The Last Call

 Last call January 18 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr. Koshy AV

I did not do that post-doc

I did not complete that French course

I learned nothing in the programming course

I did not learn swimming

or photography or hacking

or AI or Robotics or data science, crunching and analysis

I do not know how to type

I do not know how to ride a motorbike with clutch, gear etc.

I quit halfway through a course and fudged another one

Took six years to do my Ph.D

I did my job badly

I still have not completed that novel

I only write but don't know how to collect what I write and bring them out as a hundred books after editing them

They remain unpublished though some are classics

I did not go West, get the Pulitzer, Booker, or Nobel

Or in India win the Sahitya Akademi or JCB or anything

I did not become Mother Teresa

I didn't save lives like a doctor or build bridges like an engineer

I did not become a millionaire or billionaire or karodpati or a minister or win a paramvir chakra or padma vibhushan or Jnanpith,

all things within my reach but somehow, I did not want it.

Most of the people I helped were only using me

Not that I helped many people

I was bad at interpersonal relationships

I hurt everyone I knew

I am anti-human, a misogynist

and so they never liked me

I failed at love, marriage, sonship, and fatherhood

at being a sibling, a relative, a friend, a human being, or disciple

Not that I deserved better

being only one more sinner

of no consequence or significance to other human beings

The list goes on and on

Of failures

I tried and failed

I failed at pretty much everything

I fared pretty badly in life!

Now I hear the last call

I walk on the road

with my son

The dog barks at him

He turns and looks at me

I rush to him

He puts his hand in my hand

Oh, forgot to tell you he is neuroatypical and non-verbal

I feel something in me, at last

That words cannot express

He trusts me

At le/ast

It is clear

This is my "greatest reward"

I did not miss the bus

I got on at the last stop

I heard the last call

that got me home

This is my best work of art

My greatest reward is Reuel, a person, and those like him and that there are people who still love them and care and look after them and help out, not all the other things I did or did not do or was or was not.

Filled with gratitude, peace, and happiness.

Thank you, God.

(Inspired by Santosh Bakaya, who made me think on/of what my greatest reward is.)

The next three in the series

 Guilt Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge January Sixteenth by Dr. Koshy AV

When the whole world is against you

don't feel any guilt

They are ignorant

The loss is theirs

Pain January 15th Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry challenge prompt by Dr. Koshy AV

We go through various stages of pain

The first cry is of pain at

being ejected from the womb

and being slapped on the buttocks by the doctor

to make one cry if one does not

as that is not good

We do not remember it

mercifully

but we do, unconsciously

Then there is the pain of not any longer

being fed the breast

and of finding your parents are not gods

though perhaps closer than it to than other humans

yet only or most in their treatment of you

Some have no such luck but more pain

There is the pain of being an infant

and a child

then the pain of being young

of being unloved

or unaccepted

of not being able to belong

non-belonging

of insult and injury

wound and wear and tear

of hurt and harm

of suffering

the pain of school

and college

or university

of being always in the minority

refusing to back down or give up

fighting to be equal

and get others to give you the space of equity

the pain of initiation

of growing up

of job and slavery and career

of always having to battle to survive

with each life being a war field - fought solo

of unrequited love

of lost love

of illness and disease

and on the way

the terrible, rending pain of meeting death for the first time

the horrible pain of losing loved ones

the pain of being at the receiving end

of injustice meted out to you

of being taken for a ride

of no one caring, no one bothered

the pain of being always under pressure in the world

to survive and then the pains of mistakes

and wrongs

done

an endless litany of pains

till you finally come one day to stop

counting the pains

as you get they are endless

and concentrate instead on

panacea

how pain makes you stronger

and all have it

and lessening it is the only way forward

facing it

or driving it back

to where it becomes only what it's supposed to

pain that makes you stronger each time

and pain that makes you learn to be better

In the end, your scars proclaim you

lived and thrived and even gave

but do not define you

Pain becomes an anodyne

Free from its pain your new life begins

My skin Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry challenge January 14, 2022, poem by Dr. Koshy AV

My skin

I have worn various skins down the years

Soft as a baby's

Hard as a rhino's

Sunlight as a wrapper

Oil as a healer

Which one should I claim,

remember?

Skin as covering

or skin as dry, and (un-) peeling?

(Skin burning and cracking, crackling in concentration camps,

the skin of history?)

Bare skin or skin as a 'hide'?

