Did we tell you the name of the game, boy?

She has a comeback for every

sanctimonious prude who calls her

a whore or accuses her of doing

anything for money.

The sheer callousness and nonchalance with which

they carried out the act were such that,

the sanctions seem a let off, more so

because the evidence here was incriminating.

Too many could kill its business

model, since every constraint on how

data is used means lost revenue.

But, by applying the same standards across

all markets, the revenue engine could stall.

The philosopher has never killed any priests,

whereas the priest has killed a great

many philosophers.

This time, the egg on their face may stick.

     

Oh, by the way, Vijay Mallya is not really an absconder,

He eloped!


*FYI - Most of it is copied from newspaper articles. Nothing, except the last line, belongs to the poor old compiler.

Being

The arrival of a last goodbye,
during the birth pangs of a word,
fuddles the pen in my hand,
as the 'economic man' inside me,
takes over.

The story, left in the lurch,
struggles hard, wheezing to
make peace with
the final full stop - the ending,
the eternal ending.

Donkey years ago,
I began with death in my mind,
leading myself on through a boulevard
configured by fools,
'doing what I loved and loving what I did.'

The great escape is never on the cards with you,
but just a funeral pyre away,
or sometimes hyphenated to
the fickle story,
the one they've baptized as life.

The ignominy of inactivity

The black heated road, circumambulating

the garden of the tall, well-fed, green grass,

tries to merge into the highway,

laid out to high-speed humanity

and short circuit the sands of time,

waylays a dog or two,

cows, a cow or two,

denuding the transience of the breath of life.

The dogs of now devour the cow that was.

Life comes a full circle around

the death of activity. In-activity, they call it.

The highway, in turn, longs to merge into

the reactionary black heated road, encircling the

garden, where the grass is tall and

well-fed on the ignominy of inactivity.

Eye View

The sun executes
a will of perpetuation.
The dawn diminishes my shadow
on the architecture.
The ruddy river of yesterday's hope,
gushes out from my nose today.

A weak link in the cause of the world,
I sit afar. Last in the lines.
Moral inertia keeps me
in the grey. Me, it defines.
My friend of yore, drives a
big piece of metal. Bottled wines.

When the line inches,
ignorant of the imminent slaughter,
I don't move, I don't budge.
The degenerate swines.

I wish away the day for the night.
I wish for the arrival of my solitary accomplices.
I wish the darkness to veil their faces.
I wish to wipe from my burlesque memory -
the springs of them, the autumns of me.

Temerity between the binaries

The space between the binaries,

like the water of the waterfall

between the ledge and the lake,

is impetuous and temporally wasted.

The epochal interregnum between the binaries
Of Right and Wrong, Of Yes and No,
looks down the soul
of the instrumental scientific temper of the times,
of Modernity,
of the primordial culture in vogue,
of the glazing surface intellect,
of the deafening sound of silence.

It bypasses the human frailties and
eavesdrop on life growing into death.

There is a quixotic tinge to
the space between the binaries.
There, lie the unheard and unexplored
treasure troves of significant insignificance.

While fathoming the emptiness inside,
and traversing the edges of the lunatic fringe,
life comes to death
and death to life.

Joining the dots

Distributed among mendicants
of frugal wisdom, is the sweet
ale of scattered spirituality.
With the waving of the magic wand,
the trials and tribulations soot away,
the faithful is down on his knees,
kissing the spectre of the spelled cast, heavenly.

Deliverance of an asymmetrical tale
opens up the path to truthfulness,
bypassing the busy downhill boulevard,
blessed with the sanctimonious nod,
the one chastised as
the highway to God.

Ordinariness

He struggles to find the appropriate word.

He oozes perfunctory self-assurance.

He never takes the path less travelled by.

He is fulfilled at the distant sight of joy.

Night is just an internecine,

a time warp where sides are changed,

when he takes an (un)ethical stance,

while cruising in a ship of forlorn hope.

He has an opinion on everything,

the kind that does not really matter.

He was fed on a false future

all his life. Some of which, he

redeems from his wife.

Trying to improve his lot, he

worked his fingers to their bone.

He fakes emotions with consummate ease.

While giving his child lessons in morality,

he greases the palms of those who swore

contemporaneous honesty.

In a teeming sea of ordinariness,

he will pass you - unnoticed,

you’ll never remember his wrinkled face,

and on the final arrival, in death,

while obviating his last trace,

they will cover his stupid face.