I Care A Damn About This World Poem by Nikhil Parekh

When I was poor and begging on the streets with my arms stretched; they said that I didn't have skill to earn money,

When I was fast asleep on the bed drowned in realms of exotic fantasy; they said that I was lazy and fit for nothing,

When I was walking at electric speeds through the lanes; they said that I a trifle too active; fidgeted about without any rhyme or reason,

When I was merrily eating breakfast; they said that I had a gargantuan appetite,

When I gallivanted mischievously on my bicycle; they said that I simply
couldn't afford a car,

When I recited stanzas from the Shakespeare without stuttering the slightest; they said that I had consumed steroids,

When I donated mammoth sums of money for the betterment of the orphaned; they said that I had ulterior motives behind my chivalrous pretence,

When I diligently took bath thrice a day; they said that I was wasting precious water,

When I smiled sympathetically towards the destitute women; they said that I had lecherous intents,

When I danced in ecstatic jubilation; they said that I was polluting the atmosphere with my horrendous tunes,

When I inadvertently killed mosquitoes hovering around my eardrum; they said that I had committed gruesome murder,

When I inevitably sneezed in a cloud of obnoxious smoke; they said that I contaminated the ambience with my spit,

When I looked at my watch from time to time; waiting anxiously for my wife; they said that I had maniacal tendencies,

When I blissfully read books on literature; they said that I was wasting and condemning precious time,

When I wrote volumes of poetry propagating the spirit of mankind; they said that I was a disdainful piece of burden on the surface of earth,
When I assiduously worked on the computer screen for hours on the trot; they said that I was thoroughly rebuking the pen,

When I boisterously swam in the ocean; they said that I was endangering the aquatic fish,

When I amicably patted my pet dog; they said that I had simply no sense of health and hygiene,

When I covered myself with a quilt to evade the freezing world; they said that I was a coward of the highest degree,

When I stared passionately at my beloved; they said that I had just been released
from the mental asylum,

When I sometimes spoke in innocent whispers; they said that I resembled a new
born child,

When I lit a candle to pray to god; they said that I had deliberately broken the enchantment of the night,

When I commenced my journey towards the 100th floor of the building in the escalator; they said that I had no legs of mine at all,

When I sketched the enamoring shapes of the valley with my rustic paints; they said that I didn't posses the ability to write,

When I incessantly lay on the feet of my mother; they said that I was entirely oblivious to the vagaries of this world,

When I meticulously solved mind boggling puzzles of arithmetic; they said that I was very commercial minded,

When I sipped apple juice from the scintillating glass; they said that I stripped several others to satiate my hunger,

When I chewed my nails in raw nervousness; they said that I lacked all ethical values; belonged to the indigenous society,

When I cried vociferously; lamenting the loss of my beloved; they said that it simply a cover to sequester the fact that I had murdered her,

When I worked like a dog in office to achieve astronomical limits; they said that I was a workaholic completely disoriented from the spiritual world,
When I locked my house at night to guard my family against evil; they said that I lacked the virtue of being fearless,

When I fixed the tyre of my car after it had got punctured; they said that I looked like a mechanic,

When I shaved unruly strands of beard from my cheek at dawn; they said that I appeared like a shy girl,

When I hurled a volley of abuse at the thieves intimidating a priest; they said that I was ill-mannered and uncultured,

When I engulfed my forehead with a flabby cap in the peak of summer; they said that I was trying to hide my baldness,

When I went to the temple without wearing my shoes; they said that I didn't have the capacity to purchase one,

When I went to meditate blissfully in the heart of the jungle; they said that I had suddenly metamorphosed into an insane relic,

When I gulped pure and holistically radiant vegetable food; they said that I was trying to disrupt the eco-system,

When I spoke in the language prevalent in my country; they said that I profoundly castigated all other dialects,

When I enveloped my persona in a jet black shirt; they said that I had an aversion for impeccable white,

When I stood tall and domineering in the crowd; they said that I was being showing off and pretending to be bombastic,

When I clenched my teeth in supreme anger; they said that I was trying to display the color of my foreign toothpaste,

When I blew mystical whistles from my mouth; they said that I was trying to be cheeky with young maidens,

When I served milk to all the starved I encountered in the hutments; they said that I had blended poison in prolific quantities,

When I slept with my feet facing the opposite side of the church; they said that God resides everywhere,
When I expressed my philanthropic wish to donate blood; they said that the reason for my being so benign was because I had deadly aids,

When I transgressed barechested on the grass to relieve my overwhelming tension; they said that I suddenly become bankrupt,

When I procreated a battalion of children to continue the chapter of my existence; they said that I had indulged in licentious and sinful acts,

When I viewed images from the television at close quarters after my meals; they said that I was addicted to sleazy entertainment,

When I wore shimmering gemstones on my fingers to have an impact on my destiny; they said that I had furtively stolen them,

When I ploughed the soil onerously to sow food grains; they said that I was committing barbaric acts of brutalizing the soil,

When I passionately uttered I Love You with fire in my eyes; they said that I had memorized it several times from the contemporary textbooks,

No matter what I did; they always opposed me; even if I was irrefutably right and on the path to serve humanity; poking their noses ominously into my affairs; making my life worse than the island of hell every minute; and that's when I said to the Almighty
Lord; that I cared a damn about this world