The colour of it or its feel or taste

and touch, and its metaphoric, metonymic scales?

4 more poems and a movie review and a meditation

 Today's meditation

John 9

1

As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth.

2

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

3

"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

4

As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.

5

While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Then Jesus healed him.

10“Please, Lord,” Moses replied, “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am slow of speech and tongue.” 11And the LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Or who makes the mute or the deaf, the sighted or the blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12Now go! I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say.”

When your child has autism which is not a disease but a neuroatypical state of being Jesus comes along to comfort you and tell you the truth. He has autism not as a result of his sins or his parents' sins. God made him to display his work through Him. This rolls a big burden of guilt away from the shoulders of the parents. They understand their job is to be the light of his world, and they have been sent to earth for a purpose. When they feel unfit for the job, they can remember Moses. He was sent on or given a mission though he felt unfit.

If God could use Moses so mightily, though he stammered, to be such a mighty leader, without healing him of his stammering, God can use anyone. He can use parents, siblings, caregivers and helpers and caretakers and support staff. He can use science, doctors, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists. He can use medicines and training and techniques. He works in and through them to help those who need it, overtime as it is still day and God works all the time doing only good things, as he showed Jesus so that we too can work, after seeing what he does and learning how to do it from him. When you struggle with thoughts of unworthiness or guilt or shame and are tempted to blame yourself or false beliefs or others for something others see as a curse or cross in your life remember God sees it as opportunity to bless more a person who is already a blessing and a crown where man only tries to find who to blame as the disciples did to Jesus as to who was responsible that the man was born blind from birth. They could neither heal him nor stop from wanting to blame and from Jesus they learned salvation is to stop blaming and start healing.

What God wants is availability, as someone once said, and not ability.

Movie report

I read Heidi long ago. To be honest when I started to watch the film I had no memory of any of it. However, I enjoyed the film. The story goes like this: there is a maker of church organs who makes his finest one for a church in Dorfli but as his daughter who used to sing beautifully falls in love with a man and runs away withdraws in anger and bitterness from playing anymore to his home in the mountain in the Swiss Alps and has no communication with anyone anymore, not even the priest. His daughter has a daughter she names Heidi whom she also teaches the songs she used to sing or Heidi picks them up by herself by listening but Heidi's mother and father pass away leaving her with her mother's sister. She tries to pass her on to Heidi's father's brother whose wife has died and lives with a governess and his daughter Clara who cannot walk.

When that fails she asks the priest to take Heidi to her grandfather. Her grandfather does not want her at first but Heidi makes friends with Peter, a goatherd who gives her a goat, and his blind mother who tells her her own mother was beautiful, kind and good. The grandfather softens to Heidi after hearing her sing. Heidi's father's brother comes to know of her and wants to take her to stay with him to help Clara have some company. He gets the grandfather to agree saying it will also get Heidi an education. The governess is in love with Heidi's father's brother. Heidi goes there and becomes friends with Clara after an initial fight, and the butler, the governess and her Dad's brother are all kind to her but she pines for her grandfather and Peter and his mother and the Alps. She asks to go back for two weeks and is taken there by the governess. The grandfather who is happy at first becomes unhappy on hearing she has returned only for two weeks. Peter is happy to see her again. On hearing why she wants to go back is to help Clara, the grandfather offers that Clara can come and stay with them. Clara is delighted. On coming to the grandfather's house Clara is one day left alone and starts to walk to get to her father who is coming to see her, bearing the pain. The grandfather gives her a huge stick to help her walk. The governess who was planning to go off as her boss didn't want to marry her as she is only a governess decides to stay and he changes his mind. The grandfather starts playing the organ in the church again. Heidi has miraculously healed his hurt, Clara, and also brought her father's brother and the governess whom she loves like a mother together, setting right all the things that had gone wrong in the past starting with her mother running off and her father's brother's wife's death by drowning, in which accident only Clara was saved. The movie also has a good character in the priest who refuses to give up on the organ maker and player who is the grandfather and main character in the story as in Jesus' parable of the lost lamb but finds him and brings him back.

The movie really took me back to a time when life was much simpler and people not so evil, when it was still possible to imagine and believe not only in a happy ending for one person but for all.

Switzerland, the Alps and the village is to die for, as natural scenery.

Promises Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم prompt January 12 poetry challenge.

