AN ODE ON MAN,S PLIGHT

AN ODE ON MAN’S PLIGHT                                                                                                                                                                        WHEN    YOU WAIL, OTHERS PLUG THEIR EARS AND SHUT THEIR DOORS;          

When others wail, you plug your ears and shut your doors;

When all run to safety, the weakest fall to the canine prey of a lurking tigress;

When this repeats everyday, none of the animals refrain from visiting the same clearing.

When a man preys upon the defenceless and falls to the mightier,

When he also realizes that everyone alike lies into such a state of being;

Where he sometimes marauds others and is most of the times marauded by others.

When it is just a matter of time as to who is on the charging end and who else on the receiving end.

Is then our social system different from a bestial order?

How come it is becoming of us as humans?

Why can’t we devise a way out of this bestial order,

Where we live under a perpetual phobia of vengeance against our single act of attack.

When one physical misdeed translates into mental trauma severally over and over;

How come it is becoming of us as humans if we fail to understand that society is under the mental trauma of the severally multiplied consequences of our own misdeeds?

Why don’t we take a vow to salvage the humanity out of the morass?

If we take a vow to do what is desirably and compulsorily expected of man,

We begin to live with the ideology and for the ideology alone.

We begin to live like men because we understand that we cannot take anybody else for a ride but ourselves.

In that only can each one of us prove our mettle as humans.

--F.P.Shrivastava, Director,Creative Cottage Gurukul,Patna.—2002  email : [e-mail].