coronavirus poem

Apathy in the Time of Corona

‘How would it make me feel if I hadn’t left my heart at the corner of the bed?’

I turn softly to the side as
My ears pick up something
Heavy lids lift up
Eyes wide open
A yawn and a stretch later
I get off my bed
One limb at a time
Leave my heart at its corner
It has no purpose to serve in these times
Except for when it breaks.

Dragging my feet
Scratching my head
Eyes moving on their own
Looking for the source of the sound
Sleep tends to evade me these days anyway.

It’s not the sound
That caught my interest
It is the emotion within
I don’t remember what joy sounds like anymore
But this might come close.

I walk to the window
Finding the source
There are birds outside
They don’t chirp
These days
They sing
Symphonies of nature
That puts all the music in the world to shame.

They sing for hours
I’ve never heard them like this before
Not even in a Disney montage
They sound like hope and joy and love
And other tricks of life
That stopped belonging
To our kind
A while ago.

I fear they are cursing us
Our monstrous existence
All of our lives
All the damage and
All of the denial we bring with us.

I wonder if the birds know
How much we enjoy
Destroying ourselves
And this world that we live in
One day at a time
A slur, a plastic bag, a crime.

I wonder if they know
We’re all dying
Maybe faster than they are
Maybe in more pain too.

I catch the eye of a bird
It stops with its song
Tilts its head
A hundred angles in a moment
And lets out a string of curses.

I chuckle at the thought
As others join in.

I wonder if they know
I deserve it
I’m as bad as everyone else.

I wonder how it would
Make me feel
If I hadn’t left
My heart
At the corner of the bed.

Adritanaya Tiwari is a Dental student in her final year of college, she writes because it makes her mind a little less crowded and her heart much warmer.

Featured image credit: Barnard Tonmoy

Lockdown Song: A Poem For the Times We Live in

In a world ridden with crisis and new rules, no one is quite at home.

Forced indoors, the mirror is your god.

It’s time for personal grooming — manicures,

Pedicures and finicky facials

Though no one else is looking.

It’s time to go on a diet and fitness regime

Though there’s stuff, tinned and frozen,

Stowed away in your basement.

But in time you’ll get heavier in body and mind.

For the recluse and jailbird it’s nothing new.

The contagion, most democratic,

Knows no cure and can spread with just

One breath from patient to physician.

In slums and open roads

Their lungs are dustbins, the masks porous.

The cops rain down with their truncheons,

Enforcing penance with frog-jumps.

Now the peacock, leopard and gazelle

Strut, prowl and leap across pavements.

They’ve reclaimed their space

As you stare down from your cage.

Now the long knives, edgy sickles,

And those native pistols hidden behind

Prayer books and idols of unforgiving gods

Are cocked and loaded.

Soon, from a mob they’ll line up

In disciplined rank and file.

They’ll defy the daylong curfew.

They have you, you and you in their sights.

Manohar Shetty’s Full Disclosure: New and Collected Poems was published by Speaking Tiger. His forthcoming book is ‘Borderlines’.

I Don’t Want the Old World Order

‘The times of corona are opening my eyes, it’s making me look for the meaning of life.’

I don’t want the old world, and I don’t want the old order,
I don’t want a world that doesn’t like food-growers, labourers and fodder!

I want a world that favours the marginalised,
I want a world that embraces the lost-sights.
I want the scales to tilt in their favour,
I want them to enjoy the luxuries and flavours.

When life becomes difficult for us, it is always more difficult for them,
Centuries after centuries the story goes the same.

I ask this question –
When everyone is making progress with pride and fame,
Why some are devoid of self-pride and name?

I don’t want the old world, and I don’t want the old order,
I want the scales to tilt in favour of food-grower, labour and fodder!

The times of corona are opening my eyes,
It’s making me look for the meaning of life.
The meaning that’s for me and is for my tribe,
Meaning that changes the definition of life.

Is it possible for us to raise the bar?
And to forget that the marginalised are not too far.
Is it possible for the world to move out of their pyramid?
Or with compassion shatter it, so far forbid.
Is it possible for the world to love the lost-sights?
Is it possible for the world to balance the fights.

I don’t want the old world, and I don’t want the old order,
I want the scales to tilt in favour of food-grower, labour and fodder!

Dr Divya Kirti Gupta is associate professor of management at GITAM (Deemed to be University), Hyderabad. For the last two decades, she has been working in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility and has explored its meaning for individuals, systems and societies. She can be reached via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/divyakirtigupta

Featured image credit: Husaain Badshah/Unsplash

The Invisible

‘They exist in our midst, keep our cities going, yet are invisible.’

Sweating in noisy power-looms,
Endlessly punching out metal washers,
Children washing pipes in acid,
Dismantling electronic waste,
Inhaling toxic fumes of furnaces,
Bent over steaming vats of fabric dye,
Loading and unloading sacks at godowns,
Carrying bricks up rickety bamboo ramps.

Working twelve-hour days with
No leave, no benefits, no job security,
They hold life and family together precariously.

They exist in our midst, keep our cities going,
Yet are invisible.

Until
A sudden announcement
Brings the nation to a halt –
Factories, shops, trains, buses, cars.
And with it, their livelihoods too.
Not for an hour, not for a day, but
For three whole weeks.
There’s fear in the air – a new disease.
Desperate thoughts – without a daily wage, what do I do –
How do I eat, where do I live?
Will I die in this city, far away from my village?
They, the workers, are invisible.

