RAJU Z. MORAY who penned 60 Lockdown Poems for The Leaflet (Free PDF available on request from [email protected]) takes a bird’s eye view at 2020 in his concluding poem of the year.
—–
It was a year that has just whizzed past
Leaving us struggling with problems aplenty
Surely it’s not a year we’d like to remember
But i ask all of you can we ever forget 2020?
Coronavirus was already here in February
But the Powers couldn’t let their plans stall
To score brownie points with a President
Our squalor was hidden behind a long wall
After their super spreaders were all done
Many lies were fed to the gullible public
A minority’s gathering was demonised
Via the channels of hate in our Republic
Our Performer in Chief was at his best
Making his admirers clap and ring bells
But gradually those sounds got drowned
In wails of sirens and pall of death knells
And then a sudden lockdown was ordered
Depriving millions of wages and livelihood
A migrant crisis of gigantic scale emerged
Neither properly anticipated nor understood
The State tried waging war on the pandemic
But it’s citizens had become prisoners of war
The response of those drunk with authority
Was to throw open every permit room and bar
Realizing that almost everybody was broke
The Powers announced that now all was well
Experts manufactured encouraging statistics
Designed to hide as much as they would tell
Reality had become a dream that was virtual
The jobless could just hope,stand and stare
It hardly mattered to those wielding power
That for the powerless 2020 was a nightmare
Everyone was affected in some way or other
Several were infected and some we have lost
Even if we do restore a semblance of normalcy
What have we achieved..and at what cost?
My body faced curfews but my mind was free
My poems kept recording all ups and downs
Though it wasn’t easy for me to laugh in this year
To don masks with smiles is the fate of clowns.
(Raju Z Moray is an advocate who practices law in the Bombay High Court when not puncturing bloated egos. He is the creator of ‘Gobble D. Gook’, his alter-ego, who figured in the ‘Court Jester’ columns of ‘The Lawyers’.)
