Tough Questions Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Tough questions

Question turns tough
When an answer leads
To further questions
Or when there can be more than
One answer to it
It also turns tough
When any amount of answering
Leaves the question unanswered
Such questions go beyond our understanding
And defies our scientific explanations

Two such questions are
Who are you and
What are you?

You have a wide range of answers
For the first question
You are not wrong when you answer the first
That you are son or daughter of so and so
That you are father or mother of so and so
That you are the spouse of someone
That you are grandson or granddaughter of so and so
Your answer mentioning the connecting link
With inherited and acquired relationships
Cannot be wrong

You are also right
When you answer that
You have a qualification in a particular field
You are a professional of a particular discipline
You are an employee of an organization
You are the boss of a group
You are the sub-ordinate of someone
And so on
These are professionally related answer
And they cannot be wrong

You may answer identifying yourself
With a particular community
With a set of friends
With your role and position in a socially active group
These are socially based answers
And these too cannot be wrong

You may like to answer by identifying yourself
With a particular faith
And as a disciple to some leader of the faith
These are religiously, and spiritually if applicable, related answers
And these too are not incorrect

But really speaking the
Absolute correct answer is something else

Coming to the second question of
What are you?
You may have answers in similar lines above mentioned

Normally people tend to answer this question
In a professionally linked base
Here again this answer, though apparently is right
Has not revealed your real worth

You can be very close to answering right these questions
Is by calling yourself
An operating system of a robot, your body
Whose physical, mental, intellectual and emotional capabilities
Are determined by a
Permutation and combination of
A set of amino acids
Those are specific to human race

You know this answer also is incomplete
You keep exploring answers
As no correct answers have been arrived at to these
Tough questions