The Dilemma Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

While bowing my head before, whom should I bow before,
The Statue of Bhagabati,
Big and beautiful, the Ma Eternal,
Or the poor, helpless and neglected old woman
Sitting before the door-steps of the ashrama?

And passing through the way, cast I not a glance,
The cursory glance I averted that
In passing through the way
As I left the idea of bowing before the Deity.

This is all that that I faced it myself, was confronted with
Such a crisis going within,
The old lady sitting before and seeing helplessly,
Abandoned by her family members,
In this age nuclear family system,
Diaspora dais and displacement as for job opportunities,
Employment sake

While another day I saw the old man drawing just Rs.50/ only from the bank,
And old-time unrevised scaled pensioner
Whereas I with a bundle of Rs.5000/
Felt ashamed in taking that
As for that poor and staggering fellow,
The poor pensioner,
Not for my sake,
Though my money too not much to maintain myself
With the house on rent and a better living.

It had been such a state of mind which felt I someday while at the bank counters
Drawing my salary, filling in the debit voucher slip
As for taking money,
But he drawing just 50 only,
A fifty-rupee note,
The note of this denomination.

My service book will be such and such, the pension-book to be got from,
But his was an older pension-book,
Fatherly pension-book,
Showing a little bit, not more
As the scales had been low
Humbly placed in comparison with the pay bands of today,
I mean the pay packets,
Handsome salaries to all.

When I used to see the pensioners queued up near the treasury
In heat and shower
And the clerk behaving haughtily
And the officer too in red tapism,
I used to think of the hell to bureaucracy
As for their standing in the strong summer sun
When the hot wind used to ruffle all,
I used to mark them waiting for their turn.

As and when after getting the red rose, I got embroiled into a dilemma
As whom to give to,
To the beloved or the goddess,
Whom should I offer to,
The rd rose
Which it is into my hands,
To St.Valentine or to her?

Sometimes do I think that God is not in the shrine,
So piously adored,
God is blind and unjust
And if He is,
Why are the beggars at the entrances of the temples,
The grand rock-built temples,
Why do thy go begging helplessly?

My dilemma is my bifurcation, the bifurcation of my personality
And I feel myself split in two
And it causes the disintegration
And I turn into a cynic,
A sceptic, an agnostic,
An iconographer not, but an iconoclast
As make I, destroy I, if not, think I of splitting
And knowing.

What we think good is not, what we as bad is also not so
As time, situation and circumstance have
Otherwise would not have been so,
As what we think will not be of any use
Seems to be for our use strangely,
The man whom you dislike most
And think will not be of any use
Help you remarkably.