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
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