DEAR, DEATHLESS MAHATMA
Dr. Tulsi Naidu
To us, your children, what had you not given
While life was yours? Had you not striven
Without respite to present us with freedom –
With hopes and dreams in tow, good and wholesome?
A pair of petals falling from your dreamflower
You saw yourself. They fall now in a shower!
To break your fast, the juice while still you sipped,
from off the wall your humpty-dumpty slipped!
Down it fell and cracked to pieces two.
Your golden heart must then have broken too.
Yet, upon your fledgelings taking pity,
You survived -- to patch your humpty-dumpty.
Perhaps you hoped in time to mend the crack
with your magical methods. But, alack!
Knowing well what lay in store for you,
God was left with choices only two --
eternal sleep while still in fond illusion
or deferred death through disillusion’s fruition.
Since hell on earth to you He loathed to give,
perforce He chose the first alternative.
In Godse’s form He therefore Yama sent
who your lion-heart fatally rent
and spirited away, through bullet-holes, your soul,
leaving thus bereft a nation whole.
We mourned your death. But was it you who died?
Nay, the dead ones are we who hide
in corpses still, having sold our souls
to demon Devil who paltry presents doles.
Wealth, power, position, post or seat ---
for lesser humans such as we, how sweet!