2. Contrasts

Srirangam Srinivasa Rao (Sri Sri)

 

Lucky you people are!

You love light!

You hate shadows!

You have metal walls

Between good and evil!

 

Your thoughts move around

In a good room only!

The room was there even earlier!

That’s why your life is

A full meal served on a leaf!

Your decisions are irrevocable!

 

Your ideas on good

Etiquette, manners,

Behaviour, quality

And values are all

Irrevocable, predetermined!

Straight are the lines of your glances!

If the lines distort you raise hue and cry!

The people on the other side of the line

Are all criminals!

All your courts, security, police

Are there to protect this line!

To protect only, all the prisons and gallows!

    

                 *** *** *** *** *** ***

We are the unfortunate ones!

We travel in twilight zones!

On paths that have no borderlines!

We have problems and predicaments!

We see only darkness in light!

And fireflies of hatred!

One virtue amongst hundreds of sins!

One gruesome act amongst hundred virtues!

Every step of the way,

Only wide chasms, and wounds!

We have to make our own meal!

We don’t get leaf plates even sometimes!

Our attraction is only for

The narrow lanes!

 

Our sight goes only in circular lines!

With no beginning, no end!

We are the creatures of twilight!

Products of doubt!

Questions and questions!

Answers that never satisfy!

 

We have no walls!

Our job is to break them!

 

Agitation is our life!

Protest is our breath!

Rebellion is our philosophy!

 

Thorns, boulders and many more obstacles

Our step always goes forward!

 

The place you have is enough for you!

You are even prepared to go back!

Some of you!

 

We go forward!

And the world will walk behind us!

 

You die a contented death!

The world will forget you!

 

People who do not care for troubles

In the way of keeping their convictions will join us!

 

Those who change their convictions

In search of pleasures will go with you!

 

The Great Forward March

 

A different world

A different world

A different world is calling!

March forward

Push ahead

Onward we march!

 

Stamping the feet

Singing a song

Roaring from the depths of our hearts

Let’s march ahead!

Can you not hear the

Waterfall from the other world!

 

March forward

All along the way offering

Your bleeding hearts!

Walk the pathways, streets

And cross the forts!

The rivers, forests, mountains and

Deserts, what can stop us!

Let’s march forward, push ahead!

 Onward we march!

 

The ones with rotten bones and aged bodies

The lazy bones, death be upon you!

The ones with boiling blood and

Soldiers with energy filled

Come on! Join the march!

Harom Harom Hara[1]

Hara Hara Hara Hara

Move forward

Chanting Harom Hara!

 

A Different world

A great one

Pervades the whole earth!

Roar like a great wind,

Flow like a swift thought!

Burst forth like a dark cloud full of rain

Move on, March ahead!

Can you not see the burning

Tretaagni[2] of

the other world!

 

Eighty thousand Merus[3] are

Leaping and jumping

The great seas are going round and round

 In a great dance of destruction!

Is it the boiling oil, no!

It is a pond of hot blood

Leap high like Sivasamudra[4] and Niagara

Jump and leap!

March forward

March ahead!

The gong of the other world

Is tolling tirelessly!

 

Like the snakes and  reptiles

Go forward like a Dhananjaya[5]

Can you not see the dazzle of the

Crown of fire, of the other world

A different world!

The fluttering  red flag!

The rising flames of the altars? (12-4-1943)

Victory Gong 

I too have

Added fuel to

The fire of theworld!

 

I too have given a tear to

The cyclonic storm of the world!

 

I too have added

My wild voice to the

Roar of the world!

 

***    ***  ***

 

When the summer’s

Blazing Sun scorched the earth

I too burnt like an owl!

 

When the rains drenched the soil

I too have turned into

Drops of water flowing freely!

 

When the winter’s biting cold

Seized I too screamed

Freezing and hungry!

 

If I stop in my tracks

Blazing winds, rainy clouds and snowflakes

Will turn into ashes

On this earth!

 

The colorful stars that peep from

The sky explode,

And rain down, bleeding!

 

All days shatter

And nights shut down

Engulfing the world in a great deluge!

 

***   ***   ***

 

I alone will occupy

The whole world

A time will come

When my crooning tunes

Fill the world!

 

I too will blossom as

A white petal

In the flower of the world!

 

I too will become

A string in the Veena[6]

Of the world

And lose myself in its music!

 

I too will rise

And flutter as a flag

Atop the palace of the world!  (2-6-1933)

One Night

Like a smoke that pervades

The whole sky,

The waxing moon of the fifth day

Rising scares me

 

Alas! On the desert sky

There rises a sandstorm tonight!

The spirits, invisible and shrewd roam free

Between the earth and the sky!

The sea screams loudly

With an open mouth!

The hillock lies still

Like an elephant’s corpse!

The moon on the lonely sky

Looks like a camel

That has lost its legs!

Filling the whole universe like an ash

The rising moon of the fifth day scares me! (12-8-1933)