Hands

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.