If I Were God

If I were God,

I would not let cancer exist

And I would do away with dirty politics

I would speak to the masses

And put sand in terrorism’s molasses

I would make a world where there is no war

Nor the bearing of ill will

In this world, there would be no divides

And it would lack all these “-isms”

(Racism, Nazism and so on)

I would make chocolate more delicious

And boost immunity to obesity

I would bring back dragons

And the desire in people to dream

I would not demand blood sacrifice

Nor would I want people to live in strife

In my world, there would be no depression

Or any other mental ailment

Unfortunately this is a piece of fiction

And not reality

But, it can’t hurt to hope

That one day, the world will change

And John Lennon’s “Imagine” will come true

The Bilge Master

The Lamps

This is a story about a house and a girl who lived in that house. She was young and she was pretty. She loved her parents and she loved spending time with her grandmother. Her grandmother was some five and eighty years of age and she was as wise as she was kind.

The girl, whose name was I do not know once told me a story her grandmother had told her and about how it was not just a story, but fact. She started hesitantly and then she warmed to her theme and her eyes sparkled as she told me the tale.

Be warned that this is a story about love and it is a story about the past. It speaks at length of memories and of nostalgia. It is a story about fire and a story about the night and the stars.

This is the story the girl told me, when she was herself five and eighty and she told me it was a story as old as her name.

One day, the girl woke up to find that her grandmother was not in the chair she usually sat in. The girl was confused and she asked her father where her grandmother was. Her father looked devastated. He told her that she was gone. The girl may have been little but she was mature. She realised her life had just changed forever.

After her grandmother’s funeral rituals, which involved a priest and a prayer and some assorted fruit, the girl returned to the house. The house seemed emptier without her grandmother there and the girl felt sadness engulf her in a wave. She cried. But, she was also a sensible girl and she soon managed to check her emotions and she remembered all the great things her grandmother had done. The potato salad that only she could make, the stories about her college days and the teachers she had had, and of course tales about her father when he was her age. This last thing was her favourite because she could tease her father afterwards with these stories.

That evening, her father went to the porch and he lit a small earthen lamp, shaped like a teardrop. The girl thought nothing of it at the time, but she noticed that such lamps had been put all around the house. She had fallen asleep and her father must have put these lamps everywhere while she was sleeping.

She asked her father what the lamps were for.

Her father told her that her grandmother had abandoned her physical form, but the soul which resided in that form was beginning a long journey. He told her the lamps were lit for the soul, to light its way along the path it was treading.

The girl wondered where the soul was going. Would the soul need food and water? Who would care for the soul?

Her father told her that souls do not need food. They however leave a little bit of themselves behind in the place their physical form resided. Those pieces are called memories. Her father told her that memories needed to be nurtured for sometimes memories could give power.

The girl said that when it was time for her father’s soul to make a similar journey, that she would light the same lamps for him, so that he would also be able to make the journey along a well lit path.

Her father smiled and gave her a hug and together they looked up at the sky which was filled with stars.

The Bilge Master

Pastels

If you were to paint

A landscape of my mind

You’d find it filled with red

And bordered with black

Maybe along the lines

You might find

A little brown, some yellow

And a whole lot of the blues

My mind isn’t what it used to be

And I’m not the kid I was

Somewhere between the growth spurts

Hiding in a used camouflage

Is a little bit of white and some gray

And still beneath those shades

Is a little purple and some gold

Multi-coloured is my mind

Some colours symbolize hate

Others anger and grief

But some stand for dreams

And hopes

Those colours will get me through

The days the black takes over

Because, my mind is a vibrant place

And nobody can call it dull

The Bilge Master 

The Weaker Sex...?

When she was just a girl,

She found a pair of slippers

And went to a ball

Where she danced the whole night through

Then, when the revelry was over,

She walked out of the ball

Sans her left shoe

You must be thinking

“I have heard this before”,

But this is not about Cinderella’s prince

But about the princess in us all

For you see, we are deluded by illusions of majesty

And we hide behind masculinity

An essence so fragile,

That a simple puff could blow it away

Or knock it awry

Because let’s face it

There is no weaker sex

Only assholes of various sizes and shapes

With nothing better to do, than discriminate

So ask yourself, why?

