Anhad ka Baaja

We mortgage our present For a putative future We sign vakalatnamas For others To live our lives We mark time Until one day Tomorrow arrives unannounced And we find that The solutions to all our

Lying with my Patti On her kayyathu kattil I would doze off Listening to her saying That is your nakshatram: Pooraadam Mine is Thiruvadurai Your Appa's is... On our Colaba terrace My father would

The cut-and-thrust of debate The piercing wit The sharpness of repartee We all know that Words are powerful indeed Why, sarcasm can even bite When we talk to each other We can hear What the other

They come in the night The Gestapo do They knock on your door The Gestapo do They knock down your door The Gestapo do They take you away The Gestapo do Far far away The Gestapo do It's no use

We draw borders And erect fences And say That is yours This is mine Don't cross Or else But borders are porous to Viruses (And ideas) And unless we realise that We all have to hang together We will

We take sides Erect barricades And settle down to see Who can outshout the other Changing your mind Is seen as Loss of face So there is no effort made To empathise with the other To see a different