Powerless Superpower!

The country that is being touted as the super power of the future saw a red letter day in its history when 300 million people of Northern India were afflicted by a power outage that lasted for more than 15 hours, scripting in golden letters the worst blackout of the decade. And I was a witness to the event when this saga was being scrolled!

The Northern Grid that collapsed supplies electricity to Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

The bolt from the blue hit the water distribution system and Metro services with the operations at the Airport largely remaining unaffected due to the diesel generating back up system. A total of roughly 35,669 MW power had been affected due to the failure in the northern grid and the power for emergency services was restored on a priority basis by taking loans from western and eastern regions as well as Bhutan.

At 2 am a blinding black out gave way to what I thought could have been a usual summer siesta that the power usually took in the hot humid days of July.! The morning was a shocker with the radio jockey telling the city in a sadistic somberness that the northern grid had failed and much of the northern Indian sub-continent will have to live through the ordeal as a changeless choice. I wondered if this was the run to the aspirations of being a super power, where even a stray pet could plunge millions to darkness.

Some astonishing facts baring the truth about the powerless promises we are often handed out before an election as a pamphlet of ambitious manifestos.

An Ode To the Copycat

It is a cheap bargain for them

hijacking your high

they love the glare and gold

and ween to be worshipped

apathy airs their sleep

in the abortive barrens of

hubristic hopes,

they sully the word

with their stale sterotype

squaring slogans to shame

fame, fortune and fervor

are their coveted cravings

like daughters of joy.

In August

In August ache was an aged ally

bleeding through eyes, nose and mouth

as watery wisp or crimson canary.

In August you visited friends

while I confided in strangers

so senseless.

In August you were wearing wings

while catching a flight

or sailing on escalators

while I leaned listlessly on lifts

and took the bus.

In August we dressed

in a nine to five folly

to repress solitude's spinster act.

Dear Mr/Ms Politician

Once in every five years

the blue ink tattoos

a foolish forefinger

for a promise pronounced

at the cost of a manifesto

like a marriage agreement

nailed with nuptial niceties.

We are coerced to a choice

in the name of responsibility

accepting asphyxiation as a peerless pick,

you continue to feed your children

with a golden spoon

and compile cold cash

with your hands in our mouths

you fill your pockets

with more brass

while building for us

palaces in air.

Another Speed Devil Kills An Innocent

Most people die of road accidents than most diseases, so much so the Indian high ways are among the top killers of the country.

Justice V.R Krishna Iyer said in a court ruling in 1979.

Kshama Chopra was a witness to this gory testimony of words. She was two weeks pregnant, happily married just another thirty year old who was heedless of the rashness on roads, and on one such fateful day lost her life to necrotic negligent driving. On May 5th while returning from a medical check up along with her husband and parents, the Indigo she was traveling in, was rummaged by an over speeding BMW. The driver of the BMW was reportedly intoxicated and the impact of the fatality was so grievous that the car rolled over several times before landing on the ground. Ms. Chopra who was a few weeks pregnant died on the spot along with the driver of their car, while her family members suffered serious injuries and have been bed ridden since then. The rich drunken brat driving the speed devil fled the spot and until this day has not been arrested. He continues to roam around scot free while also retaining his driving license, which the police was supposed to cease immediately after identifying him as the culprit.

Ah! Poetry by Various Authors

Book: Ah! Poetry.!

Author: Members of Ah! Poetry

Language: English

Publisher: Nivasini Publishers

Date of Publishing: 2012

Price: Rs 150

The anthology offers variety in verses and verbiage with a simple and subtle language that explores all the emotions of the human heart in free verse, rhyming and some other newer invented forms except that love was over exploited in deed and discourse, sometimes bordering somewhere between cliche and originality. So also, in some poems rhymes seems to have been forced. The poets have tried to discover the Indian identity and ideology which reminds you sometimes, of your home state or your favourite Indian food or the social life in the cities or just to say, the simplicity of the rural rustiness.

Abhishek Dua's Two Square Meals A Day stalks the mind of the reader with oxymorons of human emotions plaguing the heart.

Ajinkya Raut's Deflowered explores the lives of sex workers, some that happen due to miseries and others that happen in act of shameless satisfaction.

Akshat Gupta's A packet full of Your Memories is a walk down a lane forgotten and forbidden.

Amanpreet Singh's Vacant Horizons discovers the darker mysteries of life with ease and elan.

Amar Singh' The Day Vision inspires the reader to treat each day as a gift from God.

Amit Charles travels through his grandma's childhood reminding us of hey day innocence with his poem Ammama, Puttu and the Summer Rain.

Amiya Cahtterjee's Middle May explores the good and bad and the middle road running between them.

Anand Madhukar's A letter to my Father pay a tribute to his father's memories that stalked him for a good fifteen years before pouring out in this poem.

Anantha R's I am ready For Marriage talks of a dream theme for a perfect non-plagiarized wedding in these suffocating times of arranged marriages and matrimonial websites.

Anu Cowalgi's Perspectives magnifies the present day scenario in the nation with truthful honesty.

Baljeet Randhawa's A Philosphy of Colours is a poetic perspective of philosophy and its parameters.

Charbak Das magnifies his unsaid memories of love by exploring nature's elements in his poem Sand House.

Deepti Agarwal's Free at Last is a poem delving into suicidal freedom with breath taking beauty.

Dolly Singh's poem A Designer's Muse is a distinctive poem, the kind I haven't read till this day, which poetically pens the kaleidoscopic beauty of the world of fashion.

Hiral Trivedi's To the end of the Tunnel is a lovely collection of short poems talking of a silent suffocating soul wanting to attain nirvana.

