April Fools’ Day, Western And Indian Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

When a child, I used to think,
What does it mean,
April Fools’ Day,
Is that a fools’ day
Or fools having a heyday,
Having a laugh?

Now I understand it,
It is a day of jokes and humour,
Genteel jokes and fun,
A day of enjoyment,
European and English fun.

But I feel sorry to say about
The Indian fools,
Blunt and bogus,
Blockheads and dullards.

One Indian illiterate menial boy,
When asked I about his wife’s name,
Said he not,
When asked I his wife to say his name,
She maintained courtesy,
But the fool forbade from saying.

The fools are in such a number
In India
That we need not celebrate it,
The blunt rustics ready to
Be the prime ministers of India.

The cowboys, herdsmen, shepherd women
All wanting to be leaders,
Whether they are able to write their names,
Put their initials or not,
But will be leaders.

Another Indian fool asking his daughter
As for why did she smile
On seeing a boy,
Why did she talk to him,
What’s the matter?

The bufflomen with the big-big lathis into their hands,
Seated on the buffaloes,
Going to the assembly houses,
Smoking a beedi as for an advertisement,
Sometimes seated on the bullock-cart,
Sometimes on a horse-back.

The milkmen who mix too much water into the milk
And sell it,
Not the tap water, but the wayward pond water
They too aspiring to be legislators not,
But ministers,
After calling themselves socialists.

An illiterate, backward and foolish woman
Calling another widow
A witch
And quarrelling,
The witch doctor treating,
A villagerly meeting called to settle
Desirous of confiscating her properties
And willing to expel her to appease it all.

The Indian fools conservative and faith blind
With the lathi
And a clamp of hair hanging from the back
Of the head crown
Going,
Maybe he a scholar.

But the fool is not
As his presence shows it to be
And he is adept in thrashing the lathi
From behind,
A Tinmudiya, three-headed one,
Trishanku, three-forked
Blockhead and dullard is he,
Reasonably brain-dead.