Wood for Dorje Tshering

-Raaja Bhasin

All carried

A piece of wood

For Dorje Tshering

 

 

Some carried dried loppings

Others the trunk

Of a middling cedar;

In her tiny hands,

Dolma held sprigs

Of scented juniper

 

Moving up the hill

The entire village

Carried wood

For Dorje Tshering

 

For fingers,

Sacred doob-grass

Was woven into rings

 

The gong was struck

It shook

The bare mountain

 

Dorje Tshering

Never left his remote highland home

But regardless, something

Came for him

 

And the village used up

All its wood

For Dorje Tshering.

 

 

 

Mints for the Mind

 

-       Raaja Bhasin

 

A Review of ‘Polyticks, DeMockrazy & MumboJumbo’ by Avay Shukla

 

I don’t really have a sweet tooth and will happily give jabelis, burfis and other diabetes-inducing foods a go-by. There are, however, a couple of items of exception. Chocolate mints being one. The favourite is, not unexpectedly, an ‘After Eight’. The taste that emerges from its little green sachet is pleasant, sometimes piquant , sometimes provocative  and it leaves an aftertaste for the tongue to examine at leisure. Avay Shukla’s ‘Polyticks, DeMockrazy & MumboJumbo’ is a somewhat like a cerebral version of the edible ‘After Eight.’ You can gorge on it, or you take it in little bits. Either way, it is enough to provoke comment and hopefully, some thought.

This book is a collection of blogs that I and several others have been assiduously following and enjoying for several years. The subjects vary from politics and administrative foibles to the great love of Shukla’s life, nature. This is nature that is both majestic and sublime; this is nature that is life-giving and which we, in our great wisdom, have repeatedly ignored to our peril. Almost seamlessly, satire, humour and serious commentary fuse together in this set of short and highly readable pieces. With no holds barred, he takes on political masters and minions with equal aplomb; socialites and ‘wanna-be’ socialites who have yet to master the art of air-kissing around the aura of the kissee, may be able to recognise themselves in these pages. Some of the finest pieces come from his own years as an officer of the Indian Administrative Service.

Over years of meeting each other socially (without the air being kissed or otherwise polluted), and occasionally, professionally (where a handshake would suffice), we have become friends of sorts. More lightly than not, considering that Shukla has spent much of his life moving one heavy file after another, one may say that he has found his true calling after retiring from Government. His pen has found a purpose past a file noting, howsoever weighty that may have been.

It is appropriate to mention that this is the first book to be published by Pippa Rann Books & Media, a Member of the Independent Publishers Guild. As they say, ‘…the Group  is dedicated to publishing material which nurtures human values around the world. These values are, in our perception, being attacked, subverted and suborned – with a resulting decline in the quality of life for most people.’ They could not have chosen a better person than Avay Shukla to begin this mission.

 

 

 

The Year No One Wanted

 

This is the year no one wanted.

Homes turned to prisons.

Livelihoods, hated

Born as gilded dreams

 

 

This is the year we didn’t want.

It forced us

Think.

Of yesterday, today,

The

If, of tomorrow

 

The far distance of another day

Has never looked so close

So shadowed

Till today

 

(The photograph is of two children in Sungra, Kinnaur, Himachal 

Ⓒ Raaja Bhasin)

 

Galwan

Bugle, parade

Sharp creased trousers.

Honour.

A life. A bank account.

 Money to send back home

 For an old man, an old woman

A sister to be married,

A brother in school.

A flight, a truck, a posting.

Gun between my knees.

A name I’d never heard before.

But ours

A first.

Friends.  Brothers in arms,

A week; two.

My phone,

Clear screen, no connection.

A girl, some pay-cheques down,

Shallow waters by the Harmandir Sahib; the temple, the imam by the masjid, the SDM’s office.

We would marry.

June, my father, his white beard flowing

Sweat across his body

Hand on the wheel of an erratic tractor.

June, I, icy, freezing.

Nails on a cold rod.

One patrol.

Just one.

My father, his white beard flowing.

The boy from school.

His bag, his lunch box.

Me in a box.

Partition (Again): To the ‘migrant labourer’.

Partition (Again):  To the ‘migrant labourer’.

Go,

Gather what you can in minutes

No, less.

Run,

For the last train, bus, lorry

Something that moves.

Walk,

For miles; days you must.

Take your life, your family, your dreams in a bundle.

This country has been divided.

The tarmac, the railway track is the line.

But we care,

We are watching you.

From a distance. Safe for us.

Don’t worry.

This will pass.

We will call you back.

When we need you again.

©Raaja Bhasin 2020

We let things happen

We let things happen. It suited us to look the other way till it all slapped us in the face and locked our doors.

We let rivers die; we let forests shrink.

We let highways that were not required be built. We let thousands of  trees be cut. 

We complained among ourselves, but we did nothing about it.

We ignored the basics that humans must have and we let the poor become poorer still, for it suited us and gave us lifestyles we could not otherwise hold.

We ignored our rich natural, built and intangible heritage that had been built over millennia.

We are responsible for the way things are, because we let them happen.  

For worse, or if we choose, for better.

(The photograph is of the Rosa Brunonii, the Himalayan Musk Rose)

The Noisiest Spring

Past the blooming calla lilies

The struggling petunias of the garden 

Beyond iris flowered and gone

Fleabane on stone

Bergenia along still-dry moss.

Madness

Of red rhododendron in the woods.

Air-polished,

The distant snows shine.

The river water, as we are told,

Is clear,

Drinkable

A leopard, or was that two?

Wait for the lights to change.

A foursome of deer move

From the rough to the green.

A civet cat not seen

Sets out to examine the marketplace.

 We watch from our windows,

The noisiest spring of the century goes by.

© Raaja Bhasin 2020