Look Before You Love

Its more booful than the bestest flower
Sweeter than the sweetest sweet
Spreads fairer fragrance than the poshest perfume
And binds bonds better than any adhesive

It crafts creative geniuses from nowhere
And crass cacophony gives way to melody
The macho’s mean machine gives way to a pansy in its place
The bank balance too is not safe

Everywhere it’s a special face found
Somehow surroundings seem fresher than before
Perpetual emptiness leaves fulfillment
And joy drops from eyes as pearls

All conquering it drives conquerors to slaves
As self worth appears worthless
And suddenly a new dimension is discovered
To the geometry of life

Oh yes! I know this
For its my own life that its taken
So hark oh innocent victim
For all is not as it seems to be

Takes it more than it can ever give
Though joy it gives in giving
And responsibility it demands
For its someone else’s life you choose to keep

Sorrow stems too from it
More perennial than joy and worse
Wounds it leaves though beneath the surface
And its scratches are hard to heal

Play not oh denizen with this fire
For some plays can leave terrible impacts
And a burning desire if betrayed
May consume self and take you with it


But if play does you or someone with it
Remember reality’s just across the stage
And don’t let run away yourself
Into the quagmire of grief

Love

Like a thorn it enters
And secretes the joyous juice of bliss
The pain promptly vanishes
But the prick persists.

Blood runs hot and heavy
Veins swell up with it
But cork seals puncture
Traversing transient happiness

The minutest movement hurts;
And a stationary situation seems best, though to no avail.
Jerk jerks it out but jerked it is back in;
Blood sprouts out, then blocked;
But the puncture persists.

Open it is to one day
So i know, he says
but that day is far away...

Tomorrow, blood fills buckets.
Thorn vanishes, the puncture prominent remains.

No cork, no stopppage, pure flow
and flow it does.
So i knew, he says.
Yet sets off on a new ordeal,
search for new thorn.

It wont fit the hole,
but find it he must.
While the blood oozes.

No more thorn lasts long
yet more punctures appear
No more corks curb the tide
And the blood oozes.



Shivalik Hostel

The Loving Misdeed

I look at you, you look at me
Distances melt and time stands still
As hunger grows for your heart
Yet something forbids

You realize my starvation
And offer me the fruit
You disarm yourself
And stand in mock surrender

My weapon is ready
But I am hesitant to attack
You choose neither defence nor offence
For you do not understand the clash

For for you its worship
And an offering is all you make
But whether the deity accepts
You deem not yours to decide

Winds blow and blow and blow
The rain coms lashing down
There is thunder and lightning
But the sweet is not claimed

By now you are in pain
Maybe the offering wasn’t that good
And you fulfil my sweetest nightmare
As the flower is made ready to bear the fruit

When the storm blows over
The damage doe is seen
And the Gods themselves despair
For the loving misdeed

The Brick Wall

Why do swords always pierce my aromour
Why does steel turn to cloth within me
Why do my weapons melt and shatter
Why do my own devices betray me

Why does the balance never shift in my favour
Why do the fruits always get diseased
Why do my crops always fail
Why does the sun always go down when I want to make hay

I’ve had my share of cough syrup
And more by a few dozens
Will I ever taste the taste of honey
Or is my life going to be just a dreary desert

Let me too taste the strawberries
Let me feel the joy of a successful birth
Let me se my flowing fields
Don’t make my eyes accustomed to sad scenery

Or teach me the art of drinking down dregs
And learn me the ownership of sorrow and despair
For then may I smile if at naught
At least on the pathos of my worldly affair

The country's 'best' enggg. college

It was supposed to be a very normal day for Nimish… An ordinary day packed with classes at the country’s best engineering college IIT Delhi. Only, it didn’t turn out that way… That fateful day changed his life… forever.
Nimish had his MEL 120 workshop that day. And he was supposed to go the welding shop and learn the fine and precise art of welding under the able guidance of the lab instructor wearing full protective equipment and taking all precautions…
Or so he thought. What he saw there was a small room with four welding guns in an area of about 8m^2 being operated by unskilled freshers. The shield was defective with cracks running down the glass and there were no gloves or protective specs. This, my friends, was IIT…
He wondered, "This looks dangerous…should I leave? But what about the 5 marks… My CG will be ruined… No. I must do this. I will have to. After all everyone does it… my seniors, batchmates.. nothing happened to them." And with this argument he started welding.
But in all this mental arithemetic, there was one minor flaw… a flaw which had the capability to increase exponentially… MEL 120 had a history of eye injuries in welding- a history which had been very cleverly hidden by the institute management. And every year a large number of students required hospitalization.
But ignorance is bliss, and Nimish carried on welding… At first nothing happened… except some vision blurring… which of course is normal, thought our budding Einstien, "After all the pupil contracts in bright light and sudden lowering in intensity causes instantaneous blindness for some time......"
But at around 8 that night his eyes started burning. He washed them, washed them again, kept washing them… but to no avail. Worse, they hurt even more on closing, implying that he couldn’t sleep. His situation worsened and at 2 in the night he couldn’t take it anymore and he started screaming… The ambulance came and took him away… The diagnosis- Severe Corneal damage. MEL 120 had claimed another victim.
Yes, Nimish recovered in a week’s time but even today he carries the permanent eye damage that welding caused… Thanks to IIT.
Nimish is not an isolated case. As mentioned above, each year many Nimishes suffer. An not just in welding but also in other dangerous shops like Blacksmithy where students ae made to work in hot furnaces in dingy rooms.
I ask you, is this why students prepare so hard for IIT JEE? Is this why parents dream of sending their sons and daughters to IIT? I don’t think so. What we expect is quality engineering education along with overall development and not health degradation.
The answer the management gives is- "Students need this kind of workshop exposure"
Exposure??? Sure we get exposure. Exposure to UV and IR waves… Exposure to radiations which could permanently impair vision. Exposure to countless other health hazards. But not exposure to learning.
I do not advocate a totally theoretical education with no practical component. I agree with the essence of the statement quoted above. We need experience in welding and all other engineering practices. But what I don’t agree with is the manner in which this experience is given. Why compromise on safety? Across the world in every premier Engg. Institute a basic set of precautions is followed to ensure safety of the students… Then why do we at IIT compromise on safety? Why do we play with the health and lives of students? The students who constitute the cream of the country’s intelligentsia…The students who tomorrow have to drive the nations progress machinery towards the goal of development?
It is high time this problem is tackled and the first step in tackling, as with any other problem, is to spread awareness. This issue is so far hidden from the eyes of the general public. The media should exercise its power and make this situation public. IIT management should stop trying to cover up these problems and should start trying to solve them. And last but not the least, the students should speak out. A first step could be a blanket ban on these kinds of dangerous workshops without protective equipment. For only then can we hope of a complete engg. Education free from worries of health and full of interactive hands on learning experience.

Matrimonial Love

He comes, she watches, trembling with love
Or is it fear?
He comes, he commands, she functions
The encoder here is love.

He commands, she hesitates
But barely questions before the reply is there
Splashed across her face like cold water and ice on a prisoner
She bows down to her fate

She is alone, she wonders
And smiles at the pathos of her love
The love which has been fed into her
The love she cannot escape

He cuts but does not care
She bears but does not bare
The world watches but does not act
Is this matrimonial love?