Ganga Bleeds

[anveshan]

 

My Heart Bleeds.

 

My heart bleeds; blood, red hot blood rolls down from my eyes

For, alas, and unlike you, I have a heart and the eyes

To see , perceive, feel and analyse

My own destiny , of by-gone days and unborn ones

My heart bleeds profusely, my tears all have all dried up.

 

For, you know, there was a golden stretch of land

They called it the gangetic plain beyond the Sindhu great

You got it, where the great Vyasa trod on,

Where Kapil, the peerless seer composed his Sankhya;

 

You know it was on my lap Jina and Gautama grew up

It was on my banks that they enlightened ones once cherished

Here was it that the great Sankara professed

The grandest of Philosophies, One without a Second.

 

Chandragupta and Asoka were my lofty sons

Kalidas and Kautilya were the retina of my eyes

The Greeks and the Mangols came down to me

To grasp and carry lamps of wisdom back to their homes.

 

And you know, mother Nature created my banks fertile and rich

Rich with grains, cereals and minerals great

I once possessed the Ganga Jal, the life of lives

Synonymous with purity, nay, purity itself.

 

And do you see my plight and predicament these days?

On my banks do live the most illiterate and hungry

House of learning , I have none worth the name

Only degrees are sold and bought, knowledge never sought.

 

Thugs and netas rule over my Pataliputra

Thieves unheard of, guard my raj kosha

Gangsters are mantries and gangsters make laws

Neeti and Nyaya are there in for festive sales.

 

And please do not come for a holy dip in me

For I am impure, raped a thousand times;

In Rishikesh and Hardwar they dump rotten flowers,

And tonnes of ‘prasad’ every day unto me.

 

And in Kasi to Kalighat I am the dumping ground

For heads of cattle dead , and of animals like you

For industrial waste and venomous chemicals

That instantly finishes off my aquatic children .

 

On my banks where the seers and scholars tread

Now strolls the babas in saffron garb

To satiate their stomach, as the Sankara said

They malign me, defile and rape my land.

 

I AM THE GANGA, THE GREAT EMPTYING GROUND!

 

=anveshanam=