The Remedy

Srinivas Rangaswami

I

The proudest man-made pile

brought down to a rubble

in a trice….

was it a momentary act of mad ire,

or the eruption, one more, of a sick generation,

sick at heart, raised on a cult

of hatred, violence, destruction,

made respectable with labels.?

The remedy? Suppliant submission

to a subversive regime of dastardly acts

splattering blood and rent limbs,

leaving behind a trail of life-long woes?

Surely…No.

But then…

Can fire be quenched with fire,

or hatred and violence, with more

hatred and violence?

Can terrorism be fought

by fighting terrorists?

Can a punctured vessel be emptied

of relentless gush of water

without plugging the hole at the bottom?

It is time to ponder.

Have we not, of this generation,

failed both God and Man,

drained the human heart

of all humanity, spread an arid desert

of parched souls

in a mindless pursuit of soulless knowledge

and skills, to acquire more and more

for self-aggrandisment, with the make-believe

multi-media and the celluloid world

out to feed and fuel

the raw animal passion

with no thought to grow

a garden of inner bloom?

Isn’t it time we halted on our track,

to think of the morrow

to make safe the world for the young,

sow in their hearts seeds of love,

teach them the simple alphabets

of time-tested virtues and values

so that a new race of guileless humanity

may arise

from the ruins of the present?

Back