Three Odd Friends Walking Hand-In-Hand

Three odd friends, the bootlegger, the drug-trafficker and the woman-trafficker Now cover up the news pages, The bootlegger who comes with bottles ambushed in his rugged, ragged coat and pants, Looking clumsy-clumsy, uncouth-uncouth, Clumsy and uncouth But his friends many The sadhakas in sadhna taking Siva’s buti, herbal intoxicants And Mother Kali’s madira, Vedic sura, Deviated youths as for unemployment, bad company Or being unmarried. The bootlegger sells he wine, country liquor and smuggles the types of it Looking blank-blank, blank and vacant, Unsocial and out of mind, With no work to do, But to eat, drink and be merry, Bring forth and sell them, Making them drunkards, Sell and supply And earn and drink, But get not too much drunk. The drug-trafficker in the old term is one who used to sell ganja and bhang Once upon a time on the outskirts And the bhangeris used to sit and sit, smile and smile As this used to dull the brains so And in intoxication They used to talk of becoming Sivas, Priests for the ritual sake Or a tantrika trying to garland a tiger Or one haunted by the ghosts, I do not know the base of theirs, But can say it that In this world of today, Changed circumstances, the wayward, whither modern youths Have started taking brown sugar and heroin to spoil totally, Their lives and their dreams, All the instant joys and the sources of it Will turn into their miseries and woes of life, Compelling them even to sell their kidneys For the drugs, Turning into abnormals wayless, Left to their poor destitute and destiny. The woman-trafficker may come, speak heartily and take to distant Arabia By showing petro dollars, The romantics in disguise And will abandon and dump elsewhere When the colour fades it on the midway, The restaurants and lodges standing on the sea-beach are of those Investors, hoteliers, managers and owners; The wimps and the middle men play a major role In telling about gala and glitz, Offering the jobs of the glamorous, the beautician and the fashion designer With boards and hoardings At city squares to tempt, charm the dreams and catch their fancy. The late night dance parties With cabaret, disco, rock ‘n roll and jazz, The bar tenders, The girls in bikini and lingerie, Wine bottles on the tables, The starred hotels and management faculty And its associates, Where are they taking ultimately The modern world and its culture of today, Taking to full, emptying the bottle, Looking coloured-coloured and dyed, Dancing, partying and enjoying? The call centres with the queens of dreams, Night queens, Oh, the lonely girls in lonely, manless, haunted studios or cabins Working day and night And you call it service, Day and night service without any break in it At their cost, the cost of their life, How can it be, The music of night not the music of life, It is of companionlessness Asking for companies, making one with, Come close together with. The models modelling, Will her life spend as thus, in modelling And think of When all her glamour will be gone, May be dragged into other business, The air hostess Living lonely and friendless with the joys and sorrows of her own. They cast the music albums on the snake charmer’s music But give not to anything of their royalties and earnings, Keep the all with them, Acknowledge it not even And you mark the tinge of pain, They go on playing, moving about The streets As for music, deadly dance of cobras, Risking their lives Playing with cobras, Deadly cobras, Whose single catch and bite may be fatal to his life, Which none has but come to feel it. What it pains me most is the sense of ingratitude, Why not to acknowledge it, If cannot remember, why to take it from, If we cannot create something, why to destroy, Why is this fall in standard, loss in morality and sense, To leave one to one’s destitute and harness not good, Something needs to be done in this regard As we have come to here with some purpose And for which we are here, Our living for some purpose And if this be, how to make it purposeless, a purposeless living? Will our life spend in eating, drinking and merry-making, What the purpose of our living, Why are we here, What the work to be done, What in hand And what the others, Other assignments and assessments To be taken, completed and finished, The assignments to be given to complete at home And the assessments to be taken elsewhere? The spirits and intoxicants have their medicinal value, They induce sleep And have definitely some curative stuffs To reconcile and charm, Mitigate or lessen or diminish, But not to spoil lives in this way, Taking at the roadside bar-cum-restaurant, Driving rashly and meeting tragic ends, To murder poor girls as for beastly appetite, for the hunger of the body?