No Shortcut Poem by Nikhil Parekh

The shortcut to reach the towering summit of the building; was to use the gold embossed escalator,

The shortcut to pass the treacherous waves of the tumultuously stormy sea; was an electric paced motorboat,

The shortcut to reach the astronomical peak of the colossal mountain; was a swanky airplane which flew faster than the speed of light,

The shortcut to topmost fruit suspended from the branch of the gigantic tree; was a ladder with coherently aligned metal rungs,

The shortcut to painstakingly masticating gargantuan morsels of food; was to consume equivalent amounts of tiny vitamin capsules,

The shortcut to walking long distances on bare foot; was the bombastically haughty and silken complexioned and scarlet sports car,

The shortcut to assiduously taxing the dainty fingers to pen down fathomless lines of literature; was the feather tipped and stupendously contemporary computer,

The shortcut to bathing in cold water at the crack of every dawn; was to inundate your armpits with exotic scent; fool people as if you had washed your gruesomely sordid persona umpteenth number of times in the day,

The shortcut to browsing onerously through the overwhelmingly bulky book; was to simply read its last page and drift off to blissful sleep,

The shortcut to surreal fantasy and incredulously haywire fantasy; was to put abrupt brakes to your wild imagination,

The shortcut to delivering the marathon speech for indefatigable hours on the trot; was to tell somebody to dub it perfectly in your voice,

The shortcut to witnessing vivaciously striped lions wandering through a labyrinth of paths in the dense jungles; was to spot and profoundly admire them in their locked cage,

The shortcut to waiting for rain to pelt down in harmonious unison from the sky; was to stand under an incessant stream of artificial bathroom shower water,

The shortcut to sedulously tying buttons and wearing several garments every fresh morning; was to not change your previous attire at all,

The shortcut to pertinently sniffing every now and again infinite times in a single day; was just one deafening and volcanic sneeze which nearly brought the roof down with its poignant ferocity,

The shortcut to speaking a hundred lies; is uttering an irrefutably solitary yet formidably invincible truth,

The shortcut to glancing at the watch every unleashing second of the day; is to gaze languidly forward to relish the color of natural light,

The shortcut to crawling miserably on obdurate ground in an unfathomably enduring endeavor to reach the finishing line; is to wear a pair of ice skates; travel faster than the speed of light,

The shortcut to prolifically earning quick money; was to marry a rich mans daughter; and worship him more than the almighty lord all your palpable life,

The shortcut to speaking relentlessly all day; was to phlegmatically maneuver your snobbish fingers in thin wisps of gentle air,

But as a matter of fact there simply was no shortcut to life; as one had to lead it every second; every minute; every hour; every day; till the time he was bestowed upon with the divinely prowess of inhaling breath; till the time the Omniscient Creator gave the
order to live and love.