Why would Aurora need a kiss from a stranger?

Why would Cinderella need rescuing from her situation?

And why is it that we have a constant need to be on top of everything?

And then answer me this

Who really belongs to the weaker sex?

The Bilge Master

Der Wilden Gedichte

My yesterdays are stuck

Amidst a flurry of inactivity

Born of lethargy and

Endless cups of hot coffee

In my particular brand of melancholia

You may find a subtle dystopia

As you journey through my phobia

The one about being left alone

And in my dreams

I see a falcon

Soaring in the sky

Unshackled

And I realize

I want to be one too

But in moments of sobriety

This falcon gets buried

In a tidal wave of mediocrity and differential equations

But it always comes back

Like Hamlet’s father

Prodding me on

Where I do not know

Maybe one day

This wild poem I have concocted

Will end up taming itself

But for now, I am comfortable

In its wildness

For inside me there is a bit of that

Begging to come out

The Bilge Master

The Piper

This is the story of a boy, who was not like other boys. This boy had a dream. He wanted to make people smile.  Unfortunately, the world this boy lived in was a dark one and he saw people around him, bogged down with the weight of their troubles. This boy saw their pain, he saw people grow sadder and sadder and he saw people’s backs break under the stress of their troubles.

The boy wished that people would put their troubles down.

The boy wished people could see the world as he saw it. For this boy saw a world where the sunshine made the rivers glitter and the rainbows come out after the storms. The boy saw all this and more. He saw animals frolicking and birds chirping above him in the sky.

However, the people in the world remained the same. They remained trapped in a vicious cycle of worry, and they kept carrying trouble with them wherever they went.

That’s when the boy found a flute. He learnt to play it by watching lessons on YouTube. (Yes, ridiculous as it sounds, the boy lived in the age of the Internet and that is where the story is set). He started by serenading mice, then he graduated to dogs. He made them dance to his tune and they thanked him for filling their lives with music.

Then, finally after he had practiced for years, the young man (he was no longer a boy you see) walked on stage. He saw the same people before him. He saw that some of them had grown older, and that some were bent even more under the weight of their burdens.

The young man played.

He played for hours. His music was his own composition. The tunes wafted out, like fragrance from flowers and reached the ears of the people, who were bent. Slowly, these people started to listen to the music. The music spoke to them, showing them the world as the boy saw it. The music showed them the birds, showed them the glittering fields of gold and the beautiful rainbows.

The people put their hands up, and the people danced. They put away their troubles. They smiled and embraced each other.

The piper played on into a new dawn. The people danced to his tune. Then they started to make music for themselves. Remember the young man, for he resides in your mp3 players and your SoundCloud profiles. Remember that without music, this world would be a lot less beautiful.

And most importantly, remember that your troubles are temporary and they can be put down.

The Bilge Master

Alone in a Crowded Room

As I have lived in this world,

I have seen many things,

I have seen darkness and light,

And Yin countered by Yang,

I have drunk Scotch Whiskey,

And gotten high on hooch,

I have read a handful,

And seen them adapted too,

I have found I like music,

And the company of a friend,

I have found well wishers in strangest places,

And strangers in familiar ones,

I have fought inner demons

And emerged wiser,

For while it’s true that

Relatives cannot be chosen,

You can choose friends

I have found that people are frequencies,

Oscillating about a mean point,

And that it’s important to find one,

Which can compliment mine,

I have found joy in silences between conversations,

And I have laughed loudest when they have resumed

I have found that acceptance can be difficult,

But not impossible to find,

Over time, I have carved a tiny niche for myself,

In which I stay,

I have friends, and a loving family

And mentors as well,

I have realized that I do not fit,

Into certain circles of life,

And that this does not affect,

The quality of my life,

Because as Kipling said,

It’s about facing impostors,

Lurking as Triumph and Disaster,

And treating them the same

No, I am not run of the mill,

But I am Someone 

Alone in a crowded room

The Bilge Master