Hands
~ Deepak Vohra
Once, these hands
were the architects of creation.
They chipped tools out of stone,
discovered fire,
and by its trembling light
painted their dreams
across the walls of caves.
They sowed the first seeds,
and from them
an entire civilization was born.
The same hands
split apart the mountains
that stood in their way.
But where have those hands gone?
The warmth of a loving touch,
the comfort of friendship--
all but vanished.
What remain are fingers
restlessly gliding
across glowing screens.
I, too, am trapped in their spell.
The hands
that once broke
the unbreakable chains of oppression
now scroll in silence
enslaved by social media
I am no exception.
Our prisons
are no longer forged from iron.
They are built
inside our own minds.
And I, too,
live behind their bars.
Garuda
the bird born to soar,
lies buried in government files.
Shiva\'s serpent
no longer guards eternity;
it slithers through drains,
through politics,
and through the darkness
within ourselves.
Yet somewhere inside me,
a palash tree
still waits for spring.
My heart still longs
to become a child again,
to launch a paper boat
into the laughter of rain.
But every heartbeat
draws another signature of death
across the trembling lines
of an ECG.
Outside,
amid the endless clamour
of television,
mobile phones,
social media,
and the marketplace,
even the sun
seems to be losing its fire.
If only,
before time slips away,
I could escape
this labyrinth of concrete,
this forest of steel, plastic,
and endless consumption,
to a world
where the peepal tree
still breathes life into the wind,
where rivers
still remember
how to quench human thirst,
where a farmer
still bows to the earth as his mother
and harvests her gifts
without poisoning her soil,
where children
chase butterflies
instead of notifications,
where moonlight
still carries peace,
not pain,
where I can once again
count the stars in silence--
and among them
find not the face of a god,
but the face of a human being,
standing against hunger,
and daring to challenge power.