Category: Poetry

Migrant turns Resident, A Poem

Times flies away
Such as shifting sands of time
We try to arrest the insatiable flow
Spaces linger, images turn memories
Memories reside as nostalgia
Come to life, as if summoned on call
The fate of the gulf migrant is such
the ‘Near-Abroad’, two hours from Mumbai
But, as far as eternity, once the passport controls are past
Hard to fit in to our passport homes
Where people see the migrants as portable ATM Machines
The government stops seeing us as remittance nodes
The NRI becomes, resident
Becomes pretty useless for the state, the relatives and the village
The once feted, becomes jobless and turns into a statistic
The Youth fades away as time
The migrant’s only home resides in photos on his Iphone
The image, becomes the emotional panacea

MP
09/07/2017
Muscat

More Than Combustion, A Poem

The veins of global capitalism
Are Lubricated by a dense, smelly liquid
It has various names, all children of
fractional distillation
But, the concoctions of chemicals
it not aware that it is a metaphor for power
An innate need for control,
Yes, energy.It is something more than that
A shorthand, undergirding geopolitics
Engineers and Geologists are the factory line folks in the Empty Quarter
While the real operators are in Vienna
Effect much from Bandung to Berlin
While Berlin, gets all windy and renewable
The slimy fuel rules the game
The Godfather of Energy
The Phantom of Peak Oil, still distant

Malls, A Poem

Malls are cathedrals of late capitalism
Symbolise a vague sameness
An unnecessary similarity
Whether Muscat, Mumbai or Medan
Same shops, Daiso here, Starbucks there
These sterilised structures of wasteful consumption
Refuge for the middle class during summer
These communal spaces of ‘brand brotherhood’
Often uproot disenfranchised communities of their land
Only, to offer them a watchman’s job