Couldnt have expressed it better than dear friend Driftwood Ashore... Symbolized in all the places To which he would have never wished To relate. As a style statement headgear that sits clumsily on corrupt heads And as statutes at squares Over which pigeons shit And under which peddlers cheat And hung ceremoniously as calendars on hollow government office walls before which bribes are exchanged And on currency notes, Crisp or soiled, Black or white money, A featured watermark Of genuineness. Gandhi is crumpled, Gandhi is faked, Gandhi is blackened, Gandhi is stolen, snatched, looted, sweated, pawned, spent or Simply hoarded for a rainy day. Bapu, The half naked fakir, Father of a nation that was orphaned soon after its birth on this very day. Gandhi had ceased to be politically relevant Even as he survived the last few months Post Independence And the partition. Plenty of us revere him Without understanding what he meant, Some of us hate him Without understanding what he meant Yet all of us quote him And yes we hoard him. Gandhi is more than a legacy Gandhi was taller than our collective myopic vision. Gandhi wasnt just a nationalist He was a universal pacificist. How many know that Gandhi was nowhere Near the ramparts of power At the tryst with destiny hour. He was far away doing his unfinished mission And quietly grieving partition by fasting. Let us not remember Gandhi As the one responsible for another dry day Or a character in the flick Munna Bhai MBBS. Let us remember him For what he stood for, Till he was felled this very day. Peace, Non-violence, Truth, Moral courage, Equality, Humility, Simplicity, Universal brotherhood & Humanity! ~Shyam~
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 08:04:21 +0000