Poetry Corner

COACHING CENTRE

Oh learned men!
You surely know
that impurities of touch
completely dissolve
when a high caste man
takes a dip in water
and changes his clothes.

But look at the untouchable hordes!
Howsoever much
they rub themselves
with soap and water
and splash and dip
and scrub and polish,
they cannot shake off ‘untouchability’,
which clings to their bodies.

That is how and why
they have remained untouchables
over the millennia.
No-one has been able to decide
if untouchabilityis
a colour or a touch,
a feeling or an ideal;
whether it resides
in the one who touches,
or the one who is touched.

A learned high caste man
could start a coaching center
and make good money
if he could simply teach untouchables
how to shake off untouchability
with a single dip in water
and a change of clothes.



Prayer


Come,
Let’s take off our clothes.


Let’s take off Mahapatra’s coat
from god Brahma’s body;
let’s take off Mohanty’s suit
from Vishnu’s waist.


Let’s strip off Tandy’s dhoti
from Ekalavya’s body,
and Satnami’s langot
from Shambuk’s bottom.


Let us all line up,
naked, in front of God,
stripped of our ego.
We must muster our courage
for it’s not easy to be naked.


It is a hundred times
still more difficult
to strip off our surnames
from our names.


When we’re able to do that
we may stand before God
in our nakedness
and pray to him:


Oh, God,
we offer you here,
in one single bowl,
all our surnames-
Mohapatra Mohanty,
Tandy and Satnami.
Can you, in all fairness,
return these to us,
each his own surname,
by simply looking at our faces,
listening to our voices
and sampling our blood ?

Then we will be grateful
for your godliness
and respect your
power of cognition.


Can you do that, God-
pick from the bowl
our respective surnames
and return them
each to his own ?


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