Anhad ka Baaja

Those who speak Truth to friends May lose friends Those who speak Truth to power May lose Their reputation Their liberty Their life Power seeks to Make all of us Talk on tiptoe Think on tiptoe Or

I think I can tell Why poetry doesn’t sell: Even if you stop up your ears It will say quite plainly What you do not care to hear Within the crispness  Of a line or two It tells you What you must not

Long before Mask wearing Became universal Our faces were masks We learn from childhood To mask our feelings To say the right thing To do the right thing To feel the right thing But to feel the right

A poet’s vocation Is dangerous You stand to lose Your liberty Perhaps your life Worst of all Your friends It seems to me that Nowadays I just need to Shake my head To lose a friend Should I then Keep

It’s just a  Common cold We used to say It can be cured in a week With medicines Or in seven days, without When even common dizziness Has a titled cousin Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo We

When I was growing up In Bombay My father used to say With a twinkle in his eye That he works Where the stars shine all day Now, the virus has stopped The stars from shining all day When I look up at