Seshan

 It was I think, in the question hour

That I overheard in the corridors of power

A whispered mention of TN Seshan

In an agitated nervous conversation.

Said a nervous voice to an agitated ear

"This monster is our creatio, I fear.

We thought bureaucrats had no backbone

And so even he would leave us alone.

But this devil seems to particularly hate us

And makes full use of his elevated status.

We Parliamentarians do so many things

Why can't we simply clip his wings?"

"Monster is right", said voice number two

But what can we poor politicians do?

No carrot nor stick will work on him

And chances of an impeachment are dim."

Said voice number one, "What we require

Is a strategy to fight fire with fire.

To curb one commissioner, what we need to do

Is to somehow create another two!"

Hand number two slapped back number one

With hurried confabulations the deed was done.

They thought they'd eliminated a major grouse.

And celebrated merrily in the well of the house.

But the tiger in Seshan growled in glee

He threw the law book at the joyous melee.

And as for the newly appointed pair

They had the office but not the chair.

Meanwhile on the issue of electoral reforms

Mr. Seshan decided to follow the norms.

"Follow the norms?!" said the polity astonished

Expecting Seshan to be suitably admonished.

"Follow the norms? Who are you fooling?

How will we fulfill the domicile ruling?

Follow the norms? Have you lost your senses?

How will we limit the electoral expenss??"

"You know the powers with which I am vested,"

Said Seshan to all those who protested

With a peremptory stroke and characteristic flair

He deemed future polls to be free and fair.

The crowds now cheered, and Seshan smirked

But the powers that be were truly irked.

They had an ace tucked up their sleeve

And they played their card when he went on leave.

A lot was at stake, a lot on fire.

He had kindled the flames of political ire

This man who the masses adulate and admire

Is being consigned to the beuracratic pyre.

Rumors are rife, a lot is being said

Let's wait and watch what lies ahead.

I don't think he'll quit the commission he's led.

For though Seshan is down, he ain't quite dead.

Jessica

Jessica died

Some people cried

And then they lost the case.

Manu walked

Coz no one talked

Justice has its ways.

Manu's dad

Was big and bad

And pulled out all the stops.

to cover the tracks

With cash in stacks

To the Shaayans and the cops.

Bina and daughter

Threw lots of water

On the bloodstains in the bar.

Who disappeared quicker

Than the illegal liquor

Was the culprit in the car.

Years after the crime

There came a time

When the case was opened again.

Jethmalani

Came into the kahaani

For the slayer, not the slain.

There's lots of talk

With pain and shock

Of where the case is going.

The sex angle

The socialite tangle

The intricacies are growing.

It's a filmy plot

With all that's hot

Violence, glamour and sex.

The heroine is nailed

the vamp is jailed

The villains are saving their necks.

But it's not a movie

In which a groovy

Macho hero crashes the party.

Beats up the crooks

While the system just looks

And everything's hale and hearty.

In the land of zero

There is no hero

Who will bring the bad to book.

There was a Ram

Who said no Ma'am

I'd rather represent the crook.

Nothing is exact!

Inspired by the innocent question on a song called "Mathura nagarpati, kahey tum gokul jaao?".

What does it mean, she asked. And this is my answer:

What makes it oh, so hard

For you to understand

The feelings that the bard

Wrote in a lyrical hand.

What makes Krishna so right

And Radha oh, so pure?

What makes their trysts at night

Blameless to the core?

What makes Krishna devoted

To Radha AND his wife?

Yet deified and quoted

As the perfect form of life?

What makes Radha’s character

So strong and full of glory?

What makes us resurrect her

By repeating her love story?

What makes immortal romance

So elevating in our eyes?

What makes us want to chance

Everything for that prize?

What makes that song appealing

Is not its logic but in fact,

It’s a vague resonance of feeling

Because “Nothing is exact!”

What makes nothing exact, you see

Are questions with no replies.

My truth is my answer for me

And your truth, for you likewise.

Faith is dead.

Faith is dead.

It could not survive

In the worlds that thrive

On passion and lust

And a greed for stardust

And variety in bed.

Faith is dead

Faith is dead.

Words carry no weight.

Sentiments change with the date.

Promises are broken

Kisses are a token

Of inhibitions shed.

Faith is dead.

Faith is dead.

Relationships are nought

But an emotionless knot

Of arms and legs.

Starving morality begs

And pleads to be fed.

Faith is dead.

Faith is dead.

I must confess that I dread

The order this age has bred.