Promises

lips

and temptation

and the promise not to yield

broken

bright eyes

and the promise

not to make them tearful

broken

try not to

make them

if every passing

whim

and fancy

takes you

like a storm

to not keep them

Lies January 11th 2022, Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr. Koshy AV

White sugar

coated

poison

Capsules of

death

Small sachets

of cocaine

Slope to a chasm

Weir for fishes

The mouth that smiles

after

when no one is looking,

born in the sewers

of the darkest labyrinths;

flowers of blackness that coil around once clean feet

pulling them down into swamps of defeat

from which none come out

strangled by conceit, and deceit,

their demise.

Un-riddle

Am I this?

Yes

Am I that?

Yes

Am I this and that?

Yes

Am I not-this?

Yes

Am I not-that?

Yes

Am I not-this-or-that?

Yes

Am I for this?

Yes

Am I not for this?

Yes

Am I not for that?

Yes

Am I for that?

Yes

Am I against that?

Yes

Am I not-against that?

Yes

Am I against this?

Yes

Am I not-against this?

Yes

Either- or

Neither-nor

Both-and

Am, Be

For/against

Not for/not against

Depends on who I/i am/is and is/am not

when it is taking place

who I am with

where I am then

why I am there

what for

how it is unfolding or emerging

whom all I am with

which, the outcome or goal?

relative- subjective

objective-absolute

non-belonging

non-being

When I wonder

why

I write

1000s

of poems,

God asks me

why

I think

he makes countless butterflies

Surprise January 10 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم Poetry prompt challenge poem by Dr Koshy AV

Surprise in her eyes

when I kissed my baby tight.

Surprise, surprise

to exchange might for love.

Did we not plight our troth

many years back?

Why then this surprise?

Love is costlier than gold

Love simmers in dying embers

that look like just coals

and sometimes fans up in a blaze

And the flames, fired up,

on a sudden surmise

surprise, surprise.

After all these years

one day, love shakes off

cobwebs and enters

love's reprise.

Dark Room

 Dark Room January 9th Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr Koshy AV

In the dark room of the

mind - the throne of thoughts

or heart -the seat of feelings and emotions

dwell dark, unspeakable things

In the dark room of the soul

or spirit

these dark ideas and moving images

or words, thoughts and emotions

of evil lusts, desires and their roots

lurk

tempting by taking on fair disguises

to make you fall into

the abyss

that has no floor

Only innocent doves

shrewd snakes

can bypass these doors of temptation

that when you cross them

contain bystanders

who call out to you their wares

and even try to guess your inner name

to make out they have supernatural powers

These are the dark-room dwellers, outside

When you are in the dark-room

or meet the ones who try to lure you in

you come to the awareness

that some have emerged

into the light

from Plato's cave

Either they never acquiesced

to the dark room's enticements

from when they were children

like Samuel or Mary

or when grown-up

realized

the dark-room has/is a trapdoor that opens under your feet suddenly

to the abyss

and it lost its fascination for them

who were till then playing with it

as if it is a toy

when it is a suicidal, slow slope

and so they left

taking along with them

any ready to come

to swell the ranks of the ones

who no longer want to be deluded and plagued

by the dark room's meaningless allurements

and charm.

 on the other side of...

January 8 Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

on the other side of midnight...

there is the first streak of the light of a new dawn

and on the other side of doubt

there is rest from feeling torn

broken and always forlorn

on the other side of the grave

is a world without hurt or harm

Fall January seventh Koshur Qalam poetry challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

I fall to pieces

I fall into your arms

In the fall

I rise to fall

I fall to rise

Part of my never-ending novel

Come with me, said Jesus, and I will show you...

I met Jesus at the crossroads.

Jesus, I said, I want to follow you. I want to be like you.

He laughed. He had a full laugh. The man of sorrows had a laugh that was different from that title that someone had given him. One more hat to wear and throw away, no one could box anyone in into being only this, that or the other.

Come, sit down here with me, he said.

Then he did a surprising thing.

He took a small needle from the pocket of his robe, the smallest I had seen, and a thread and told me: thread this needle and you can follow me.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle sometimes than a thread. I tried and tried but could not get it to go through the needle's eye. The thread seemed to grow thicker and thicker and the slit in the needle smaller and smaller.

Then he took the needle from me and put his eye to its eye and

laughed. His eye could be seen through it.

Then he threaded it.

Then he stepped through it and vanished.

