To the dear departed
Srinivasa Rangaswami
Kindred soul
You have winged away
Afar
Beyond tears, beyond recall…
Destiny was not kind to you
Your journey weary
Your brow knit with gloom
Bravely still you plodded on
Ploughed in thought, in private quest
Of the holy grail.
Until your last breath, the very last,
undaunted by the thorns and thirst
of an untrodden ground
under an alien sun
you pressed on
the lodestar of a new harvest
of unreaped golden corn.
Surely yet we shall meet
sometime, somewhere
yourself robed in light
winged, joyous
to soar to other realms,
no longer held
By the crippling inequities
of
this our unkind world.
[Lines written on hearing the news of
the sudden demise of scholar of standing Prof. P.B. Sitaramayya of Bangalore]
Triveni’s valued contributor