In shame I hang my head

But now this must be said:

Love, with suspicion is wed.

Faith is dead.

A DROWNING MAN’S COME UP FOR AIR

 

My boat that sank

Like a ten ton tank

Has gone down without me.

I’m wet and cold

But I’ve got the hold

Of hope that’s floating free.

I swim and kick

I try every trick

To keep my head above

The sea of charges

Of who sank the barges

On which had sailed my love.

I cough up my bile

With a shrug and a smile

Discarding the flood of despair.

I struggle for the shore

To live once more...

A drowning man’s come up for air.

A DROWNING MAN

No hope in sight

No will to fight

An ocean full of grief.

Hands that clutch

At nothing much

But impossible belief.

That he will endure

Till brought to her shore

In a dream filled golden boat

But as time flies

He does realise

That wishes do not float.

His boat of gold

In which his bold

And reckless love had sailed

In stormy weather

Got together

With betrayal and failed.

Memories evoke

Emotions that choke

Engulfing all senses in pain.

Wave after wave

Of nostalgia enslave

All thoughts of loving again.

Tear dry eyes

He shuts and tries

For unconsciousness and bliss

And as he sinks

In sorrow thinks

A drowning man must feel like this.

A day in the life of a clerk

Sunrise

Dawn stealthily stealing

The nightly cover and revealing

Smog, and those irritating flies.

Eyes

Gummed with sleep and yesterday’s dirt

The pillow made of the other shirt

And the youngest baby’s piercing cries.

He sighs

A toss of the blanket over the head

The creaking of joints of the weatherworn bed

The smell of leaked milk on the wife’s chemise.

He dries

Himself after a scanty bath

Combs those graying hair as the aftermath

That he plans to but never dyes.

Chastise

One child and scold the other

For troubling the youngest baby brother

And hurriedly leave, no waves, goodbyes.

Futile tries

To impress the boss with the typewriter’s clatter

And shabby compliments aimed to flatter

The boss’s acknowledgement, curt, concise.

The despise

For those interminable files

Evident in the complete absence of smiles

And the vacant look under a busy disguise,.

Socialise

Over soggy lunches and cups of tea

Discussions on the boss’s secretary

Then back to work with tired sighs.

Scrutinise

The yellowed dial on a tired wrist

Through cigarette smoke and a sweaty mist

And hurriedly leave, no waves, goodbyes.

Noise

In the street and in the house

Shrieking of children, complaining of spouse

Go on till the darkening of the skies.

Economise

The uppermost thought in either mind

Evident in the trouser’s patched behind

And the children’s clothes, too small in size.

They arise.

After the evening meal has ended

And sound sleep on the kids has descended

He retires for the night between her tired thighs.

Realise

That life of checking files by light

And passionless love to the wife at night

Is nothing but a slow drawn out demise.

Aching eyes

Dreaming of a paradise

Which the frustration and pain belies

Welcome a sleep that will anaesthise.

Six Years

Your absence

Like a hollow space

Reverberates at night.

Vacuum can be painful,

I realize.

Six years

And you still are

Like a breath of fresh air

In my life.

Oh Bush! Eat your words.

Bushisms never end. and the lates one that got a lot of Indians riled up (and perhaps for the wrong reasons) inspired this rhyme. I do feel there is a larger malaise to the inferences Bush drew. Read on to find out.

Oh Bush, are you getting enough
Of bacon ham and all that stuff?
Is it a result of the hunger pangs
That you have again shown off your fangs?

Oh Bush, are you feeling cheated
That the Indian economy is over heated?
Only the Americans have a right to grow
Why should India have their share of dough?

Oh Bush, you’ve spent so much on war
With food and guns it’s either-or
Guns are fun, leave millions dead.
And dead men do not eat their bread.

Oh Bush, let the third world die
So your food stocks are always high
The lesser world will be dead meat
So America has enough to eat.

Oh Bush, but on a personal note
Referring to your infamous quote
You do not need YOUR share of grain
Just put your foot in your mouth again!

FMS stress!

This is for all my friends from FMS. I wrote this for my fresher's welcome and I just incovered it in some old papers. Enjoy the nostalgia!

FMS


Why lines on the graph define the bounds
Why solutions are rejected on feasibility grounds
Why OR is an activity that confounds
Narag expounds

Why importance is not of the soap but smell
Why sales go up by an attractive shell
What will not and what will sell
Anand will tell

Why humans are separate from other resources
Why these can wield some formidable forces
Why we have to take some HRM courses
Mamkootam endorses

Why debit is debit and credit is credit
Why engineers and mathematicians dread it
Why accountants and their ilk have rigourously read it
Madhu Vij has said it

Why Information Systems are important too
Why the techy guys do what they do
Why the IIT types gloat and the others go blue
Singla has no clue!!!!

