Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar Poems

Society is resistant.
But for it, where is your pride?
Without it, where is identity?
In privacy, where is intimacy?
...

A humorist is a sadist.
Someone is sacrificed.
A sympathizer is a sadist.
Some other is sacrificed.
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Some pleasing, some inviting,
Some exciting, some enticing,
Some alluring, some enthralling,
Some arresting, some captivating,
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Detachment is not no-attachment,
Nor non-involvement. It's having
No attachment to the fruit of action.
With an eye for the end, you overstep.
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Imagination is not a reality.
Imagination of original
Is not real, but coloured with mind.
History is of imagination
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Birth is not bliss but a curse
To itself and the begetters.
It has to encounter death,
Till which fear haunts at each stage.
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I'm not at all proud of my national,
My race or my religion and the sect.
To be other than these is not my wish.
There only I enjoy my belongingness.
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At every junction, we chose a path
With a vision of, say, a hundred yards,
With many miles lying ahead unknown.
Is it that we have made the choicest path?
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Tigers sleep, deer sleep,
Cats sleep, rats sleep,
The water sleeps, the earth sleeps,
Everything sleeps when the sun sleeps.
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Sonali Dasgupta then
And Sonali Rossellini now
Passed away this week all alone,
At the age of eighty four in Rome.
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