THE SOUL
By Lt. Colonel A. N. S. MURTHI
(1)
Lay
a baby-corpse on the road
In
a ghastly pool of blood;
A
heavily loaded rushing lorry
Had
crushed its baby-body,
As
mother and baby drove
For
a meLa in a nearby grove
In a hand-drawn hansom;
Came
this giant lorry and pounced upon them.
A
minute ago the pretty baby lay
In
its mother’s arms quite gay,
Divinely
looking into her eyes
Making
the mother rejoice.
Now
it lay lifeless and dead;
Where
now the baby-soul has fled?
(2)
A
chicken coquettishly walked
And
crowed and baulked,
As
the farmer to catch it chased.
He
caught it after, indeed, he had raced;
He
clasped its legs and brought it to his wife,
With
its head hanging and swinging for life.
She
laid its neck on a chunk,
Severed
its head from trunk,
Plucked
its feathers and roasted it on the fire.
In
glee the family, the farmer,
His
wife, e'en his innocent big-eyed children
Ate
the curried chicken.
An
hour ago the fowl was alive on the lawn,
Where
now could its soul have gone?
(3)
My
faithful clock of many years,
Day
in, day out, striking all the hours,
Which
showed me, warned me the time,
Suddenly stopped its
chime.
My
winding it one night,
Try
as much as I might,
To
life could not bring it back.
I
took it to one who knew the knack,
Its
working ways, its why and how.
Soon
he set it right and now
It
shows me the minute and the hour
As
correct as ever before.
After
it had stopp’d and ’fore its repair,
Where
was its ‘life’–oh! where?
(4)
My
radio with an eye
As
good as a human eye,
Which
a minute back
In
human voice sang or spoke,
Was
silent–I’d turned it off completely;
It
was as dead as dead could be.
I
turned on its knob again;
Its
magic eye glowed green again
I
turned more knobs to tune
To
where I wished, Leningrad or London
And
lo! the music gushed,
Or
the news I wanted rushed,
Hitting
far off ethereal girth
Bouncing
back to earth.
It
was again alive, my Radio!
Where
was its ‘life’ a minute ago?