A Eulogy.

{Written After watching a very disturbing video on CNN of a young girl dying in a bomb attack in Syria and being mourned by her two helplessly grieving young brothers}

From under the debris of dried tears

From below the heap of violent frozen screams

Dodging the splinters of hate,

Braving it all

A young Syrian girl rises to question the world

Standing tall

She asks…

Is there a way for my blood stained country to escape from here?

Is there a way to stop the howling humans from their fears?

Vultures hover over dead dreams

Our homes ash, our families die

I am in search of my mother?

Is she dead?

I want her back,

Like in the story, where dead arise and life comes back full circle

Can you tell me the truth?

Or

Lie me a Story?!

An eerie calm hangs in the air…

Life shudders and steps back!

And then,

A bullet rips her too…

Death. Silence. Numbness.

Fired from the devils gun.

Then,

Nothing.  

Voices. Cries. Women. Men. Friends. Leaders. Community.

Flowers. Candles. Drama. Media. HYPE.

All Grieve. And return to routine,

Then,

Clouds arrive… uncomfortably, dressed in black and gray

For the burial of what has remained on that bright sunny day,

A skeletal reality without a human soul or a shadow of guilt!

Fades away…like always…

Countries without an identity remain…

Trapped in a world that is so small, & terrorized

Surviving yet powerless with just one last wish, one last hope,

To die in Peace

Like the little Girl who died but left this world with a big smile…

So let her live in our memories at least,

Don’t wrap her in a blanket of your indifference OR decaying values

Unlike your rotten guts

She deserves a tribute

Lets pray for her safe passage

Into her heaven and her unfinished dreams!

@2016 17^th June

Nirav Vaidya

Bubble in a Bottle

Bubble in a Bottle!

Inside an empty bottle
A wandering wind caged unknowingly, ensues a silent rebellion,
Fossilized tears ride the stifled airwaves and become a Bubble,
Pregnant with a dream,
Looking for an escape,
Echoing a promise made,
To deliver the possibility of rebirth,
To Seed hope for every dying wave,
Unknown to the vastness of the immortal sea,
A game of mortality is at play,
For the dream thinks it will never break,
The bubble is anxious for never loosing its dream,
It’s only the bottle, floating endlessly into eternity,
Doing its Karma,
Peddled by almighty’s benevolence
Keeping everyone Alive!

@ 2016 Nirav Vaidya

Being Human

BEING HUMAN.

An Empty riverbed is like a carnivore’s maw

Waiting to gulp the sky or the first bird to fall in its womb…

This is where all human forms of inequalities stand unmasked, waterless, shamefully…

& There,

He sits alone,

Looking inwards,

At a gaping hole inside his stomach

It’s almost like his barren land, filled with dried up desires and cracked up dreams with no sign of crop or hope!

The sheer emptiness Mirrors the riverbed’s hunger

Echoes of his family wailing, carrying their cross of invalid existence oozes up to the brim of his humility,

There,

He looses his sense of faith, of his religion, and his dignity

At the intersection of India’s neglected reality…

Many lives loose their worth…

Naked & Famished like a helpless wasp

He has no choice but to think

Of biting a piece of death...

And so he falls

Into the abyss with a certain finality and vengeance promising himself never to come back…

Neither as a crop or as a drop of hope!

This happens frequently Just about few hundred kilometers away, from an indifferent civilization mired in progress and probabilities of becoming a super power state!! Wearing t-shirts with a certain élan over the charade of “BEING HUMAN”!

Approximately 63000 farmers have committed suicide in the state of Maharashtra due to drought situation. Not only does the situation become worse in drought, it weakens due to excessive flooding during rains too! The one who suffers most is the poor landless farmer. 

Wrote this after hearing Mr. P. Sainath at a recent writer’s conference.

@5^th August 2016 Nirav Vaidya.