jangles.

The fiscal smile curves

Down. Down. Down.

Laugh Out Loud.

LOL. Ello Ell.

Hello Hell?

Have some fun.

It's okay.

Now. Now. Now.

Fashion me those blinkers

So I will not see.

Will not hear.

Them who eat the daily sweat

Of brick over brick.

Gloves of grime.

The back breaking load.

That screaming hollow.

Hunger walks. Home.

Enter Bleeding hearts.

Fifty thousand at last count.

Conscience balm.

Caritas. Agape.  

Manna from heaven.

Thank you. And you. And you.

Feeling better now?

It's okay.

The Lotus speaks once more.

Soft as the voice of an angel.

Breathing a lesson unheard:

The Crown knows no religion.

No religion the Lotus said.

Unheard before. Hurrah.

No Kalki on white steed.

No Abramic ash from Gomorrah.

Forget the Garden.

Shaheen not Jallianwala.

Welcome amnesia.

Of all that went before.

CAA CAA Cacophony.

To inflamed ears.

The Crown sees no line.

Alleluia. Jai Hind.

A fair scourge.

Hate wiped clean by death.

Then hit me more.

It feels good.

Death with its gentle persuasion

Whispers a comforting word.

Return of the Piggy Toilet

You thought that the piggy toilet was a Goan invention. Right? That we in Goa could lay claim to inventing this environmentally friendly, dry privy, at a time when everywhere else in India, poor scavengers cleaned and carried this offence on their heads to places where they had to be dumped? Well. I thought so too, till I read recently that they found small replicas of the privy-pigsty in the tombs of Chinese royalty around 200 B.C. 

The pigsty latrine, sad to say, is not one of our inventions.

Most of us, however remember that revolting feeling at our sunrise ablutions just a few decades ago; fighting it off and giving ourselves up to thoughts of higher things by whistling away those sounds of grateful grunt. 

It is about this time, say a little before and after Goa’s liberation that a happy piglet family, whom we may call Leitao could be seen glorying in the abounding slush allowed them around the acreage of the reputed Patrao S’s property; partaking every morning of the offering laid out for them in the family privy. There were other piglet families, of course who partook of banquets from other well-to-do and influential Patrao families, all of them content in the belief that their Patrao was the best, providing them with sustenance and more. The piglets even spoke of a long line of ancestors who were reincarnated into that higher level of being called sometimes Vindaloo and sometimes Sorpotel that graced the Patrao’s table. 

In time these clever little porcine brains got cleverer and as they looked up at their dandy Patraos leave every morning in their fancy cars to their halls of assembly or wherever it was they went, they began to wonder why they had to be content with their slushy existence. They had heard a Patrao daughter read aloud the story by Anatole France in which a group of Penguins were baptized and were transformed into human beings. Why not us? They thought. If Penguins can do it, why can't we? And so the Leitaos, followed by the other piglet families went to the nearby river and washed themselves in a porcine ritual of self-baptism. 

It was not long before they were seen in the same halls of the Patraos, dressed in suits, wearing patent leather shoes and Rayban glasses. 

Disgusted with the sudden stink, manifested now in the language, diverse forms of gluttony and what they saw as shameless venality that now filled the hall, the Patraos slowly left the scene; over the years giving up their high offices to the well-shod, well-stuffed snouts.

What, you would ask did these well-shod piglets do for their sustenance in these halls, their new pigsty; how did they get their nourishment? Oh there were plenty of droppings from privies of various kinds: from contraband from across the seas, the booming real estate hurrahs, the rich take from under the table and oh so many sources. After all there is but a thin, translucent film between the fecal and the fiscal, isn’t there?

They lost no time in throwing parties, rollicking get-togethers of like-minded and not-so-like-minded snouts. They had a grunting good time moving from one party to another. Party hopping proved to be a perfect porcine pastime. Much, of course depended on the size of the fecal/fiscal offering. 

This indeed is an invention: the new elevated piggy toilet.

Rubbing its eyes in disbelief and impotence, the citizenry, with its modern flush toilets and septic tanks today wonders how this neo-piggy toilet came to pass, the stink now wafting into their homes; a lot of them confused and angry but not wanting to think the painful thought that it had to do with that little black spot on their finger.

Traffic islands

A silly spot of naughty verse)

Traffic islands of forbidden meat

Sacred speed breakers along our street

Disinfected evenly with goodly dung

For the many goodly ones among

Us who call her Mother

It’s a blessing no other

Nation or government may

Even hope for today

For what fancy roundabout

What designed pothole

Can stay that speeding lout

Or cleanse a greasy soul

Of that mortal sin of wanting

To get ahead. Flaunting

Our locomotive miracles

Be they Ferraris or bicycles.

Thank heavens for these

Our holy traffic police

Who sit around

And stand their ground.

A holy obstinacy

Of a sacred aristocracy.

Honk and abuse

It’s no use

Being irate.

Meditate.

That’s the salvific thing to do

For an eternal minute or two.

Then, if bladder and state

Of your mind cannot wait

Get down from your chariot and do

Obeisance. A worshipful “Shoo!”

That panchayat and govt. will not do for you.

 (See? My sillyverse

Is getting worse)

I better stop this naughty rant before

Mischief turns to malediction or more.

Politics and an old fart

True story. JWT in the 1960s.

He (I won't disclose his name) was always well turned out; freshly laundered shirts every day, red necktie (striped or checked but always red) and pin-striped trousers. He said he would have liked to wear a pin-striped suit to work every day, but that would be overdoing it, he thought.

