A bit of poetry …

I wrote a cryptic, meandering, incomprehensible entry today in the morning from home but could not post it due to the fact that my host server was down. I feel like making a post today but can’t think of all the stuff I wrote earlier (plus, I can republish that from home tomorrow anyway :p) and so I decided to put up this poem that I wrote today for the newspaper page that I edit. It seemed to sort of come together pretty fast and while I don’t think of it as “real” poetry, it did flow well and so I’m putting it up … or something …

The Song of Lanka

First came the Aryans to this island fair,
With the heir of the clan from the lion’s lair,
They drove off her native sons,
To the jungle where the wild river runs!

Then came those from the Indian South,
Who some claim had entered the lion’s mouth,
In search of lands to plunder
Or just places to live, they here did blunder.

In to this mix was thrown the Arab traders,
Who some now claim were invaders,
They came to trade
But liked the climes and stayed.

All three races lived, allied and fought
Till the day they sighted the first boat
Of a new race to enter the books of Lankan history,
The Portugese were this new race of mystery.

The Portugese took over the sea ports
But in turn were driven off by the Dutch cohorts,
Who themselves wanted a beachhead
On this island paradise of the sands red!

As seconds turn to minutes and minutes into hours,
So do invaders get thrown out by even higher powers.
The British followed the Dutch to the Indian sea,
And took over this land in its entirety.

After a century and more of British rule,
We gained our independence with a roar, not a mewl
But since then instead of living in harmony
We’ve bickered and fought, called each other enemy.

After all the bloodshed, all the pain
All that we went through to, our independence gain,
Why can’t we learn the lessons of history
And learn that amity is the way forward for you and me?

Life, she ain’t simple …

Life – it just threw me another curveball. Totally unexpected, totally out of the blue and as I mentioned a couple of days ago, totally in opposition to a certain course of action I was beginning to follow up on. I don’t know if it is wish fulfillment or just some sort of a mystic reaction to my actions but there it is – but the thing is that this time there is a certain rightness to it, a certain this-is-the-moment-you’ve-been-waiting-for, feel to it. So I’m going with it again. Anyway, when life throws a curveball at you what do you do? I guess my baseball analogy fails me at this point and I must jump to cricket – you must either hit out or get out :p I’ve decided to hit out since getting out is not even an option at the moment – I hope it never will be 🙂 Yes, I know, none of the above made an darn sense whatsoever. Sorry, I’m just writing for myself today. Putting down my thoughts and feelings and reactions and whatnot down so that I can read it later and both savour this moment and be able to think back a bit more objectively on the situation.

Sometimes you get stuck in this really strange spot half-way between dream and reality where your dreams are real and all you have to do is reach out and touch to have your dream but it seems almost impossible to raise your arm because your arm suddenly seems to have grown so utterly, impossibly heavy. Have you ever been in a situation like that? My thoughts are very chaotic right now, I don’t think I’m even thinking completely lucidly, I’ve just gotten up a little while ago, had a fairly strange night of dreams and am actually rambling just now, get reality settled in again and also getting ready for another day of work after a week of idleness. I am sure today will be full of its share of drama at work – I don’t even want to think about it since I’d like to just not be bothered about all these nitty gritty details of life right at this moment …. (yes, I’m rambling and just trailed off …)