Of Dreams

I wish I could dream
The dreams of my children
Those impractical, juvenile,
Infantine trips to worlds
That I now know to
Be fiction

There hardly is a point
In dreaming dreams
That are impractical

There are no gardens
Where the fountains
Have the elixirs
That imbibe me with powers
Or butterflies
Resting on rhododendrons
That are in fact
Filaments of gold
Sewn together
By a magical hand
That I waved

I’ll merely kiss my kids goodnight
And watch their eyes droop
As they fly out to their lands
Awash in belief

I will close the door
And silently bid them goodbye

The lake that catches fire. The lake that spews foam. And now, the lake that inspires poetry.

The Bellandur lake in Bengaluru is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Here's an ode to it.

#Bellandur #BLR #poetry

An Ode to Lake Bellandur

And the white clouds floated on land
Past the clutches of those pesky weeds
Trampling the iron mesh of tyranny
Snowy glory on a tar-filled road

Lake Bellandur flowed onto the roads
Spreading liberally, its blessings in foam
Like a Dali painting unshackled from a frame
White Christmas on a sizzling morning

What do they know of you, of Bellandur?
Calling you a lake of filth
A symbol of greed and decay
The death knell for a verdant city

Why do they only see that fire on your surface
As waylaid chemicals in a giant bog?
The stinging smoke as poison to the lungs
The clingy weeds as shackles on growth?

Ignore the accusers, avoid the guilt
Your sprawl matches that of the city
Your failures nothing but its inaction
You are but a mirror and nothing more