Until
They start their long walk home.
Without transport, without food, they walk –
The old, the young, the children,
Pregnant women,
They walk. 20, 80, 200 km.
They walk in the hundreds, in the thousands,
In hundreds of thousands.
And fill our TV screens.
Making some of us squirm,
And leaving some of us worried – what if they spread this new
Disease all over the country?

Some do not make it home, and fall by the wayside –
Hunger, exhaustion, heart attack.
We do not know who they are, says an official:
They have no documents with them.
Will they return? When?
When will our cities start functioning again?
Our industries, for whom a
Package has been announced?
Fleeting thoughts, before we wash our hands,
And sit down to dinner.

Ramani Atkuri is a public health physician based in Bhopal, who is associated with an organisation that works with migrant labour.

Featured image credit: Pariplab Chakraborty

Unseen

‘The future once again, isn’t ours to see.’

The world was supposed to end
Into a watery grave or a fiery rend
The ugly kiss of apocalypse
Was to be the final geas
But those prophecies came to a naught
Through false auguries only panic was wrought
We seemed destined for a millennium of beauty and wonder
Only for the unseen to tear us asunder
Not with a bang but a whimper
With hollow men and empty thinkers
Money was pumped into tools of annihilation
Only for the medicus to be asked for salvation
The world stood still, and Pan danced for joy
As the creeping tendrils of mankind stood destroyed
Now whatever will be, will be
The future once again, isn’t ours to see

Note: Pan here refers to nature, as we globally saw a reduction of pollution. Pan was the greek god of the wild.

Shashank Shekhar is an editorial content writer for a global marketing communication firm.

Featured image credit: Brian McGowan/Unsplash

Pervasive Pandemic

A poem about the various kinds of lives in a city that can be affected by the coronavirus.

Long Italian vacation,
Deliberately tanned skin,
Taste of delectable polenta
And tiramisu still persists on tongue.
First-class airplane seat and service.
But pungent smell of garbage invades
Nose as feet touch homeland.
Ordinary Ola taxi.
A cough not covered.

Grooving to nineties hits,
Steering wheel, car AC,
Broken English with an accent
Greets foreign faces every day.
Impatient honks and road rage,
Naps on a slanted seat,
Aching back and apathy
Towards the youth in the backseat.
A lethal sneeze.

Group of friends ready to party,
Sequin dresses and Old Monk breath,
Striving to melt worries greater than
A failed test and heartbreak
With loud music and strangers’ lips.
Adulterated shots of vodka
And neon disco ball shades,
Attractive boy with messy hair.
A meaningless kiss.

Sunday morning mass,
A reaffirmation of faith
After a regrettable night.
Unending supply of hugs
For family and friends,
Sunday school students’ storyteller,
Biblical parables made interesting
For curious little ears to listen.
An incorrupt high five.

‘Chota Bheem’ lunchbox
With cold, pasty Maggi,
EVS classes and English notebooks,
‘Uma Joshi, hey hey hey’,
Strict Maths ma’am,
Red pen strikes and stains,
Stuffed in a tiny Omni,
Back to apartment, friendly watchman,
An affectionate handshake.

In a city that is now home,
Small town boy with big dreams,
Now a man in a blue uniform,
Watching over apartment entrances.
An instrumental component of
The Anthropological Ecosystem.
Two kids to feed with minimal income
Despite a wife with two jobs.
Sinful intimacy.

The tale of a forlorn woman,
Stitching clothes and crocheting,
Also scrubbing toilets while
Changing adult diapers.
The former, a passion; the latter, a compulsion.
Sleepless nights, growling stomach.
Hearing stories of old women’s heydays
And laments about ungrateful children.
A clean touch turned malignant.

Painful joints and swollen feet,
Asthmatic lungs and hunched back,
The affliction of senility is endured.
Abandoned amma in a vridhashrama.
Fits of cough and fever attack,
An inglorious end to a legacy life,
As a minuscule, not-even-live entity
Takes over humanity.

Vismayi Lanka is an aspiring journalist who aims to make the world a better place.

Featured image credit: Pariplab Chakraborty

Chaos of the Unseen

A poem on how coronavirus has affected the simple activities of humans.

An unseen organism,
Painted fear and suspicion,
Spread throughout humanity,
Increased sadness and insecurity.

Every interaction loaded with doubt,
This is what a virus has brought about,
Getting ready for a forced hibernation,
Every person in every nation.

Every sneeze suspected,
Leaving the person dejected,
Every cough analysed,
As if the group would be vaporised.

Houses wrapped in insulation,
Young and old protected by segregation,
Future brood left without personal interaction,
Students surviving on distant education.

Men travelling on deserted roads bend,
Think twice to help a fallen human,
Vendors’ services across glass walls,
Not conversing the short and the tall.

A day not too far,
When people greet only from miles afar,
Display emotions only on digital forums,
Adding to the personal conundrum.

Sreeyantha is a person who sees the world in all the colours of the rainbow. A creative homemaker who wishes to capture the universe’s beauty in poems, paintings and short essays. You can read a collection of her poems here.

Featured image credit: Claudio Schwarz/@purzlbaum/Unsplash