The Historical Process Poem by Bipin Patsani

"Each fault is a new discovery
in the search for truth
and hence a part of the creative process.
What harm is there
if Columbus missed the way
and reached a continent? "
- Song of The Happy Cripple
(HOMECOMING/ 2010, Bipin Patsani)


Not only in days, our own,
the days of our success and glory,
the pain and strain we endured
and that we fought bravely at any cost,
are also integral parts
in the history of our growth
whether we won or lost.

So why curse history,
why do we try to erase
and reverse the historical process
and waste our time in ifs and buts?

Hiding our wounds, darkening,
deleting the shining sides of others
and ignoring the historical process
are signs of our inferiority complex.

We change names, structures,
we change geography of a region,
its habitats, its politics and course.
Can we reverse the flow of the Ganges
back to its source?

No one can bring liberated minds
back to the shackles of unreason
the high priests of bigotry
so eagerly have in store for us,
nostalgic for their good old days
when they had ensnared our minds
for their selfish interests,
for their snobbish amusement
and comfort.

There is nothing to be scared of
coming together of ideas and cultures
which have made us what we are today,
free from the hegemony of those
who had been luring us, using us
with the promise of securing for us
a place in heaven, registered by rituals,
or else threatening us
with their gifted power to curse
and its frightening consequence.
Not in surrender to marketization
of ‘mokhya' and mass investment,
only by free thinking can one aspire
to reach the height of excellence
and attain the depth of inner peace.
A sense perception of the highest order
and nothing else,
heaven is there in free thinking
and in the work one enjoys doing.

A nation is not all for the nexus
of a king, corporates and karmakandis,
striving together for power share.

A real Rastra falls not low as a snare
to use people for a favored few,
it is free and friendly rather for all
in its cozy creative atmosphere.