Those Days Are Gone

Those days are gone
When the blue swan
Sung a sweet song
At the break of dawn.

Those days are gone
When noons were spent
Weaving tales of
Fairies and friends.

Those days are gone
When dusk was seen
Through the rickety branches
Of the Holy Green.

And now I pine
To trace the notes
Of that silent song,
To bathe in the rays
Of my faded childhood dawn,
To see my time fly away
In the charms of fairylands,
To cherish the betrothal
Of the pink and amber horizon,
To discover the hidden treasure
In the old, abandoned church,
To breathe for once, a fresh gust of air
Bereft of all the worldly despair.

As I gather the fallen leaves
The foliage that adored my childhood tree,
I try to fill the emptiness that says
Those days are gone.

Crying over scarred world!!!

It makes me lament to see What Man Has Made of Man!!!


I am supposed to write something about something. And I have tried my level best to trace that something, but in vain. Today when I was watching television in the afternoon, all of a sudden an advertisement captured my attention and I felt that is SOMETHING to write about. It was the Airtel ad, which shows 2 boys from neighboring countries playing soccer, even when they do not share a common language. Apart from being a brilliant piece of imagination to increase sales of the company, I feel it is a fantastic portrayal of human gesture, which is not confined to the concept of boundaries. The advertisement says – ‘there is no boundary, no wall, which can keep us apart, if only we talk.’


Communication is something that knows no barriers and has the immense power to break all boundaries, created by the evil politics of human beings. Both the boys in the commercial come from two different countries, two drastically different backgrounds and speak different languages. Still they are able to convey the simple emotion of accepting each other and being each other’s playmates in the game of soccer.


At this point, I recall an incident that one of my friends happened to tell me. Her father is employed in the Indian Army, so she had the opportunity to live in many places. This incident took place when she was staying in Ladakh. Many Indian soldiers used to live in bunkers near the fencing that separated India and China. There were Chinese bunkers on the other side of the fencing. My friend told me she often used to find soldiers from both the sides talking to each other in a most un-foe like manner. This used to amaze her. One day she went to an Indian bunker and asked a soldier the secret behind these unusual greetings. He simply said, “We talk, share food and laugh together when there is peace both the sides. But the same ‘WE’ slay each other at the time of war. That’s war!”


These lines seem to be so hollow but they say so much. They say that God gave us the supreme power of speech, hoping us to take the process of communication to undefined heights, so that we could talk and reconcile the issues that happen to emerge between nations. They say that God desired us to live in harmony and share the essence of love and humanity, but we erected walls to fragment the common humanly soul and paint the pieces in the dark hues of caste, religion, color, race and what not…in short hatred.


At the end of this very usual piece, I am unable to draw any unusual conclusion. It just reminds me of a poem written by Wordsworth. I don’t remember the words exactly but it expresses the pain the poet felt when he sees the disfigured and tarnished world created by the humans. And it makes him laments to wonder ‘What Man Has Made of Man’.