The Invisible Wall Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

‘Ossi' is what the west likes them to call,
The East complimenting West with ‘pushy',
No more stands there the brick-and-mortar wall,
Love's lost still in old animosity.

The wall o'er a decade and half back fell,
Yet, an iron curtain still them divide,
Minds cannot meet over the wall of pride,
The prejudiced, hurt hearts can't that gulf scale.

‘I'd rather a spouse from a foreign shore
‘Bring than one from behind iron curtain, '
Felt one from across the long secured door,
Deep and wide does divide decades of pain.

Here's lingering dislike, there's disdain old,
What venom brethrens nurse for each other!
An open war has turned into one cold
Togetherness in search of fair tether!

‘Too hot' for us these women from the West,
‘Hard to please, pushy, far too material,
‘Everything about them seems commercial,
‘From old world do we come and too modest'.

‘Too darn dense be these people from the East,
‘Lacking any a style whatsoever,
‘Forever on a bargain-hunting heist,
‘Let them savour their old odious flavour'.

The wall's brought down that there begins a flow,
Heads finding hard still to communicate,
Streets and bridges and trains run to and fro,
How hard ‘tis two distant hearts to placate.

Love and passion when at a premium come
In too short a period of years fifteen,
Persists old prejudice placed for long plum,
It's hard indeed, long closed closets to clean.

World has its Kashmir, long-gulfed Koreas too,
And torn-apart people elsewhere a few,
A healer great, a great teacher is time,
If not today, morrows may sing in rhyme.
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The Berlin Wall came down some 15 years back on 9th November1989. But the iron curtain continues to divide the two people that history separated. Only two per cent of marriages every year are between the East and the West Berliners, which under normal conditions should have brought together one-third to half of the couples in a city its size. Yet, they are 12 times more likely to marry foreigners. After the wall fell, there came the euphoria only to die soon. A lingering dislike persists between the two sides. Yet, in all fairness 15 years is too short a period to mitigate the wounds inflicted by 60 years of separation. Time, let us hope, will prove a great healer that it is.
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Happenings | 01.11.04 |