Three Odd Friends Walking Hand-In-Hand Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Three Odd Friends Walking Hand-In-Hand



Three odd friends, the bootlegger, the drug-trafficker and the woman-trafficker
Now cover up the news pages,
The bootlegger who comes with bottles ambushed in his rugged, ragged coat and pants,
Looking clumsy-clumsy, uncouth-uncouth,
Clumsy and uncouth
But his friends many
The sadhakas in sadhna taking Siva’s buti, herbal intoxicants
And Mother Kali’s madira, Vedic sura,
Deviated youths as for unemployment, bad company
Or being unmarried.

The bootlegger sells he wine, country liquor and smuggles the types of it
Looking blank-blank, blank and vacant,
Unsocial and out of mind,
With no work to do,
But to eat, drink and be merry,
Bring forth and sell them,
Making them drunkards,
Sell and supply
And earn and drink,
But get not too much drunk.

The drug-trafficker in the old term is one who used to sell ganja and bhang
Once upon a time on the outskirts
And the bhangeris used to sit and sit, smile and smile
As this used to dull the brains so
And in intoxication
They used to talk of becoming Sivas,
Priests for the ritual sake
Or a tantrika trying to garland a tiger
Or one haunted by the ghosts,
I do not know the base of theirs,

But can say it that
In this world of today,
Changed circumstances, the wayward, whither modern youths
Have started taking brown sugar and heroin to spoil totally,
Their lives and their dreams,
All the instant joys and the sources of it
Will turn into their miseries and woes of life,
Compelling them even to sell their kidneys
For the drugs,
Turning into abnormals wayless,
Left to their poor destitute and destiny.
The woman-trafficker may come, speak heartily and take to distant Arabia
By showing petro dollars,
The romantics in disguise
And will abandon and dump elsewhere
When the colour fades it on the midway,
The restaurants and lodges standing on the sea-beach are of those
Investors, hoteliers, managers and owners;
The wimps and the middle men play a major role
In telling about gala and glitz,
Offering the jobs of the glamorous, the beautician and the fashion designer
With boards and hoardings
At city squares to tempt, charm the dreams and catch their fancy.

The late night dance parties
With cabaret, disco, rock ‘n roll and jazz,
The bar tenders,
The girls in bikini and lingerie,
Wine bottles on the tables,
The starred hotels and management faculty
And its associates,
Where are they taking ultimately
The modern world and its culture of today,
Taking to full, emptying the bottle,
Looking coloured-coloured and dyed,
Dancing, partying and enjoying?

The call centres with the queens of dreams,
Night queens,
Oh, the lonely girls in lonely, manless, haunted studios or cabins
Working day and night
And you call it service,
Day and night service without any break in it
At their cost, the cost of their life,
How can it be,
The music of night not the music of life,
It is of companionlessness
Asking for companies, making one with,
Come close together with.

The models modelling,
Will her life spend as thus, in modelling
And think of
When all her glamour will be gone,
May be dragged into other business,
The air hostess
Living lonely and friendless with the joys and sorrows of her own.

They cast the music albums on the snake charmer’s music
But give not to anything of their royalties and earnings,
Keep the all with them,
Acknowledge it not even
And you mark the tinge of pain,
They go on playing, moving about
The streets
As for music, deadly dance of cobras,
Risking their lives
Playing with cobras,
Deadly cobras,
Whose single catch and bite may be fatal to his life,
Which none has but come to feel it.

What it pains me most is the sense of ingratitude,
Why not to acknowledge it,
If cannot remember, why to take it from,
If we cannot create something, why to destroy,
Why is this fall in standard, loss in morality and sense,
To leave one to one’s destitute and harness not good,
Something needs to be done in this regard
As we have come to here with some purpose
And for which we are here,
Our living for some purpose
And if this be, how to make it purposeless, a purposeless living?

Will our life spend in eating, drinking and merry-making,
What the purpose of our living,
Why are we here,
What the work to be done,
What in hand
And what the others,
Other assignments and assessments
To be taken, completed and finished,
The assignments to be given to complete at home
And the assessments to be taken elsewhere?

The spirits and intoxicants have their medicinal value,
They induce sleep
And have definitely some curative stuffs
To reconcile and charm,
Mitigate or lessen or diminish,
But not to spoil lives in this way,
Taking at the roadside bar-cum-restaurant,
Driving rashly and meeting tragic ends,
To murder poor girls as for beastly appetite, for the hunger of the body?

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