Krishna

Krishna,

Your presence is felt

When my friend holds my hand,

And when my child hugs me with pure joy;

Your hand touches me

When deeds go unrewarded,

For injustice does not make me lose faith or hope.

Your healing balm is there

In every breath of wind

That plays gently with my hair let down.

Now, as I stand on the brink of a new birth,

A nascent life, full of trepidation,

Wondering if the labour, the pain, the tears,

Will bear fruit,

I cease to worry any more, for..

Krishna,

You are holding my hand

And climbing into my lap

While playing with my breeze-smothered hair

All the time.

You are in all, and all are in you,

My Krishna, o my

Krishna.

Blooming

In this cold winter morning,

A little bud has decided that she will bloom,

Knowing that the chill will not last forever,

And sooner than later, spring will come.

Having being a bud for a long time now,

She is waiting to spread out her soft petals

Full of colour and fragrance.

No winter can kill a bud, for she

Has the patience to wait for the time of bloom.

A child shall show the way

Walking on the steep hilly road,

With sweatdrops dripping

I almost gave up.

It was not of my choice

That I was on the road

So forbidding.

I had been politely ordered to walk

And walk, and walk.

The boss had underestimated my difficulty

In walking. It was not her fault;

She had no idea how different I am.

On the uphill climb, my little son came running to me,

Seeing me panting, and by seeing him so near me

Full of faith and natural joy,

I knew I could walk all the way.

As my son walked a few steps ahead of me,

I followed willingly, and with revived vigour.

My handicap no longer holding me back,

I remembered that years ago,

Someone had whispered to me,

"A child shall show the way."

The Fifth Sense

This is not my work, but I thought it worth sharing with you.

A 65-year-old Cypriot Greek shepherd, Nicolis Loizou, was wounded on 30 December, 1957, by security forces. He was challenged twice; when he failed to answer, troops opened fire. A subsequent hospital examination showed that the man was deaf.

Lamps burn all night
Here, where people must be watched and seen,
And I, a shepherd, Nicolis Loizou,
Wish for the dark, for I have been
Sure-footed in the dark, but now my sight
Stumbles among these beds, scattered white boulders,
As I lean towards my far slumbering house
With the night slumbering upon my shoulders.

My sight was always good,
Better than others, I could taste wine and bread
And name the field they spattered when the harvest
Broke, I could coil in the red
Scent of the fox out of a maze of wood
And grass. I could touch mist. I could touch breath.
But of my sharp senses I had only four.
The fifth one pinned me to my death.

The soldiers must have called
The word they needed: Halt. Not hearing it,
I was their failure, relaxed against the winter
Sky, the flag of their defeat.
With their five senses they could not have told
That I lacked one, and so they had to shoot.
They would fire at a rainbow if it had
A colour less than they were taught.

Christ said that when one sheep
Was lost, the rest meant nothing any more.
Here in this hospital, where others' breathing
Swings like a lantern in the polished floor
And squeezes those who cannot sleep,
I see how precious each thing is, how dear,
For I may never touch, smell, taste or see
Again, because I could not hear.
(From, Collected Poems by Patricia Beer, published by Carcanet Press Limited in 1998)

The world is still very much the same.

Closeness: an act of love

As I walk down the narrow lane

Trying to save myself from all the crowd,

Smell and touches undesired,

I feel a breath on my neck.

Yet, for the first time in the narrow lane,

Did I like to have someone so near me.

There is that one whose closeness

Makes me survive anything, anywhere;

Yes, survive even in the narrow lane.

(Dedicated to the one who makes my life worth living)

Manners?

A good friend visited me a few days back. Along with her came her 7-year-old daughter. As we were sitting in the living-room, the child got up and started roaming around the place. I thought she was getting restless sitting for long, and wanted to stretch her legs.

After about 10 minutes I heeded towards the kitchen to check if the domestic-maid had prepared the snacks and the tea for the guests. As I crossed my bedroom, I happened to glance inside and what I saw irritated me.

The child was at the dressing-table, had opened the drawer and was using my comb!

When we were children, our parents, grandparents and teachers had taught us never to touch things that did not belong to us. They had said that manners are important in life.

The Healing

Toiling hard each day of this life

Or living in doubt or pain or despair

One gets tired.

Tired to work; tired to laugh;

Tired to breathe.

With every bone aching

And every tear fallen,

What is left?

Is there anything that can heal

This broken being?

Leaving all that hurts..

Oh, there is so much that does!

And, no longer trying to control life,

She surrenders, to the one

Who holds the thread running through all.