We are shutdown.
There will be no prepared
Parvenu face at my door.
So I will wear the beloved
Tattered shirt
I could not wear before.
With no fear of any gentlemanly visit,
I will slouch in any posture,
In any cluttered corner sit.
I will play the music nobody but me
Fancies, and be short, brief, and nasty
To Whatsapp dunces.
I will sing in the bathroom as I did
When I was but an energetic kid.
In the kitchen I will cook outrageous
Dishes, cocking a snook at
Professional dervishes.
When I am tired, I will lie askew
on a rough and tumble floor,
and reject the infected world
with therapeutic snore.
I will thumb through books nobody
May read, unshackled from the
Baggage of an academic creed.
When some rogue guru delivers
Homily at prime hour, I shall press
The mute button and shout
“get thee gone slime, I am wise to Lucifer.”
Besides, think how many spoilers in high places
Corona embraces. That thought too
Is grist in quotidian quarantine.
Where other things have failed,–
Nationalism, religions, war–
How a sightless bug unites us all,
Obliterating contentions of yours and mine
From low to high, near to far.
May be bugs are the answer to a world
Gone mad. Bring on the bugs
They spare no cad.
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.
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