Junta will rule

Diplomacy is all about standing for contradictions with conviction! Or so I gather from the latest statement by the US foreign office!

Recently it was in the news
USA had expressed its views
That Pakistan should embrace
A more mellow democratic face.

They said they would tolerate
A schizophrenic head of state
On condition that he declare
Future polls to be free and fair!

Is this serious or a joke?
Don’t they really know the bloke?
In the current circumstances
Would he ever take his chances?

Musharraf is nobody’s fool
When he says the “junta” will rule
He is being foxy and sly
But in all honesty he does not lie!

The military junta that he leads
Draws its power as it breeds
Leaders with a feudal hand
In a poor and violent land.

Henry Ford in another age
Sold his cars with the adage
“Buy any color in the rack
As long as the car is black!”

The General takes a similar cue
And gives democracy its due.
“Vote for the most deserving,” means
“As long as they’re dressed in olive greens!”

A case against body language

Anjali was a lawyer. A pretty one at that. Somebody persuaded her to pose for a girlie magazine and all hell broke lose. The Delhi Bar Association (DBA) was up in arms demanding she be debarred from practice. The logic eluded me till I dug deeper...

For some odd reason she wanted to defy
Social norms and customs, don’t ask me why
And she wasn’t too demure, she wasn’t too shy
So she took off her clothes for the voyeurs eye.

She’s smart and capable, she’s done her law
God only knows why she wanted to draw
Attention, ensuring everybody saw
A lawyer posing for a picture in the raw.

Well, I guess you can say, “Each to his own
It was her own body she wanted shown
Why should it have become a contentious bone
And the issue out of all proportion blown?

The DBA has a certain point of view
What if the magazines particular issue
Has been seen by the Hon’ble judges too?
Do I have to spell out the ramifications to you?

Each time that she would present a case
Would the judges (in their minds) see only her face?
Come on, judges are judges, but can they place
Hard facts before an argument of lingerie and lace?

And then under which article or sub section
Will the opposing attorney raise an objection
When the critical point of interjection
Is the Hon’ble Judges obvious erection?

Let me see, am I correct if I guage
That this outburst of indignation and rage
Is because of the indiscriminate usage
Of the powerful tool of body language!

Body language, then is the culprit
As a tool of argument, should be banned by writ.
Lawyers should now wear a strait jacket
And when this is done…Anjali will quit.

Elegy on the massacre of my moustache

Male visitors to this blog would empathise more closely with this. Shaving the upper lip for the first time is always an ordeal. And when it has been an important feature on your face, the repurcussions can be devastating. As I found out many many years ago!

It was Monday morn
When I was shorn
In a hurried shaving session
Of my manly possession
And a whiskerless Sanjeev Bhargava was born.

In the form of a fatal slip,
Tragedy struck my upper lip
And when my eyes caught mine in the mirror
With as expression of dismay and terror
My heart went down for an abdominal trip.

There was this goon
With a hairless moon
Who peers from the mirror and inspects
My face for the very emblem of my sex
But finds no hair to trim and prune.

Aghast and petrified I stood
As a court martialled soldier would.
But looking at the brighter side I thought
I can live without a mush why not
And so decided it was gone for good.

Now people did stare
At the massacred hair.
As they looked and for long after
They indulgently burst into foolish laughter
At the simple fact that my face seemed bare.

Some smart alec trying to be witty
Asked me not to indulge in self-pity.
With a face shaven clean and spic and span
I had transformed myself into a man
Who was petite, demure and extremely pretty.

Defeated dejected and at a loss
Beaten ridiculed angry and cross
Eating humble pie with humble sauce
Letting public opinion be the boss
I decided again to grow the moss.

The world is so unfair... By George Bush Jr.

Some years ago, the Iraq war was at its peak and the Bush Propaganda likewise. what were his real intents? Why were WMDs never found? Questions that inspired this satire on Bush.

The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.
I work so hard
To play my card
And grab Iraqi oil.
But shits like France
Go take a stance
And try to act the foil.
I give it a go
With the Brits in tow
Now the Brits will want THEIR share.
The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.

I send in the troops
And they go “Oops!
Iraqis are fighting back!”
I’d given them spiel
That the victims would feel
Grateful for the attack.
Now the Yank and his brother
Are shooting each other
And blaming me for the affair.
The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.

