Let’s come back to the present realities. With that, all that I can say: We were better off in those years passed by…when verse and sentiments held sway, with carefree abundance holding out. There was less of violence, hate and divisions and more of togetherness and free flow of the arts and creativity, of words and verse.
Leaving you with Kerala’s celebrated rebel poet Balachandran Chullikad’s verse titled Ghazal:
December 31
In the music hall of the night
Club
Ghulam Ali sings
I’m the singer of lost days …
As the music flows, melting
Urdu with the pangs of separation
Into the soft resonance of Ali’s
voice…
A long pent up melody of grief
breaks open the tremulous
window of the harmonium
Inside, the heart reverberates
with
The tabla of season less years
As Ghulam Ali sings …
*****
Also this verse of the last Mughal Emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775 – 1862), to give us the required hope as we move ahead from 2021:
Ode to Hindustan
Matchless is the soil of Hindustan
In it grow love, compassion, fidelity
As sure as the sun rises from the East
So surges from this land sincerity.
This is the true seed of Hind and from its earth
These fruits have spread across the world, far and wide.
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