plenty petty pennies in the
name of pilani, four years of
drought under the clouds of queries,
clarity too subtle for the
two eyed ones,
ghot's and nots, {"ghot" in BITSian lingo meant a bookworm}
seniors and the lot,
all collegiate assessor of things,
trying to out-sell one another,
entire generations diseased
by salesmanship,
theories,
more theories,
of intellectual existence,
of its glamour,
of how a squared
added to b squared
becomes c squared
inspite not knowing
what it actually means,
how clearing an MBA exam
meant you could start being cocky,
and how having a friend at
the placement team in tandem
could help you land a job of
eighteen lakhs per annum;
and now,
would you look at all of them,
stuck to their laptops and zoom calls,
monkey see, monkey do,
in other cases,
being slapped around
for not manufacturing oxygen
for dead patients,
which weren't in their job profiles
to begin with,
all being fed a giant bottom,
private cum public,
heads up,
lips moist,
smiles wide;
...
fuck that,
there were better days
when great many cricket matches
were played amidst cousins and crowd
in the sutaal of our homes
without any agenda in mind,
{ancient India designed their homes to have
an open space inside the four rows of build,
and sutaal is the Assamese word for it}
when having fun
was not forgotten
whilst competing,
and gura-khaanda,
which means really
cooked rice flour with some tea,
was brought to our farmer elders
in their fields as a sign of affection
by their shying, sometimes aging,
wives who didn't know
how to show love publicly
but meant every bit of it;
and there will be better days
when we start throwing our
phones and televisions out and
planting our first marijuana tree,
alongside lemongrass and tulsi,
being fully blessed by mothers,
who will know deeply that
laws on paper are simply
not worth following;
...
control over narratives,
young boys and girls,
is the only
game in town,
always has been,
and it's best to learn
how to sniff it at
an early age;
...