POEM_: Good Guys and Bad Guys

There are good guys
and there are bad guys.
The good guys are ‘We’,
and the bad guys are ‘They’.
‘We’ may not be as good
as ‘We’ want to be.
And ‘We’ may not even want to be
as good as ‘We’ can be,
or should be.

But the bottom-line is –
we are ‘We’.
So, the good guys are always ‘We’,
and the bad guys, always ‘They’.

- owais

--
This was earlier published in Poetry Chronicle and in the book, 'Love?'

POEM_: As I Grew Up

As I grew up
I found
that life was not all
we were led to believe.

I found
that it was not fair.
I found
that it was not just, nor equal,
that it was not pure, nor virtuous.

Until one fateful night,
we were children,
who were allowed
none but the “pure” kind of love.
Overnight, we were told to call
the “dirty” love, “married bliss”.

We
who were not allowed
to look each-other in the eye,
we, who knew that sex was bad,
were told to have it.
And the men, and the women,
the elders of the family,
waited for the job to get done.
The cardinal sin had become
the very meaning, the sole aim of life.
The rite of passage, the ultimate duty.
With the ultimate disgrace
waiting for those who dared fail.

That was not fair
nor just, not pure nor virtuous.
When one sits back, and reflects
he finds that there are
two great realities of life:
Power and Love.
And each has its own scales.
One provides the means to life,
the other - meaning to it.
One is called
power, money, health,
knowledge, beauty, brains,
skill, status, pull…
The other is simply called love.
One is achieved, performed,
the other is simply felt, and expressed.

Power has no feelings;
Love no right to perform.

And that is why
it was so unfair.
They asked me to perform!

And as I grew up
I found Love.
I made it- one of my gods-
my only God,
and started living by It.

I met those whom I loved,
those who loved me, somewhat equally;
who desired a life with me.
But we always went our separate ways.
And never gave each-other for long
the love that we had promised.

Perhaps, because
Love is also of two kinds:
One that I was asked to desire,
One that I did desire.
And the two were, and are,
not equal.

Perhaps,
those who loved me
desired to be more equal,
than I did.
I just wanted more equality.

And so,
as I grew up
I found
that life was not just, nor equal,
that it was not pure, nor virtuous.

No one had told me that.

- owais

--
This was first published in the book, 'Love?'

POEM_: Virus

Virus.
Would you not call it noble?
Lives,
while its foe is alive
and dies with a dying foe.
Oh, the sacrifice, ultimate!
Not like us,
the inhumane humans,
who need to kill,
even before we eat.
(And then
wish to live ever after!)

Doing its job
with a single-minded devotion,
vacillating not like humans
never looking at any but the chosen species:
It could teach us a lesson
in determination and integrity.

And yet:
Armed with an awesome power
over its eco-system,
it is ever ready to destroy it.
How very human!

- owais

--
This was first published in the book, 'Love?'

POEM_: A Birthday

Birthday!
The tenth of Ramadan
my sixth birthday
Mother is ready
with the iftar snacks,
to be sent to the mosque
for the faithful. To be consumed
at the end of their day-long fast.

I leave, holding
the hand of my cousin
and the box of goodies.
In the mosque
a clean cloth is ready
with some iftari already spread
and some being spread.
Happily,
I set forth my offerings.

An old man totters by
Looks at the goodies
with a gleamy lonely eye.
I offer him a piece
and he grabs it thankfully.

A furtive glance
at a long-coated man,
bearded, respectable;
and quickly, the piece
disappears in his mouth.

The hawk, disturbed
by the sudden change
in the steady pattern
closes in: hits the man
on his weary little head
and shouts -
Sabar nahin hota buddhe?
(Can’t you wait, you silly old man?)

I return home
crying,
my birthday ruined.

.

- owais

--

This was first published in the book, 'Love?'

POEM_: My Mother; My Life

There was, once, a woman in my life,
She wasn’t in my life, she lived my life.
Then one day, I asked her for my life,
and she told me –
Your life isn’t yours at all;
It is mine, for I gave it to you.

I said –
You live one, and I live one;
we are equal, one and one.
No, she said –
You are unjust, you are cruel,
I shall have both,
And you have none.
How dare you call us equal
when I am the creator and you
The created!
How could you be,
if it were not for me?
You are, because I am,
and still I could be,
even if you weren’t.

I did not know what to say.
I looked around, then said:
I wouldn’t be if you were not,
yes, and I wouldn’t be if Time were not,
And if Love and Beauty,
Desire and Liberty,
Mind and Matter,
were not;
and so wouldn’t you be!
Why shouldn’t I give my life
to them?
And I have none,
and you have one?

- owais

--
This was earlier published in Poetry Chronicle and in the book, 'Love?'

POEM_: An Arrival

And lo!
It is India
My long awaited, long lost India.
India, in rains.

Far from the dust and sand
the burning sun, the scorched earth
the dead land
I come back to you
My everloving India.
In rains.

Life I see
in every breath of the monsoon,
in every gust of the cool fresh wind,
in every blade of glistening grass.

Life I see
in the grey muddy slums of Bombay,
in the shoves and the jostles at the VT,
in the speeding and the stalled locals
which acquire a certain elegance
with the ground wet under them;
even in the sulky faces
of the Indian Airlines hostesses
who are either incapable of joy
or short of the glue
that makes the plastic smiles stick.

And life I see
in the gay frolics
of the young and not-so-young boys
naked on the Chowpatty beach,
celebrating the youth, not just their own,
but of their earth too.

Life I see in everything
for I am in love
with India,
in rains.

- owais

--
This was first published in the book, 'Love?'.