Being well-dressed was not a vanity, he said; it was necessitated by his particular health condition. Flatulence. Vayu, he called it; of the most stubborn and aggressive kind. It was as if he was given bellows for bowels, he told us with head lowered as if to be modest about a rare personal gift. His ‘bellows’ worked continuously, at all times; something he could not control. Fortunately, he was blessed with a robust sphincter as well, which was able to regulate the velocity and decibel level of the ejected vayu. At home, when showing off to his wife or entertaining his two little ones, he could play it like a slide trombone, producing an impressive glissando from a resonant G on the bass clef to a nice thin C# two octaves higher. This was as told him by his musician neighbour.

He was most proud, however, of his ability to apply the sphincteral mute, if we can call it that, whenever he needed to, particularly in company. It was this talent he found useful every day in the first class compartment of the local train that took him to his office. From Vile Parle, where he had his one-bedroom apartment, he would take the Andheri Local, which would then return to Churchgate station. He needed to do this, because it guaranteed him a seat on an otherwise crowded train. He had to make sure that his carefully ironed shirt retained its creases the whole day.

The well-groomed look was important, because of his rare condition. He had to look like a sahib to handle his gift with respectability. At home, he read a Gujerati newspaper, but in the train, he would hold an English Times of India in front of him, generally looking at the classified columns and the art work of the local advertisements. The Times, he figured, lent him more respectability than his Gujerati newspaper.

The vayu would come unbidden, unstoppable, but our man with his sphincteral expertise, would mute it to silence. The problem, however was that while the vayu did not disturb the ear, it certainly did offend the nostrils. In fact, according to our gentleman sahib, the reduction of the vayu’s decibel level was in inverse proportion to its mischievous olfactory effects. But our man had learned how to handle the situation with aplomb.

Every time he ‘let go’, silently of course, he would lower his Times of India, turn his head towards the person sitting next to him and curl up an accusatory nose at him in disgust. Then he would go back to his newspaper. The rest of the compartment would quite naturally direct their glares towards the accused, who try as he may, with all his expressions of “I didn’t do it” would never be able to plead innocence. Nobody would pin something so vulgar on to a respectable looking gentleman as our man.

Brilliant. It worked always.

…..

This scatological reminiscence was triggered by a Times of India headline two days ago, which said that our man in Delhi was going on a fast with his party to atone for the ‘divisive politics’ of the Congress party!

Demonitization as spiritual exercise

Sacrifice. Mortification. Penance. Pain. All of that is good, we are told. Good for body. Good for soul. Good for you. Spritual exercise is cleansing; is salvific.

But then, who amid the urgent demands of duty and pleasure; of opportunity and insecurity, the slings and arrows and delights of life today can give time or even thought to the earning of this kind of salvation? Sure, there are those who will painfully contort muscle and limb in yogic poses and exercises for that desirable figure. Then there is that pious Catholic who will rise from the confessional with a prescribed ‘penance’ which he performs on his knees for absolution of his sins.

No. There is no time for all this.

But Heaven has its ways. Today we are witnessing that rarest of rare times in history when a nation and its honourable leaders are prescribing a formula for salvation. Penance for a collective sin. It is a wonderful opportunity for spiritual advancement.

Listen to this.

Two days ago, after attending the Litfest in Mumbai, we were getting into a taxi, when a man selling balloons on a bicycle approached us, and with his eyes sweeping the floor for shame, told us that he hadn’t sold a single balloon the whole day and that he had to take food home for his family. At most times I would have ignored him as just one of those street hoaxes. But then I remembered the demonitization. I felt the pain of this man (like our honourable leader often does as he ‘breaks down’ on the podium) and gave him a 100-rupee note. As we were entering the taxi, the taxi driver, switched of the ignition, reached into his shirt pocket, took out a 50-rupee note and gave it to the balloon man. His thoughtfulness was an expensive one. Cash was precious to him, particularly at this time, but he was ready to make that sacrifice..

At home, after briefing the carpenter on a job, we gave him his advance in the form of a cheque, saying that we had no cash. He took the cheque, and thought for a minute. He slowly took out his wallet and counted the cash he had. “I have 1500 rupees in 100-rupee notes,” he told us. “I can give you a thousand. You may need it for something.”

Demonitization was making people thoughtful. Unselfish. Charitable.

I have been hearing from friends how they have been doing without things: “The bank gave me this Rs.2000 note, which nobody would accept if they had to give me cash back,” said one. “So it was a useless piece of paper. I could buy nothing with it. I have spent nothing for so many days. And I am OK. Doing without!”

Mortification and sacrifice as a result of demonitization. This is a spiritual awakening!

Our foreign friends and relations tell us that we are unique. What is happening here would never happen anywhere else in the world: standing in line from dawn to dusk to be able get your own money; going through hunger, thirst, dehydration and fatigue; being witness to people fainting and some even dying... And then to go back at the end of the day empty-handed because there was no more cash in ATM or bank.

We are a special people. The favourite of the gods, surely. We are blessed with that fortitude, that resilience, that spiritual strain that few other people possess. We do these things because we have to, without asking why and for whose sin we are doing this penance (not ours personally, we know, but someone else’s) or to ask if this penance will in truth absolve the nation of that big collective sin they call Corruption, which is the real sin, of which the dark colour of cash is only a manifestation. We will not ask what is being done to exorcise this demon called Corruption instead of demonizing my hard-earned money. And please do not give us talk of all those many lakh crores that have been spent in order to mop up much less lakh crores of the coloured money. No price is too great for the rewards of this spiritual exercise. Please do not ask us to ask questions. The nation has made its collective confession and we will perform our penance because it is good for our spirit. It is salvific.

Let’s make the best of this spiritual exercise, the demonitization. We may not get this opportunity again.

Or will we?