Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma

One man generating a nation- wide neurosis. That sounds absurd. Many have been tilling land, sowing seeds, nursing plants in hibernation. Almost a hundred years. Racial integrity unfurled every evening. Invoking Nazi infrastructure. No generous compromises. National accommodation to adjust with discordant trends. Alien rulers fought with kid gloves. Aliens are questions of being and non- being, to be or never to be. Battles are lost even as warring parties partake of minor gains and play safe for the ultimate triumph.

Why flog a dead animal. No matter if it is accident or conspiracy. Dozens die, the dead bleed in a procession down the streets, walk into houses in hobnailed boots with knives drawn, fire engulfs, swords screaming through the night. Camps give refuge, rescue people from dying at home and butchered in public squares. Peace marches through daytime city roads. Tremors shiver across the vast spread of far off provinces. Frenzied mobs scared by their deeds look for a savior in the heroic utterances of hatred. The top court intervenes and calls a halt to rioting and arson, armed forces move into streets, disorder sinks into oblivion, people stirred from a collective nightmare.

Rioting identifies friends and foes, the formidable muscles exert, the communal eyes blink, the racial recurrence invites dreams to damn the other. Crowds outnumber the last time’s gathering, outpace the racial rhetoric currently held in check, envenomed tongues talk in tea shops, small social gatherings,  neurosis spreads like an epidemic, social distancing is the norm, everyone begins to work from home.

Once convinced, there’s a reckless chase.  Playing blind man’s bluff. There are soft targets everywhere. The soft and gentle are perturbed, distracted from the ongoing tug of war, but malicious aren’t afraid, are taken lightly, there are confirmed losers on both sides, the worst take the upper hand. The world is like a family, but the family isn’t the world, it’s dark with dense clouds at the dusky hour, recognize no faces, identify through clothes they wear, language they speak, gods they worship, not the content but script of their history which matters.

Failure is a word not to be found in the dictionary of rulers. Everything in plenty, nothing in shortage, not a single lapse in their time, no sign of corruption, nothing remotely of seditious character, intelligence is superb, can preempt bad times, avert disasters, but any calamity is a curse of time or nature. Any mishap sighted has to be inevitable leftovers consequent to misdeeds of previous regimes.

Repetitions, day-in and day- out, year after year, painted on hoardings, flashed on television screens, racing through the daily headlines of print media, verbatim in the mouths of municipal commissioners, the meandering queues at ration shops, in mouths of citizens who need no daring conviction to speak their minds but are contented to repeat what they hear.

Read: Inclusive Voids (Poetry) by Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma

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Hailing from Himachal Pradesh, India, Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma, born in 1952, has published ten books of English poetry which include ‘Man with A Horn’, ‘Eyes of Silence’ and ‘There’s No Death’.  His book, A Three- Step Journey, is English translation of Zahid’s Urdu poems. ‘Icicles of Time’ is the latest in 2024. Sharma was conferred with ‘Master of Creative Impulse’ at World Poetry Conference in 2019. A former Principal, Government College, Dharamshala, he has been anthologized in several books of poetry, stories and such books of academic interest as 21st Century Critical Thought: A Dialogue with Post-Modern Voices Vol I, (2020), A Handbook of Contemporary Ethics, (2024), Ed by Molly Joseph and JS Anand

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