Indelible Ink Poem by Ratnakar Rout

The presiding officer of the Polling booth
Was in haste as the intending voters
Queued up eagerly to exercise their mandate
He smeared the nail of my index finger
With indelible ink before casting the vote
After exercising my franchise I tried
To erase the ink as it disfigured the nail
And my finger skin down the nail.
But I could not make up my mind
Recollecting the childhood advice of my teacher
That which cannot be cured must be endured.
Since then whenever I spent time leisurely
I used to look at my finger.
Gradually the nail grew and the ink stained
Portion of the nail was replaced by the new nail
With each passing day the nail grew
And the tainted part of the nail vanished gradually
Like the present generation paves
The way for the generation next
Offspring’s take the position of parents
And babies grow up as children and
Become youths later on. The nature moves on
So as the nature’s ingredients, though
The process is slow
And ordinary people are unable to go along.
Keen introspection to the natural objects would
cast a reflection on the steady evolution.
When a visionary can see the changes in the ecosystem
Through his sharp vision, ordinary
Persons can not visualise the same.
One day I realised the ink marked portion
Of the nail has grown beyond the finger tip
It led me happily to remove the extra
Portion by a nail cutter as
The Creator eliminates the unsuitable one from the world
Things appear indispensable loose
Their importance in the course of time
They go out of the sight and are lost in the oblivion
As it seems, life on earth
Is like a blot of indelible ink on the finger tips.
It passes on slowly and one day
In every body’s sight goes behind the
Curtain leaving each one in speculation
Where does hide an unseen hand
That washes out the redundant now and then
And who protects the cleanliness of our environment too?