Just Not Being Great

(Kumaran Asan- A painting by Shibu Natesan, Oil on Canvas, 2004- for illustrative purpose only)

I have not walked out in the darkness

Or even in a full moon night from a palace

Where she sleeps peacefully near the child

Why did I name him ‘bond’ or ‘bondage’?

Was I too much in love with the chains?

Had it not been my father who sent me

To the streets to see life in all its variety

I would never have thought of its dimensions

I would never have given a damn to death

For death-defying pleasure was my pursuit.

Still when the call comes one has to go

From Shravasti or Kuruskshetra or Dilli.

I have not been beaten up by racist forces

In a strange platform at night I was not thrown out

Before I left they asked me a bit of penance

Abstain from wine, women, men and eunuchs

I did indulge in wine, women, men and eunuchs

Not in kind but in mind and what a price I paid

I slept alone, fought alone and pained alone

Though thousands of them came following me

Enamoured by the ability of my endurance and will

What did they know, nothing but my shrivelling shell

I have not been at a charkha spinning yarns

I have not tendered goats, birds, nationalists and foreigners

Still when the call came I had to leave with or without

People who sang anthems and revelled in dreams

I could have been just there at Nazareth

Helping my dad in his works of carpentry

My mother would have been much happier

Than seeing me hanging from a cross at the end

I could have led a revolution in a local scale

Maximum made a union of carpenters

Even I could have become a craftsman

Or an artist who decked up the ceilings of palaces

(My looks were just perfect for an artist)

I did not know why I went to the temple

To chase the money launders out

I did not know why I woke up Lazarus

From his deliverance from ailment and pain

I did not know why I walked over the sea

Why changed water into wine

Why I loved a woman who was fallen

Why I fed people with all what I had

Still when the call came I had to go

And hang on the cross with or without you.

I am just an ordinary man

Yet what is that calling me

From inside and from outside

To leave everything and go

I do not want to search anything

Because what I should search for

Has already been found out

I just need to be that; the mission of my life

I cannot be anything but that

My words may make no sense

My stories may lead you astray

You may leave me half way with disparage

But when the call comes

Like them I need to go

Though I am not great like them