Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 4: CLRI November 2019
Poem by Dr Dalip Khetarpal
Thunder and Plunder C/O Narcissists
Narcissists, in ordinary life, are generally perceptible,
When observation is keen.
But even sans keen perception,
They could easily be perceptible
When a Facebook account is switched on.
As an idle mind is the devil's seedbed,
Facebook quite unwittingly becomes the seedbed
Of idle maniacs, releasing
A stormy wave of narcissists,
Of ego-surfers, to simply taste
Trivial fake 'likes' and empty praises
For even worthless achievements and works
Often with concomitant manipulative certificates
Of appreciation and commendation
Which they madly famish for,
Embellishing also their dreary slot
By feeding it with the superficial diet whereon
They also seem to survive.
Thanks to the Facebook creator for infusing new life
Into infinite narcissists and promoting their inane cause.
Strangely, equal praise is elicited
By both the ugly and beautiful,
The stupid and the intelligent,
Proving how ingratiating praises are also so false.
But the plethora of compliments and praises
Chokes the helpless, yielding Facebook.
Surfeited with such wild invasion and encroachment
It has been ailing with seeming vibrancy since its creation,
Ailing also, all its well-meaning sensible and intelligent users.
Does not all this seem to be a vain-gloriously orchestrated plan?
Narcissists rules where hapless Facebook surrenders!
Death & Resurrection — Ultramodern Style
Once in a renowned hospital,
I chanced to see a dying man gaining instant resurrection
By suddenly grabbing
And throwing violently his ventilator,
Springing back to life and action
Simply on seeing a bombastic, exquisite and eulogistic comment
On his cell-phone display screen,
Flaunted by his attending tensive wife.
Suspended betwixt belief and disbelief,
I rubbed my eyes to ascertain
Whether it was a dream or reality.
FB succeeds where doctors and medical sciences fail
To resurrect or revive humans!
I was also quite taken aback
when I saw A girl riding a scooter
With her mobile tightly sandwiched between
Her left shoulder and left ear.
Lost in conversation, she jumped the red-light
And so, was crushed by a running car.
This time I didn’t rub my eyes
To ascertain the facts, ‘cause
I’ve learnt how facts are even stranger than fiction.
Cell-phone succeeds where gods and destiny fail
To decide the life and death of humans!
Resurrected pious souls are few e’en in scriptures,
But many are resurrected impious souls today, in truth.
Google not only makes way for
The infinite amount of information
Available on the web,
But also fills one’s emotional and intellectual vacuum;
It also renders unprecedented service
By providing a conduit for earning a new life,
Bringing many from the abode of the death
To this living world–like a divine power, effecting instant resurrection.
Ferrying the death to this world after enlivening them In the twinkling of an eye
Could be an act benign and divine,
But repeating the same indiscriminately with many humans
And regularizing it, is devastating,
Causing rather population explosion.
Christ’s resurrection is still unclear,
But resurrection through FB operators is galore----
---experienced and witnessed by many.
After resurrection death often raises its ugly head
When one detoxifies himself
From this advanced computing world even for a short while.
But, he knows the secret of re-resurrection
That propels him to exploit it over and over again,
Till he dies a FB addict one day.
Pitiably, all remedies discovered by medical sciences
Have also failed to de-addict such addicts
Though it is still unclear
Whether it is addiction or insanity.
Protean psychiatric treatment
And psychological counseling have also failed,
God also knows not the way to weed out
This outbreak of an epidemic of FB
Generated by cybernetic humans
Who have the expertise to measure the length and breadth
Of their joys and sorrows through it.
Strangely also painful to see
A host of starved FB users soliciting for empty likes,
Or, inviting their empty-mundane-petty achievements to be liked,
Simply to enrich their empty impoverished famished life
And inflate their deflated ego.
Poverty and richness of their psycho-somatic life so,
Is simply determined by the number of FB friends
And by the superficial quality of plethora
Of perennial accrual of comments
Emanating, surfacing.
For all that, intelligence or stupidity is surely reflected by
How one discerns and takes one’s praise.
How really earthly, but godly and divine is cybernetic man
That performs
Deeds, holy and miraculous
With greater speed, precision and efficiency
Than all Gods and angels!
How also really satanic and fallen is he
That also performs
Deeds, evil and malicious
With greater velocity, intensity and competency
Than all demons and evil spirits!
Big Pseudo Gods amongst Little Blockheads
Truth matters not, for perception, though false, is a reality.
People, vitiated with self-interest, biases and prejudices,
often color this mute helpless world with false perception,
with the way they want to see it and so, have ruined it--
--- pathetically, almost completely.
Clearly, selective blindness is lethal to humanity.
Spying and eyeing for a demi-god
His roving eyes roam the earth
To see the category of security,
The number of pilots, security guards and sniffer dogs,
The potentials to dare and scare the poor and weak,
The perfect image for which
He dies to be his doormat.
Carried rashly, if not blindly by his self-effacing drives,
He frantically longs to enter into kinship
With his perfect good-for-nothing, but ideal demi-god,
For he wants to be himself fearsome and empowered
With the powers of a potentate,
Not knowing the cheap, mean and empty sentiment and aims
Whereon he squanders his time and energies.
Famished for power and pelf
Man often falls from grace,
Willing to strip off all that is noble and virtuous,
He heartily, submissively, resorts to total surrender
And joyously sacrifices all his human and divine attributes
At the altar of degenerate, but seemingly true semi-god.
A passive and unwilling lamb bleats
While being sacrificed
But an active and servile stooge shrieks
With delight, gets instant resurrection
And reaps rewards unprecedented
Through his sacrifice----of principles, of morals,
Of everything that brings humanity laurels
By becoming the arbiter of human fate.
To be an eager replica of evil
With a smirk of contentment
Shows how evil is deeply entrenched in his psyche.
He poses to be larger than human life,
But in truth, is pettier than animal life.
He also poses to be blessed with a high IQ,
But in truth, is nothing more than a mule.
When our earth is infested with blockheads and mules,
Demi-gods must reign supreme.
Painfully again, there is still the dearth and demand of pseudo-gods
For the mushrooming growth of fools has outgrown them.
As the eternity of blockheads blesses demi-gods with eternal life,
Their evaporation only
Could vaporize pseudo-gods.