After a couple of seconds he came back out of the needle.

Do you really want to follow me, he asked.

Yes, I said.

Even after this?

Yes, I said. I want to be like you at all costs.

It's not easy but it is simple, he said. It is a matter of practice.

Learn to do these three things. And you will automatically become like me. Thread the needle. Look through its eye and see what I see. Then go through it and come back.

I shall try, I said.

After trying a lot more times, I managed to thread the needle finally.

From easy to difficult first, he said.

He was smiling.

What did you learn?

To not give up, to never give in, to keep trying, to not get upset or angry at not getting it right the first time, or many, many times, and patience, I said.

Yes, he said and persistence, endurance, long-suffering, and perseverance and... He laughed.

And what?

I don't know, I said.

Humility, he said. You can't even thread a needle, then how do you expect to become like me?

Then I laughed too.

Aye, aye, sir, I said.

Now to the next two things.

Yes, he said. Before you go through a door you need to see what lies behind it. On the other side. Beyond.

I looked through the eye of the needle. The slit was so small but the world beyond was so huge it seemed to stretch away to infinity.

Wow, I said.

He smiled.

If you look, you will see. Alter your perception. And you will get clearer vision. You will see the unseen that others don't see.

I began to understand.

And the last thing?

That will take you some time. But come with me and see. First. Then you will pick it up. God is the God of the impossible.

How long did it take you?

Many years, he replied.

We both smiled at each other and set off. I left everything behind in a flash. No regrets. This was what I had been looking for.

(To be continued)

Today's meditation: It says "Jesus was faithful as a Son over his household" in the book of Hebrews.

Today morning Reuel came and knocked on the door. He cannot have his tea made for him or make tea for himself. I rubbed the sleep kinks out of my eyes and went down and said "ok Reuel make your chai." He was so happy being impatient as it being a Saturday we were all tardy to get up. He has no such tardiness being young and full of joie de vivre and not knowing what day it is probably. So we made chai together with the usual ups and downs. Then he made his egg by himself. I went upstairs and when I came down he was making his next dish the way he likes it and has been taught to. However it got a bit burnt and to my surprise he threw it all out as he did not find it to his satisfaction. Then I made him the same kind of thing. While I was watching him the verse about Jesus came to my mind. Reuel does what he has learned from Anu, Danie and Jo and Abi, and others, quite well even if by himself when no one is watching and is true to the spirit of what he was taught. He does not forget and does not regress and tries to be perfect at it, does the best he can, though he does not always succeed. He does this when supervised but even otherwise.

Jesus was faithful to God in the same way as Reuel is to his mentors, in God's presence he was faithful in heaven before he came down and in God's seeming absence on earth as an invisible being, and it is this hidden life of his, in his thoughts and unrecorded actions and deeds and works and reactions that pleased God to make him who had been made a little lower than angels for a time on earth the only human being to have the power to resurrect himself from the dead even after three nights and crowned with glory. Hindu yogis know a dead person can be resurrected after a few hours, if only a few have gone by as Jesus did, but none know anywhere in the world how to bring themselves back to life, especially after such a long period and proving it by doing it. Jesus is the only one who did it. We know that that was God's reward to him for his faithfulness to make it clear to all men that he was His Son who had been faithful over all his household in heaven, over God's celestial beings we call angels and over all who came into touch with him on earth, and even when he went into paradise after his death and Sheol or hell to preach the gospel to those there who had not heard it in Noah's time and to get the key to hell and to eat of the fruit of the tree of Paradise, mystical truths only those who understand things of the Spirit will understand even as I say them. A whole lifetime of being faithful to God in the hidden life gave him all authority and power from God over all in heaven and on earth. Down the ages, he has shared this glory with a few in each time and place and country and from each creed and language and ideology or philosophy or worldview who like him are faithful even to the death in obeying God accepting their sonship or daughterhood as of the family of God. To want to be in that number is not pride but good sense. The difference between him and others is that he wanted to be like "God who is light in whom there is not darkness at all" whom he knew as His Father but not through any shortcut or robbery as others want but by making himself of no reputation, when found in fashion or appearance as a human being, and humbling himself even to the point of death, death on a cross as someone cursed by mankind and as a common criminal of his time. Thus, it became a symbol of salvation, of the crossing out of the ego, not before man but God, a total refusal to do one's own will and only God's will instead, and bear God's yoga which makes one meek and lowly and learn of God bringing rest. This rest will also lead to resurrection not just spiritual in that your name will live on forever (even though you did not want it) but physical, not after three days but in the first or second resurrection and it was this hope that made St. Paul, for example, strive on relentlessly to see if he too could somehow lay hold of it, a kind of insanity to all, but not to ones who understand the inner life it calls one to as it leads to blessings for millions of others on earth as they suffer by lessening the suffering of others.

