THE DIVINE GARB
I see a divine garb hanging around my body
In the early morning hours when I still feel bodily pains
And warding off all attempts to bring to an end
Night’s dreamy splendor
I see the crimson colors of the divine garb
Absorbing the cooling effect of the early morning rays
The garb giving me the feel
That I am something of the very special
The divine garb is not like the one
Faked by rogue weavers
To make a gullible king walk half-naked in the streets
The garment is indeed woven like a web
Where threads are smeared with thoughts pure and holy
To give them dazzle and sheen
I get up not knowing what to do
Is the garment meant to convey a message
That I should play the role of a missionary
To make the man in the street learn his relationship with Almighty
Though a devoted soul I know I am hardly fitted to play such a role
My inadequacies are too many and too glaring
To dare and challenge those already in the field
Is the garment meant to wake up in me thoughts lying dormant
Like particles floating in the rays of the morning sun
To enable me to join the ranks of knowledgeable souls
Whose message conveyed through word and print
Makes them unrivaled in the field of poetry or art
Here again, I feel humbled
As the gumption that produced those wizards
Whose classics enthralled humanity over the centuries
Is not what I can lay claim to with confidence
I pick up a few granites of hard history
Which is all I could gather after digging over the years into realms of past
Though the effort is not much I can see the road ahead
I have an understanding of how the world is what it is today
The chronicles are there for anybody to read
To understand the myriad efforts put forth by man to achieve progress
I find the divine garb is sent with a mission
To give cheer and hope to an agonized soul
Perplexed with dismay and despair
Facing the trauma of a life besieged with problems of aging and health
Its message is not to waver but put forth the best effort
In the service of man even in a limited way
As the last days could also be best days at times
The mind cast in a mold of peace and content,
And God remains sheet-anchor in thought and deed.
R. Suryanarayana Murthy
The Language of the Heart
The language of the heart is a language rarely heard
It originates from the inner recesses of the body
From a point nearer to the heart
In the passionate love between a lover and his beloved
Sanctified by the sacerdotal string tied during matrimony
Round the bridal neck
It is the language marked by deep emotional fervor
Spoken in whispers of cadences sweet
Providing the balm to their daily chores
Help the boat in sail through calm or perilous waters
Bind the souls together with hoops of steel
It is also the language of truth, of sound reasoning
Making their thought transparent as in a mirror.
The language of the heart gets added strength
With new colors added like the flowers blossoming during spring
When the family base gets widened
The birth of a child, bursting flood banks of love,
Gives the language a new warmth and greater depth
The total innocence of the child and its shining face
Providing the rich tapestry
To sing the song to lull the child to sleep
Or stop it from crying
Its twitters providing a stream of endless joy.
The language of the heart gets further enriched
With the child growing in age
With new vocabulary added to give strategic strength
To build a canopy, to help the child grow in freedom and joy
To ward off evil forces
The child deeply aware of the flow of love around
Storing in the subconscious
Scenes of the enchanting days
Memories which will never fade
And help to serve as the bedrock
To mitigate life’s myriad troubles.
The language of the heart gets bogged
Its frontiers getting pierced with the teacher entering the scene
Laying emphasis on acquiring skills and smartness of usage
Adding richly to the child’s mental kit
Helping him to acquire a new appearance, the adolescent youth
With a buoyancy of spirit, rugged and wild,
To start a new career
To seek a partner in life, in happy wedlock
To live in a dream world of their own
The heart establishes its regime again
Making full use of the strength extended of the mind
________
R. Suryanarayana Murthy
Hyderabad – 7
October 05, 2000
Rule of Law.
I have a rule of law for myself
I need no external aid for this regime of mine
Its strength lies in its vast assets
Built-up over the years
Based on internal purity of the mind
Of body too as both are linked in many ways
Body oft taking orders from the mind
Mind like the protecting angel to steer the body
Through eddies and whirlpools but always into the harbor
But at times mind fails to provide the signal
Gets bogged with conflicting thoughts
Like the ocean when churned by the Devas and the Asuras
Emanating poisonous fumes
Body in deep agony and forlorn
Dwelves deep into the inner recesses
And lo a thud, deep and sonorous in tone
Its source scarcely visible
Could it be the inner voice, the voice of conscience
It’s message clear like the Commandments of yore,
All doubts get doused, all illusions vanish,
A new regime is launched, a new pathway found,
The mind becomes the Conqueror, a Mahavira,
Its enemies are driven in all directions
While the body becomes the Kingdom, where peace reigns eternal.
R. Suryanarayana Murty
SATYA KIDNEY CENTRE: THE MODERN MEDICINE MAN
In the world of disease, where billions are prey to myriad troubles,
Giving them sleepless nights,
When anxiety and worry about the dawn of the morrow
Keeps persons in high tension and low spirits
The presence of a doctor by the bedside
It could be the greatest of boons.
Not for nothing, the medicine man was glorified by the early tribes
He is nicknamed sorcerer by modern pundits
But could be truly a scientist with an all-embracing role
Using his medical knowledge for political gain
While compelling death to take a glance and pass by
Instead of pouncing on his patients with its piercing claws.
In ancient Taxila a student searches and searches in vain
To find one plant or herb not useful for man
In the vast herbal garden adjacent to his school
Is it an insignia of the acquisition of the highest knowledge?
Or is it the starting point of research?
