Self And Self Portrait

SELF AND SELF PORTRAIT

On mental canvas, relentlessly sketching shapes, Embellishing them with colors, painting hills and lakes Our artist fall in love with every thing he makes, Finds home in sketched houses, gives reality to shapes.

Times’ wrath, in a stroke, wipes all. But we learn little and continue to draw with hope this one is indelible, may defy natures law. But we learn little and continue to fall.

For paints, brushes and palette; heavy price he pays. For his self portrait; he mixes, only shades of gray. Artists’ come and go; Art stays. Self stays at home; self portrait goes astray.

PUZZLED CHILD

From confines of a womb, To more spacious ward, He moves, as feels free, But finds his navel, tied to a cord.

They note down the time. They note down the date. He thinks, he is new, But constellation had, decided his fate.

Product of ignorance, or Product of genes. He appears to begin afresh But finds oscillating, from ends to means.

Grief visits him every season, He cries for no reason, Rattle brings a smile, But that lasts, just for a while.

Is happiness momentary? Am I, bound or free? Am I, new of old? Puzzled he ponders, on these questions, manifold.

“Valid questions haunt you, But you seek answers in wrong locus, Consciousness that makes you, You, On That Principle, shift your focus.

In that lies true freedom, That is eternally new. In that lies true happiness, That is no different, no different from you.”

DEATH IS AROUND THE CORNER

He was young, handsome, clever. Toilsome days of engineering were over. ‘Honestly, Life has just begun!’ Well paid job, plans to buy a car, Followed by marriage & occasional visits to bar. ‘Honestly, Life would be so much fun!’

He hands over his abdominal CT scan report, I see the film, and then, what radiologist wrote: ‘LIVER: multiple metastases; PANCREAS: primary’ Twenty-five is not the age, to move in a cemetery. I wonder how true are words of wise, ‘God does not play dice”.

I speak in volume, low; keeping my pace, slow, to convey: how long his life will, flow. He shudders, his face gets pale, his lips get dry, But a friendly tear, or was it, a drop of sweat, trickled along his nose, and made them wet. He tries too hard, tries not to cry.

He mutters few words, which make no sense, “No one wants to witness :his absence!” Death hovers on him like a patrolling chopper. Thought of a wrinkled face makes him shivers with fear “Those shoulder on which, I as a toddler used to play, would bear the weight of my bier?”

Like smell of incence, sorrow fills the room. Could a flower wilt, before it could bloom? Deafening sound was heard when we dint talk, of a dream shattering:” We’ll paint the town red!” Could one stumble, before one began to walk, upon his deathbed?

I know what lies ahead: A game of chess. Between: We, Doctors and Yama, Lord of Death. Between: Amateur and a Grandmaster. But he: A mere pawn, till his last breath. “Checkmate!” who would utter is not a difficult guess.

‘Honestly, Life has just begun!’ ‘Honestly, Life would be so much fun!’

On the horizon, sun turns, violently red, with his rage, as though, the sky would burn. I walk home, a hard day is over, But just before I could take the next turn, I paused and pondered, on what a wise man said: “Death is around the corner”

LOOKING DOWN THE MICROSCOPE Small round blue cells, in a 3 yrs old eye, they would never see blueness of the sky.

Months later, other eye, blossomed rosettes. Years later, in Braille someone read: “they also formed flurettes”.

Through the window, a teenager limped, for life crutches tied. Through the lens, his femur showed, tumor-osteoid.

Unlike us, malignant cells follow some quaint order, which we appreciate, in order to diagnose, a disorder.

For carcinoma, we need to look for pleomorphism. For lymphoma, opportunist takes help of monomorphism.

Myxoma, we easily pick up, in myocardial tissue, but lack of compassion, is the pathology, the real issue.