I have come a far distance from where I started which is about Reuel but to sum up my desire is very simple, to learn from Jesus and Reuel to be good in my inner life, thought life, and hidden life when no one is looking and not even or only when others are and one is forced to conform to society and so is not a bad person. Reuel does it naturally but I need to learn it. To not seek the honour of men but the honour that comes from God only.

Poem: I never want to die.

 I never want to die (January sixth, Koshur Qalam - کآشُر قلم challenge prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV)

"I never want to die"

is the last tempter

but after one crosses

him/it too

the fourth one

portrayed by Eliot well

and overcomes him

Satan or Mara

or the one Nanak wrestled with

portals open

Rose petals strewn on the path

raining down from heaven

the sole of the foot in touch

with mother earth

mindful in the here and now

where you are with the wild animals

and angels come and minister to you,

playing the music of celestial, cosmic tunefulness

Thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh for the influence.

Twigs and Do not be ashamed of your ugliness. (2 poems)

 A companion poem to "Do not be ashamed of your beauty."

Do not be ashamed of your ugliness*.

It is the only thing of yours

people won't fight you for

to take away from you.

It is not like the ugliness of youth

that passes away like spring

when acne and freckles no longer sting.

"Age cannot wither nor beauty stale"

your ugliness.

Guard it as what it is:

treasure

from the dragon's hoard

that is the most precious piece

for behind it may be hid

as in the case of Pope

a startling poem like 'The Rape of the Lock'

or as in the case of the Hunchback

of Nortre Dame

the only heart made of pure gold.

* Thanks to RAVINDRA ARORA for the inspiration.

Twigs January 5 Koshur Qalam challenge Prompt poem by Dr. Koshy AV

She gathered the twigs

for firewood

She wended her way

to her hut

In the big-afar-city

in air-conditioned rooms

they decided,

they fenced her out

She no longer could

collect twigs for her hearth

For them, she didn't exist

For her, she did.

Ditty and Two Other Poems

 Do not be ashamed of your beauty.

It won't last long.

It is the beauty of youth that fades away

like a song,

that withers when left

love-lorn,

that like a flower is born

only from the stem

to be torn.

Stitch

Koshur Qalam challenge prompt 4 poem by Dr. Koshy AV

When there was no stitch

left to cover my victimhood

between those who had pawned me

and those who thought me the spoils of their gambling

you stood as a blue cloud

surrounding me

saving me

"Extend the border of your mantle

over me"

be I Draupadi or Ruth amidst the alien corn

listening to the nightingale

be you Krishna or Boaz

in the ancestry of the line of the chosen one

Jesus

"Cover me"

Pebbles Jan 3 Koshur Qalam Challenge Prompt by Dr Koshy AV

My life is a

Handful

Of

Pebbles

That lead me

To their source

My home

The rock

From which they were hewn

The water in which

They were smoothened

Fashioned

Cool to the touch

Fair to the eyes

An imaginary sweet

In the mouth

Memories

Pebbles

Light of God

Refracted bands

My many

Pebbles

Stitch ("Kinsman Redeemer")

 Stitch

Koshur Qalam challenge prompt 4 poem by Dr. Koshy AV

When there was no stitch

left to cover my victimhood

between those who had pawned me

and those who thought me the spoils of their gambling

you stood as a blue cloud

surrounding me

saving me

"Extend the border of your mantle

over me"

be I Draupadi or Ruth amidst the alien corn

listening to the nightingale

be you Krishna or Boaz

in the ancestry of the line of the chosen one

Jesus

"Cover me"

Pebbles

Pebbles Jan 3 Koshur Qalam Challenge Prompt by Dr Koshy AV

My life is a

Handful

Of

Pebbles

That lead me

To their source

My home

The rock

From which they were hewn

The water in which

They were smoothened

Fashioned

Cool to the touch

Fair to the eyes

An imaginary sweet

In the mouth

Memories

Pebbles

Light of God

Refracted bands

My many

Pebbles