Shoe-shoe

(Picture: MailOnline)
I never really understood why?
Why shoes n sandals n slippers
Were kept out of worship and high places
Keeping our eyes on the shoes and not the idol

I thought they would scratch the marble n tiles
Making the investment a second fiddle
And take the shine off the fable
Leaving the heart in shatters of cradle

The light then shone from the box of rituals
Stark pictures of the shoe in flight
The powerful bowed before the powerless
Missing the target by a whisker’s helplessness

It then struck me like lightning
That shoes were kept out of powerful places
To save the powerful from acts of survival
Coming forth from the shoes of repulsiveness


(The poem is a result of the (by now famous) shoe throwing incident at President Bush and Dr. Rudhran who blogged on the same)

You can hurt me but you cannot destroy my spirit: Mumbai will survive

Every violence, mental or physical is attributed to the skewed understanding of supremacy of a particular group. By resorting to violence the group thinks that others will toe it’s line and it will emerge victorious. Maybe this is true with regard to a building, a hotel or a monument. But is it true when it comes to the mind, the spirit and the resilience of a people?

Mumbai has seen it all in the past twenty hours. Shooting, killing (of civilians and police personnel), hijacking and military action. Should we call the culprits gunmen or terrorists I do not know? What I do know is that this is a time to reach out to our sisters and brothers in Mumbai.

You can bomb me and terrorise me all you want
You can take my life and my belongings
But what you can never claim or take away
Is indeed what makes me who I am

The spirit of resilience, determination and survival.



"Aye dil hai mushkil jeena yaha
Zara hatke zara bachke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan"

(From the Hindi movie CID. Sung by Mohammad Rafi and Geetha Dutt)
It is difficult to live here. Move a little, look out and take care…this is Bombay my dear.

‘Statutory warning: Cross at your risk’ India’s aggressive development model vis-à-vis India’s aggressive roads

I waited to see if I would be cared for
Whether someone would stop and let me be
The wait continued in a forced anonymity
Till everyone else called ‘break’ in magnanimity


How many of us have felt paralysed in the course of trying to cross a road in a city (towns also these days)? My recent experience in Bangalore was indeed an eye opener.

It’s not just the fact that there is a dramatic increase in traffic or more cars in proportion to two wheelers, or narrower roads handling huge volumes, but the psyche that rests behind the steering wheel and the handle bar and the traffic rules. Both systemic apathy and individual ‘I care a hoot’ feelings come together to crush the aspirations of the foot bearer.

Does this signify anything? Does it mean that India is on the move and vehicles are bound to increase? Does it suggest that we are in a competitive jungle and ‘survival of the fittest’ is the norm? Does it bring about the age of the ‘fast and furious’?

My concerns go in the direction of the aggression we experience in the new India, the crazily developing India. It’s not just a question of increasing deadlines, swelling pay cheques (which is now zigzagging like the share market) and changing life styles. It is also about being impatient, impolite, selfish, and doing whatever it takes to achieve one’s goals.

This aggressive push however totally forgets India’s underprivileged. The poor, the discriminated, the old aged, the have-nots, and even the silent environment (including the trees and the natural flora and fauna) are out of the picture. It’s not about crossing the road in a city but it’s about being left out of India’s so-called push for progress and development. Those who want to be a part of this are only given the option to follow the industrial-information-labour-share-automobile dispensation while others can wait for the time when the dispensation rests, the time we are served out mercy from the plates of the haves. If we flaunt existing un-written rules and venture to cross…’Cross at your own risk’…