Two vintage middle classics by Badri Raina


Hippopotamus

The new Indian middle class
is full of pelf and prayer;
it ogles at the fop in front,
and quarantines its rear.

The new Indian middle class
is full of potato chip;
it hogs away at restaurant,
but is careful with the tip.

The new Indian middle class
means business every way;
it will have the atom bomb,
whatever you may say.

The new Indian middle class
is cross at population;
it simply cannot undersatnd
why people live in the nation.

The new Indian middle class
is bored by argument;
argument so upsets
its vacuous content.

The new Indian middle class
connects with tradition;
it often needs to fly abroad
to propagate that fashion.

The new Indian middle class
is a hippopotamus;
it fattens on protected feed,
and yawns at politics.

Hippopotamus revisited

The new Indian middle class
is into Channel V,
where V stands for vertigo
and viscerality.

The new Indian middle class
drives to disco tune,
It sees nothing upon the road
except its good fortune.

The new Indian middle class
is full of stock and share;
it packs globalised machismo
in Philips underwear.

The new Indian middle class
is Pentium perfect;
Its E-Mail carries latest news
of when and where to eat.

The new Indian middle class
is glued to one-dayer;
it despises Parliament
but is buoyed by Tendulkar.

The new Indian middle class
marries in farm houses,
where poor relations never reach,
and whisky drowns all grouses.

The new Indian middle class
is too busy to  visit;
when parents lie in ICU
Archies Card does it.

The new Indian middle class
uses language like hammer,
it has no use for critical thought,
nuance, complexity, grammar.

The new Indian middle class
will surely take us far,
from hauteur, humbug, heartlessness
to bloody civil war.

Comments

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

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

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