Ganges boy on the Gangetic spree

The poem is an attempt to put forward the poet’s views on how we treat a river which we call our mother. While showcasing the approach of spring with its burst of colours, processions and birdsongs, the poem highlights the bitter reality of a polluted Ganges.

 

Off the shore, amongst the flow all green

Looking at the mother, teeming with life… it must now preen

 

It started around lentil fields, holy colours, or all plastic

Divine; thought wide and living, no water… dramatic and drastic

A griffon whom once all knew, became outlander

Cawed to lie… barked to fly; I so wonder, all it does is wander?

 

What comes next shook me with shock and surprise!!

Although known and read, filters mildly disguise

 

Friends of the race who now rule the land

Devouring the flesh of Lord’s grace to sand

 

Denizen of the doomed… Are they? I wonder!

A thrust beyond which, even clouds don’t thunder!

 

And on the shore, not a single bird is seen to breed

With their bills all open, found snail neither caste nor creed

 

What chore shall be done by the infant bull blue?

With horses and cows, the grass green goes without adieu

 

Flowing without water, purity at dis-ease

Bloated mass of carbon, invisible ageing crease

 

 

And “hey” I said, “I think I saw a carapace on water”

Is it?? Damn, it’s another skull that seem to flutter

 

Neither stream-up nor down, single fin been found

Is it, the effect of the metal pontoon bound?

 

Meanders and braids and rifles and raids

I wish I could see some land, without human kraits

 

At least kraits are better, they do their business

Unlike us, the hefty invaders, we harass without distress

 

Now the pirates’ fleet came to my view

Piercing bamboo and brimming buckets, is that all what they knew?

 

Looted the sunken, for every penny that they can

Without a word, holy mother still spared the clan

 

After which nothing was seen, and I… I was delighted

But as silence prior thunder, my lips I bite-d

 

 

Machine so huge, a dredger pierced earthen grains

Chewing, cutting, throwing up in the air, with diligence it drains

 

Slighter logic and superior law, and manly lust which grows

Devouring the untouched, all is done with man’s brows

 

‘Not on land, but in water’, the evil debris is blown

Deepening here and settling down… as it is flown,

 

The blown carry toxins isn’t settled that easy

Bursting like cancer, innocent hands all greasy

 

Anabranches, grassy meadow, rock islands, and bound clocks

An eel, two otters, ‘eighteen skimmers’, after few meander blocks

 

A breath here another there, with spark it ignited

A fin with the fluke and a beak with melon, each one awed and excited

 

We were counting and counted more while moving

“Dolphins now seem okay, but till when?” I asked, voice all shaky and grooving

 

Further down we go, the river runs wide,

Few confluences we met with, the water here seems not-dried

 

A river with magnificent width became all grey

With dirt and no flow, appeared like a lake, it made me pray

 

Here, is a story, facts recorded with a degree

Presented by a Ganges boy, who is on the Gangetic spree…

 

 

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Read also: Junglimericks: In the Crazy Wilds of India

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