I awed and shocked
The general who mocked
My power to attack.
But he’s rebelling again
By killing my men
Throwing my gameplan out of wack.
I bomb and maim
To end his game
But he keeps on STANDING there.
The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.

Now look at his gall
Before his fall
He captures some of my guys.
He treats them well
But what the hell
They are on TV with his lies.
I scream and howl
And I cry foul
It’s AGAINST THE RULES, I swear.
The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.



I’m about to blast
More bombs than the past
On that god forsaken nation
I’ll shake and rattle
Saddam in battle
To establish my high station
Thousands be killed
That is GOD willed
Not by me or Tony Blair.
The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.

When the oil is mine
Everything will be fine
Blood does not cost that much.
It’s old fashioned greed
That’s done the deed
And Saddam is just a crutch.
I was always a fool
Now they call me cruel
Its an insult that I can’t bear.
The world is so unfair, you know
The world is so unfair.

Golden moments on the Golden Gate

Ex-flames have a way of coming back into a life which is not entirely your own! Mine is half way across the globe but I still cherish the time I get to spend with her. We decided to go to the Golden Gate. As she parked the car, she shoved some quarters into the parking meter. Now that meter really dictated how much time we would spend on the most awesome bridge in the world...

At the edge of a scenic bay
A parking meter ticks away
Marking the time with ruthlessness
As I walk in step with happiness

The winds that touch me kiss your face.
Caress your hair with gentle grace
A bond so soft. A thought so bold.
It makes me dream. It leaves you cold.

Life zips by on a four lane street
Time stands still as I drag my feet.
Tall skylines on the shore remind
Of a world that’s almost left behind.

The shimmering sea. The verdant hills.
The bridge and the wonder it instills.
The awesome vista begs a view.
But I have eyes only for you.

The shores seem misty miles away.
The sea a distant mass of gray.
The sky an endless void above.
I feel the closeness of my love.

And then the parking meter ends
Its ticking and abruptly sends
Me hurtling back to reality.
A lump in throat and self pity.

How I wish that I could barter
This dream with another quarter.
Slip in the coin and twist it through.
And buy the time to be with you.

All about idols

Pblic life is full of idols. As a common man, I have made heroes out of people in public life. Be they politicians, film stars, sports personalities or even social workers. I invest them with super human traits in my own imagination and idolise them beyond the reality. So here is to our heroes and the tough act they have to follow.

Idols I’ve noticed, are perfect in form
Stoic in the face of sunshine and storm
In postures that lead to stiff necks and backs
Idols I’ve noticed, never relax.

Pedestals I’ve noticed further expose
Idols to… their idolatary woes.
Holding them aloft for the public eye
Pedestals I’ve noticed, are always too high.

Sculptors I’ve noticed live in dreamland
Creating fantasy from marble and sand
Limitations of flesh just do not exist
A sculptor I’ve noticed, is a perfectionist.

Romantics I’ve noticed are sculptors in parts
Making idols of those they love in their hearts.
Reality checks are a big compromise
So romantics, I’ve noticed are comfortable with lies.

No Heroes for Jessica

When Jessical Lall was shot in full public view in an illegal bar owned by an influential socialite, nobbody had any doubts about the case. There were witnesses, circumstantial evidence, the weapon, the bullets, the getaway car and an absconding key accused. Despite all this there was no conviction. The case is open again and this prhyme is all about the queer developments of the recent past.

Jessica died
Some people cried
And then they lost the case.
Manu walked
Coz no one talked
Justice has its ways.

Manu's Dad
Was big and bad
And pulled out all the stops
To cover the tracks
With cash in stacks
To the Shayans and the cops.

Bina and daughter
Threw lots of water
On the bloodstains in the bar
Who disappeared quicker
Than the illegal liquor
Was the culprit in the car.

Years after the crime
There came a time
When the case was opened again
Jethmalani
Came into the kahani
For the slayer, not the slain.

There's lots of talk
With pain and shock
Of where the case is going
The sex angle
The socialite tangle
The intricacies are growing.

Its a filmy plot
With all that's hot
Violence, glamour and sex.
The heroine's nailed
The vamp is jailed
The villians are saving their necks.

But its not a movie
In which a groovy
Macho hero crashes the party
Beats up the crooks
While the system just looks
And everything is hale and hearty.

In the land of zero
There is no hero
Who will bring the bad to book
There was a Ram
Who said, "No ma'am"
I'd rather represent the crook.