The Games

By Badri Raina

However you may cavil,

We got the game, the game;

However it may unravel,

We have no shame, no shame.



Only a hundred workers lost their lives,

Only a footbridge fell;

Only the beggars were put to the knives,

Our hands remain in the till.



The white man does not appreciate

How well we negotiate

Reality and bluster,

Third world and first world state.



Our metaphysics teaches us

To look with benign eye

On scoundrels and scalawags

Who leave us high and dry.



O India we assure you

Your image shall not be dented;

However the shit may hit the fan,

Our glories shall be scented.



Be not the anti-national wag,

Sing praise to national pride;

Whatever be the price to pay,

We shall bring in the bride.



And when we do the beggars will

Be back where we know them;

And they will so rejoice with us

When we show them



All the infrastructure we built

While they were in quarantine;

They will dance to national pride,

They will say it is fine



If they never have a belly full,

Or a shanty in their fate,

So long as the Queen acknowledges

How the games made India great.

Comments

ML Raina said…
paan spatters the toilets
faeces litter the granite slate
still we keep on chanting
glory to India the great
Kalmadi sparrs with Iyer
Sheila kicks the plate
still we keep on singing
glory to India the great
dollars sneak into pockets
they bulge and inflate
still we keep on chanting
glory to India the great.
September 24, 2010 at 9:35 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering Maninder Singh Kang

Image
(18.5.1963-4.2.2013) By Rajesh Sharma I visualize him watching his own burning corpse and laughing a philosopher’s laughter. “Oye pandatā , this Kang was a dog’s tail of a man. Look, he is poking even the flames to laugh. What a struggle the wind and the fire are waging over his body. And look at the rain, it refuses to stop. His death seems to have released an excess of the five bhoots , making nature go berserk.”                 Listening to him, I try to make sense of his bizarre inner geography.                 “He’ll be impossible to replace. It’s such a loss,” he adds in an altogether different mood.       Maninder had this ability to move effortlessly between gaiety and gravity. He probably had found the thread that connects the extremes.        ...
Read more

You don't know (A poem by Pash)

  Translated from Punjabi by Rajesh Sharma you don ’ t know how I ’ m counted in poetry: like some carcass-eating dog that has strayed into a full-blown mujra   perhaps you wonder what I write late into the nights in the light of a lamp for some party engaged in dangerous things   you don ’ t know how I go to poetry: like a rustic woman in new clothes of outworn fashion who steps, bewildered, into city shops   I ask of poetry nail polish for you coloured embroidery thread for my younger sister bitter medicine to treat father ’ s cataract   poetry sees mischief in such demands   every month night after night it sends for me its sentinels carrying batons of cane and guns with polished butts they take away my beloved books my childhood picture from the shelf and my first love ’ s cry that slipped on the stairs and, hurt, was broken into a disconsolate rainbow   you don ’ t know...
Read more

Remembering my teacher

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma A friend, who also is a teacher, recently sent an sms: satinder singh passed away this morning . Satinder Singh introduced me to the art of reading literature. He taught us to read patiently, to wait like birds even as reading hatched taking its own time. And he taught us to navigate literary works like wayfarers exploring the labyrinthine patterns of some Persian carpets. I remember the day -it must have been in 1980- I first went up to Satinder Singh. As always, he was there outside the classroom well before the class began. I had been reading a poem by Tennyson and had some questions. He heard me out and asked me to see him again the following day. 'Read this book over the weekend and come back to me,' he said, handing me The Complete Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson . I looked apprehensively at the forbidding tome but he reassured me, 'You'll read it through, I know.' And he smiled, patted my shoulder and walked into the class. ...
Read more