Equality And Existentialism In Education, Enterprise And Evolution In Canada Poem by Gayathri Seetharam

Equality and existentialism in education, enterprise and evolution in Canada
-Gayathri B. Seetharam
The song floated into my mind,
"Mustang Sally, put your great big feet on the ground"
And I smilingly thought that among my husband's considerable attributes
Has been his ability to lead a good life with me
Ensuring that my two feet are on the ground
Despite my tendency to float happily on Cloud 9;

This has stood me in good stead
For male swains of my beauty and sensuousness
Apparently made verbal love to me through electronic mail
And although it did go to my head a little bit
I managed to remember that a fatherless daughter
Has, in many ways, only her beloved husband to turn to
Other than her brain and wits and talents for a living;

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own
Can be their home, sweet home
And success came to me
With its beautiful sunlight
And I have become widely published on the internet;

To top off my husband's disinterestedness in my success
My beloved, lovely, caring 6 foot 2 inches of a son
Had the temerity to say, dismissing lightly,
My successful efforts at a biochemical engineering experiment yesterday morning
That he had done this sort of thing during high school
Which made me, after I said that I had done a lot of lab work during my academic and work days,
Retreat into my inner sanctum;

This came on top of two days out of a total of 5-6 days of emotional stress
For while I was reading Harper Lee's book, Go Set a Watchman
I shed tears which rolled down my cheeks continuously, at Jean Louise's (Scout)discovery
That her father, Atticus Finch has become racist;

I felt her inner pain and I did not think of my brownness
But felt that somebody who had stood for all the right sentiments in life in
The earlier book, Harper Lee's masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird,
Had changed from his character, which had become his daughter's way
Of looking at the black man and woman's place in society
In other words, he supported the legal way of the court
And the moral way of society;

It brought a new perspective into how liberal leaders like PM Justin Trudeau have to operate
To bring about change in society
And Scout, as Bernard Shaw's heroine in his play, The Man of Destiny, put it,
Had the misfortune to be born good, when talking about herself;

As the same heroine in Shaw's play confides to Napolean Bonaparte,
Her own truthfulness and unselfishness and all the rest of it
Is nothing but cowardice, want of character,
Want of being really, strongly, positively oneself;

This is either soul searching or self-disparagement or plain cynicism
And the cynic's perspective is not the answer
But a wise stand many a time coming from a good person
For as I myself, in jest, say that the Gandhian philosophy
To show the other cheek when slapped on one,
Could be a lack of spine or if borne quietly, a case of taking it lying down,
However, in many cases, a retaliation could mean more pain;

Shaw's heroine says the said monologue as a part of self-introspection
But there is an endearing quality in Scout's embracement of the black people
And a good soul, many a time, can change the course of history
In a positive way or in ways a less-than-good person cannot
So here's to you, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson
And in present day Canada, Justin Trudeau,
Who has apologised for three past wrongdoings and dealings by Canada,
One to the Sikh community for not allowing a boatful of people entry into Canada on the grounds of discrimination
Another to the LGBTQ community for having been discriminated against in their workforce
And the third, to the indigenous community, for all the injustices heaped on them over the years
And this had begun a fresh chapter in Canada
An era of constitutional, Supreme Court ruling and actual, social equality of every individual.