Dwarakaithalaivan's poem in MUSE INDIA

Boats and lamps - Part I

- Dwarakaithalaivan

Our mentor
Is a social reformer.
As he speaks
The river of oration
Flows in our mind.
The waves are rolling
The golden foils
And we are elevated
To jump into the water.
We smear the glittering words
All over the body and
Swim inside
Probing the water space
With drowsy eyes.

We are floating the mind
Like a piece of wood
on the stream of speech.
Our dresses of beliefs
Are many centuries old.
We the shabby people
Lose our thick rough clothes
In the flood of oration.
We now wear
The waves as attire.
All those years
We strolled along the streets
With fetters.
We dragged the iron shot
Chained to our feet.

It made trenches in our hearts.
Sharpness of Orator’s tongue
Has snapped the chain to pieces.
Now we are free
Not only to run
But to fly.
We built many walls.
we painted them with blood
And wrote on them with tears.
All those primitive barriers
Are now washed away by the
Eloquent speech.
We make books as boats
To row over the flood.
Our writers are
Expertised in designing the boats.
Boats are not made
With polished planks
But with the rough ones
Like the path of
Oppressed people.
They are nailed together
With quotes of our social reformer.
The boats sail as swans
and swoop up the fishes
Which find their way
In a new channel.
We survive by going
Along the stream.
We don’t travel over the water
All the time.
We dive inside
And row the boat
Like a submarine
As we notice
An arrogant eagle passes by.
The eagles hover
High in the sky
they land for a food
And go back to their
Play ground the sky.
The eagles are no
special persons.

They are some common people
Who strike a balance between faiths
And practical life.
They soar in the sky
And land for a while.
The nails of mind
Hold the belief as prey.
They take the medicine of dogma
To soothe their aching wings.
They get the blood of truth
To transcend the noisy ground.
We make a mockery of eagles
With feathers of shackles.
We declare ourselves
As sons of freedom.
But we fail to look at ourselves.
What did we intend to do?
Why did we make boats?
We were determined to shed
All the shackles and
Make ourselves free as a wind.
But in the process we created
Our own shackles
In the form of boats and paddles.
In the river of rationality
which we believed
would wash away all the barriers
We are left as
Islands now.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reader's comment:

We are boats in the waters of knowledge.During Vedic period and till the end of Upanishad period,we were free at Gurukulams.During the Valedectory Function Yagnavalkya Maharshi advised disciples to be free in life and never refrain from learning(anuvaka-11,Thaithiryopanishad.)Here, we are free to learn though not to express.The poem is a fine exposition.Thanks.

Nasarudheen.P., Kasargod.Kerala.Aug 20, 2010


courtesy: Muse India sep- oct 2010 issue

Let the world resonate

I speak on the world around us. It smiles like a flower on the bark of a tree. Some times it influences us and even corrupts us.Is our mind in resonance with the things around us?
Resonance is re-echoing or vibrating sound. But what we try to find inside us is more than that. Our attitude is just a response to the environment. If our mind is compared to a sphere of riddle, the outer most layer is our attitude. The sphere is not moulded with a single thing. It has many layers. If we want to simplify it we could reveal two more layers inside the outer layer. If we remove the layer of attitude we find our behaviour and if we move further we end up with the core values.Are we in resonance with the environment? How do we respond to environment with our attitude? Will the environment has a say on our behaviours and values? These questions challenge any kind of research. We respond to the environment each and every minute through our attitude. In the course of time most of us will become slaves to the surroundings in one way or other . We are preoccupied by the things around us. Here we may lose ourselves and forget our inner-self which is the true self.Our mind covers the inner-self. Those things which take the mind start dominating us. Then we experience the resonance. It is a prolonging one. It is just an obsession. Later it becomes an obstacle to the freedom. Most of the people imagine happiness without understanding the very nature of it. Let the rotating world resonate with the beautiful song of nature.


- Dwarakaithalaivan

Dwarakaithalaivan's poem in MUSE INDIA

The poem below has been published in the recent issue of Muse India -one of the leading literary web site journals in India.


The Spark

The layers of remembrance
Are sliding and
Breaking the shells of
Fogetting.
That one which
Runs out of the shell
Shedding the nothingness
Has the corpse of
Previous thought
In its blood.