SCHIZOPHRENIC
Every year comes the month of sravana with luxuriant green landscapes and overflowing rivers. Luminous rainbows bridge the horizons, lost in the cloudy mist. Heavy clouds hang down all though the mellowed days. Frenzied lightenings send thunderous echoes throuhout the pitch dark nights . The almighty heavens pour fertile promise of plenty, down to the earth. The creative fury of the elements gives birth to tender life.
This year too, it is sravana.And up there, in the broad open, cloudless sky, walks around shamelessly the full-moon in her obscenely bright nudity - and seems to have no qualms about it. Her vitiligous witchcraft lends deathly pallor to the poor fissured earth.
A cadaverous tree stands alone, like a sepulture on the barren expanse. Leafless branches spread out like a begging hand.
Perched on the dried up tree, sits a thirsty chaataka*.
Below the tree, is a huge carcass of a beast, that had perhaps lost its way, looking vainly for a streak of shadow.
We carrion-crows are having a merry time.
The huge glassy eyes of the carcass reflect our gluttonous selves. So the first thing we do is to stab those eyes; this soothes our conscience, and makes things easy.
The carcass is huge enough to give us all indigestion. Still, pecking and clawing each other ruthlessly, we fiercely fight for every bit, as if insecure and uncertain of the morrow. Fierce competition is our second nature.
Truly speaking, these days nobody is as secure, and as certain of the morrow as the carrion-crows. Carrion-crows never have anything to lose: famines bring feasts, and droughts are delightful. A true carrion-crow is never in want.
However, though one of the lot, i am always out of place amongst the clever, competitive, canny, and successful; always a perpetual laggard.
I have a mind torn in two.
Yearn and long as much as i may for the first pristine rain drops, i lack the peace and the patience that makes pain a sublime prayer. Hunger and thirst soon find me picking at rotting flesh and filth.
I am not given to the ravenous revelry over carcasses; nor, unlike a chaataka, can i sacrifice myself on the altar of unanswered love.
A carrion-crow, or a chaataka, i am always out of place.
------------------------------------------------------------
*a legendary bird, that subsists on rain drops as they fall from the clouds, before they touch the earth.
Every year comes the month of sravana with luxuriant green landscapes and overflowing rivers. Luminous rainbows bridge the horizons, lost in the cloudy mist. Heavy clouds hang down all though the mellowed days. Frenzied lightenings send thunderous echoes throuhout the pitch dark nights . The almighty heavens pour fertile promise of plenty, down to the earth. The creative fury of the elements gives birth to tender life.
This year too, it is sravana.And up there, in the broad open, cloudless sky, walks around shamelessly the full-moon in her obscenely bright nudity - and seems to have no qualms about it. Her vitiligous witchcraft lends deathly pallor to the poor fissured earth.
A cadaverous tree stands alone, like a sepulture on the barren expanse. Leafless branches spread out like a begging hand.
Perched on the dried up tree, sits a thirsty chaataka*.
Below the tree, is a huge carcass of a beast, that had perhaps lost its way, looking vainly for a streak of shadow.
We carrion-crows are having a merry time.
The huge glassy eyes of the carcass reflect our gluttonous selves. So the first thing we do is to stab those eyes; this soothes our conscience, and makes things easy.
The carcass is huge enough to give us all indigestion. Still, pecking and clawing each other ruthlessly, we fiercely fight for every bit, as if insecure and uncertain of the morrow. Fierce competition is our second nature.
Truly speaking, these days nobody is as secure, and as certain of the morrow as the carrion-crows. Carrion-crows never have anything to lose: famines bring feasts, and droughts are delightful. A true carrion-crow is never in want.
However, though one of the lot, i am always out of place amongst the clever, competitive, canny, and successful; always a perpetual laggard.
I have a mind torn in two.
Yearn and long as much as i may for the first pristine rain drops, i lack the peace and the patience that makes pain a sublime prayer. Hunger and thirst soon find me picking at rotting flesh and filth.
I am not given to the ravenous revelry over carcasses; nor, unlike a chaataka, can i sacrifice myself on the altar of unanswered love.
A carrion-crow, or a chaataka, i am always out of place.
------------------------------------------------------------
*a legendary bird, that subsists on rain drops as they fall from the clouds, before they touch the earth.
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