Indira Mohanty's poem Love is an an amalgamation of emotions of various hues from red to white to black and even grey.

Jayachandran Ramachandran salutes the supreme sacrifices made by Irom Sarmila Chanu in her fearless fight demanding withdrawl of the AFSPA from Manipur.

Jatin Kuberkar's An Unusual Biography exploits a forsaken love's journey towards nothingness.

Jennifer Robertson makes use of unusual metaphoric images to tell the story of a dream unfulfilled.

Krihsna Dasani's poem Women salutes the power womanhood has been bestowed with gracious charm.

Kunal Sen's poem Vermilion is unusually structured and digs into the elements of an Indian arranged marriage very beautifully.

Leenuka Reddy is a womanist talking of Eve's curse with sad sinister detailing.

Madhav Bhandarkar's Loyal Husband is an exploration of everlasting parting love that doesn't die even with death while Maulik Trivedi respects the yin and yang of fakery and reality in Opaque Reality.

Mayank Sharma is innocence personified in his poem Dedicated to a Bird.

Manish Gautam's Coin in economically worded poetry talking of how life can never be traded for coins.

Mehul Jain skectches his philoshphy of life with attractive adjectives in his poem Life Unexplained..Unexplainable while Nishant Shah's poems Aum had chants of Hindu philosophy driving it.

Nivedita's poems written for her friend is a very honest dedication in the reverence of friendship.

O Sudhir Janardhanan is an imaginative poet with intelligent use of imagery while Payal Aggarwal's Acrostic offers variety to the reader with form poetry.

Philoment Chaudhary explores darker and dreaded secrets of love in all her poems while Pratibha Sofat hankers on hopelessness in an incomplete efforts in her poem Hope-less.

Pravaas Ranjan does justice to his professional paranoia in his poem Raincoat.

Preeti Venkatesan's poem Death Wish looks much like a Suicide Note with Prerna chaudhary utilizing abstract elements to ulterior use in all her poems.

Rajashekhar Sen seems to write a memoir in his poem Intro. Rohan Sen's poems are twining love to nature while Sanket Karkare's uses the Metaphor Butterfly to wonderfully describe independence.

Raj talks of love like other poets but from the purview of a teenager. Sashus' poem Love Note is again a wonderful love poem dancing to the tunes of nature.

Saurav displays his acting skills quite convincingly in his poem A Question while Shabbir Khorakiwala again takes you to a wanderlust journey of nature discovering God's creative prowess.

Shashank Mishra's poem Those papers in my Drawer is a good attempt at rhyming poetry while Shigufta Uzma's The Changing Prefixes and Suffixes talks strongly of the surname culture in Post Colonial India.

Shirish Kota's poem Revised Recklessness is a wonderful tribute to womankind.

Shivraj Amin's I the Thief on the Left is biblically inspired and does justice to the hallowed honour in the crucifixion of Christ.

Simranjeet Singh's Skinless layers of I is a memorable memoir poem while George Everett writes two poems to relegate and honour a martyr.

Sudeep Singh Rawat's I am Sorry explores shameless guilt while Sunita Prasad's Pearls of Wisdom are those you might want to keep.

Surabhi Goswami's finds love in her poems.

Syed Qaisar Gilani's is a wonderful journey of life penned with both innocence and maturity.

Yamini Periwal completes the collection with her poems on love and friendship.

The book is available here.

My rating 2.5/5,  2.5 points go away for some poets who did not manage to strike a chord with me for the poetic prose they had to present.

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Yamuna- How we managed to raise hell on a piece of heaven?

Two thousand years ago as parables and poems testify, this piece of the heaven landed on earth. And we raised a hell on it, since then. Today it is nothing more than a corpse, a carcass of ashes, coins and sweets forcefully fed in the name of religious rituals.

New Delhi is aware of the importance of this dead water body and the need to resuscitate it, for it is the only wealth of water the city can afford as tap water for four hours everyday in households across the city. The other times bring water to the people in the form of municipal trucks that they pay for or the water tanks installed in the buildings. What is saddening is that sometimes they have to pay doubly or three times than the amount they would have paid had they running water supply at home.

The Yamuna enters the NCR region cleaner from its 246 mile descent from the head of Himalayas. The New Delhi Jal Board collects 229 million gallons of water from the river which forms the single largest source of drinking water for the city. As the Yamuna leaves the city, it becomes a drain for the drab and the drench. To add to the river's torment, the residents pour 950 gallons of sewage into it everyday. As you pass the city, you can see the river as a black barren desert of waste, smothering your nostrils with the repressive rot. Clumps of crap flaot on the top making it unsafe for fishes leave alone for drinking or bathing. With the population of Delhi having expanded by roughly 41% in the past fifteen years, two decades of labor and an expenditure of nearly 1,500 crores pollution in Yamuna has not shown a decline and the government audit last year suggested that the DJB spent USD 200 million which yielded little value. More sewage plants have not done the trick since the lines are heavily clogged and are left at the mercy of the power which fails to keep it up most times.

To add to the woeful worries, colonies like the Janta colony are not connected to sewage pipes with open sewers drowning the alleys with sulking scum. They give the sight of green black ribbons of muck sloshing the sewer line with mosquitoes. Malaria and Dengue are epidemics that visit the areas every year.

With the burden of the Delhi, Yamuna bends to head south to cities like Agra and Mathura which are forced to treat the water heavily, all thanks to the curse of Delhi hiking up the costs by three to four folds.

As per the RTI act, the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan extracted information about the extent of pollution and it is alarming to say that the river is now spoiled upto a 600 km stretch.