Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 1: CLRI Feb 2019
Dr Dalip Khetarpal
Futile Queries and Epical Shrieks of Few Anguished Souls
I was so inspired by the theme of a poem of Sara Rozit (a 20- year- old filmmaker of Egypt) that many analogous ideas sprang up from my mind, making this poem possible.
This fractured age
Has generated a society, improvised
Wherein manipulations are legitimate rights,
Wherein luck or success depends not on caliber
But on whims, on the choice of boss
Whose birthright privilege has often been
To shape your fortune,
Wherein every feeling and thinking is fake,
Wherein everyone has to forfeit his honesty and integrity
Simply for acceptance,
Wherein stupidity is glorified over intelligence,
Again, simply for acceptance,
Where dishonesty is glorified over integrity,
Simply, still again, for acceptance.
In this cyber age
Beauty is worshipped over morals,
Selfishness over selflessness
Weakness over strength
Cruelty over kindness
Revenge over forgiveness
Demerits over merits
Dishonor over honor.
The false so, win
And the true, lose.
Surely, this is a cybernetics, capitalist,
industrialized-robotized century,
The purest century of impure face-book,
Instagram and cybernetics,
Of cyber-space, cybersquatting and cyber-sex of cyborgs,
Wherein everything, devoid of spirit, is fake and mechanized,
Sans life and warmth
Depriving also the life and warmth
Of ecology, of nature.
A robotic culture clones
Can’t spend a day, an hour or even a minute,
Sans apps on their smart-phone,
But can comfortably and gleefully spend their whole life
Witnessing the poor, the sick, the wretched
And the deprived, wilting.
Media also teaches us not
To follow the unpopular
That is worthy, virtuous and meaningful,
But the evil demonic popular
Through trivial and worthless ads.
Latest modern concept opines: ‘We need to be wealthy,’
So, our system also teaches
How wealth power and fame are essential,
How they determine one’s success,
How character is defined and refined by
One’s material position,
How even one’s religiosity is measured by
One’s socio-financial status.
But does acquiring and having all such illusive best
Makes one really the best?
Can the best of Satanic qualities imbibed
Makes one the best?
Success is ironically attained by who one really knows,
Not by what he really knows.
The cursed majority suffers, is exploited,
The unfairly blessed- selected few, enjoy cakes and ale
Though awash with lust, greed, malice, spite
And loaded with deep loathing,
While the languishing commoners slave over
Their menial jobs
And groan in anguish.
Day in and day out, we notice all these physically
But we remain unaffected, feel it not a whit
‘cause the sensitivity of our sensibilities
Has become blunt, hardened,
Rather dead.
Compassion and pity
Affects not our insensate defunct psyche.
Conditioned to seeing all this
We’re not capable of seeing anything good
Seeing better is a remote dream.
Passionately luxuriating and wallowing in lies,
We have become terribly accomplished liars.
Science makes us robotic culture clones,
Schools only teach us how to mug up the syllabus,
To inhale and exhale a fixed specific matter
But seldom how to think freely and analyze.
They only teach us how to think
Of conforming to societal norms, to authority;
But seldom teach us how to react freely,
How to question the rod-wielding or gut-wrenching authority,
How to fight the evils of our own culture and conventions.
They rather impel us to yield to authority
And blindly follow the set conventions---
----defiance so kills as conformity survives us.
Religions want us never to question
But to blindly believe in it
For they know that faith is unquestionable,
Forgetting that faith is something personal too.
Religion, race, ethnicity and all human beliefs
Are but ineffable human constructs,
So why blindly follow them.
No human construct, howsoever good and appealing,
Should ever overpower our sense and sensibilities,
Snatch our freedom of thought,
And prevent us from thinking freely.
Most religious men are corrupt to trick us
Still, we worship them, shamefully, knowingly.
Why should it be?
Why should the corrupt be fed, eulogized and worshipped
And empty and theatrical rhetoric and rants
Of fake saints and leaders earn
Applause and kudos
When we witness the languishing poor
Ruthlessly torn by hunger,
Poverty and disease?
Why should all means of comfort and luxury,
Special foods, drinks, electronic gadgets, pop culture
Be more important than environmental pollution,
Animal extinction, starving sick children, poverty and hunger?
Why should we impart such a bright sheen
To the mean and unclean?
Should we allow their undeserved celebrity status
To intrude on our sensitive conscience and consciousness?
We kill animals because they’re weaker than us,
Because we can control them.
We kill them solely to gratify our palate----
-----ruthlessly prioritizing taste over innocent lives.
Why then do we advocate the cause of animals,
When we kill and eat them?
When we can’t love humans, how can we love animals!
When living by killing even humans is our forte,
How can animals be spared!
We often show our loyalty and love to animals
Only when we have no alternative, no being
To vent and shower our love on,
Or, when they serve our needs
Or offer some gain.
Why should our love emanate from selfishness
When it is something natural and compellingly needs a vent!
Why then should we demand sincerity and trust
From these speechless innocent species
When we know that our return is nothing, but betrayal?
Why should we be also called mankind
When we’re most unkind?
As an intelligent, enlightened species of this planet
We’re surely mean, cruel and selfish.
Sustainable mushrooming endless growth of all ills
On this finite planet ironically, has led to the collapse
Of this civilization, for virtues and eternal values
Have become unsustainable.
This most advanced enlightening ultra modern century
Wherein even the most fatal problem has a solution
Why should there be famine, poverty, hunger, disease, war
And mental illnesses varied?
Why then do we advocate peace, progress and prosperity
When we generate wars, deaths and chaos?
Why should we follow such a system
That promotes all these,
That makes the unclean rich,
And the clean poor?
When one per cent of the world’s population
Owns 40% of all the wealth this pitiable planet has,
Can we say this world is fair,
Just, balanced and healthy?
It’s all so gnawing…
These are the symptoms of an ailing system.
This fractured century
Needs to be repaired, revived,
It’s the ripest time to act.
Should we so now not awaken and dredge up the truth,
The sense of fair play and justice that lies dormant
In our sub-conscious and unconscious mind?
Let this world remain a stage,
Let all be actors,
Let the producer-director of the play
Be mute and unconcerned,
The show should instantly stop
To save the world
From its cataclysmic end.
If my vision needs revision,
If my perception is wrong,
I must clean my dirty glasses
And see all this again with cleaner glasses
And give a cleaner view
Which may again not be true,
‘cause it’s unwise to generalize personal perception,
Though it is right.