As no visible sign there is to set a limit to the horizons of knowledge
Which seem to recede further and further
The more the knowledge is acquired.
In Mahabharata a tribal chief,
Practicing the highest arts in the life-saving game
Befools Takshaka, the serpent king,
By bringing back to life a tree
Reduced into cinder by its venomous fangs
A miracle indeed but medical science presents many such miracles
What more classic example can one have
Or ancient India’s pristine effort
To practice the art of healing for the needy and the suffering.
The great Asoka built many a hospital for man and beast
To restore life and give it a fresh lease
A time when sciences and arts mingled in harmony
To make life less miserable to man.
In the Satya Kidney Centre, I see
Something of the glow of the golden past
A medical team wedded to service
Practicing the latest arts in medical surgery
Headed by a chief with skillful fingers
Piercing the interior of the body, the invisible and the unseen,
Unearthing the devil inside
Scorching it to see it will never raise its head again
I see here human effort at its best to serve humanity
Let Satya Centre thrive
And be a beacon for the country and the world.
R. Suryanarayana Murty
Hyderabad – 7
October 29, 1999.
N.B. Composed after the author underwent surgery for prostate gland enlargement in the Satya Kidney Centre, Himayatnagar on October 09, 1999.
Prayer
(A Prose Poem)
1. Ye up from bed, it is prayer time,
Pure in mind, raise your voice in his praise,
Is it one god or many
Is it one shape or many shapes
Or is it shapeless
Or is it female form
Makes no difference to the devotee
As each form touches deep chords of devotion
Each has regal splendor of its own
And makes you feel equally at home
Instills in you high moral virtues
Of love, sympathy, and forgiveness
Lays claim to govern the moral order
The cosmic phenomena
While being part thereof
To sustain it, to keep it going,
Each endowed with enormous power
To subdue the mind, to thwart evil,
To make you feel humble, to flush out all impurities
(As no prayer is worthwhile with mind remaining impure)
And allow peace to reign while the prayer goes on.
2) Ye up from bed to sing the song of prayer
Each prayer an offering to almighty
A garland of pearls offered in love
To seek pardon for sins committed
In thought, word or deed,
The list can be long, as the mind can never be stable,
(Unless trained in a different way)
Mind, a cauldron, grilled in many ways,
Victim of tempests rising inside
No escape route to avoid committing sin
Each act planned in the silence of the chamber
With doors closed
To grab a larger slice of material riches
Or satisfy lustful cravings
To which the body succumbs so very easily
Or get at power by methods twisted and tainted
Or by wading through a pool of blood
Prayer the biggest antidote to mitigate sin
And to escape it’s after effects
Achievement grooved in sin
Is a life condemned
Acts marking success circumventing sin
Will rank among the best of prayers.
3) Ye up from bed lest you miss the prayer
For there is no better way to cleanse the mind
Prayer the only escape route for the woes of man
To provide the grip to lift yourself up
To rouse the divine in you
Or bring you near to the divine
To bid goodbye to all that is ephemeral
And aspire to become part of the great Reality
Hyderabad – 7
August 04, 1997
R. Suryanarayana Murty
Right and wrong
I live in the corridor in between right and wrong
The right is the area of righteousness
Where only good deeds are performed
Where good neighborhood, charity, and love are practiced
Where nobody’s bonafide suspected
Where heroic deeds re-performed with a spirit of sacrifice
Where death produces no ripples of fear
But deemed as the culmination of a well-lived life
Where forces of evil have no chance to penetrate
As each house is built on the hard granite rock of faith
Where each ore makes his life one of triumphant glory
Revolving the dharma chakra
To live a life of subdued joy and inner peace.
The wrong is the area where evil has its perpetual sway
Where people wallow in crime, sedition, and intrigue
Where evil is not confined to a small part but spread all over the body
Where shafts of cruelty and barbarism are used to pull to ground
Pieces of art soaked in the sanctity of a glorious past
Where pride of place is given to the cult of bomb
And diabolical plans are nurtured and used with devastating effect
To target the citadels of power and authority
Where people steeped in a philosophy of obscurantism call the shots
And the law is demonized to impose bondage and servitude.
As for myself, I have chosen my path long back
To live in the safety zone of the corridor
Where honest people live
Still, I watch with dismay the predations of evil forces into the area
To carry away sheep and cattle in revelry
To make a bonfire, to indulge
Still, I live in hope the corridor will one day become a land
Where peace and joy prevail.
R. Suryanarayana Murty
Hyderabad
June 25, 2002.
The Dame Obeys No Laws
1) what is this dame that obeys no laws
And claims its origin in some dim, dark days
When man had yet to learn to walk,
Conjures the mind with visions of the past
Giving no clues to the tangled web of events,
Putting at the helm now one, then another,
Each claiming superior to the other
Every time springing a surprise
An election debacle, a military coup,
Or the more daunting assassin’s hand
Settling the issue for the while;
Or when things take a dramatic turn
An invader from outside or a revolution inside
To claim the mandate, but all the while,
“It is the people that rule always”
The highest bidder proclaims each time
While always it is the people
That is taken for the ride.
2) There are no set rules for the drama that is history
It is a paradise where you can roam as you like;
There is no need to go step by step,
To provide the right answer for the right question;
The historical process none can analyze
Where millions are involved in money and men
And ideas too sprouting from nowhere;
We may begin hoping we are at the end
But find ourselves still very near the beginning
But if the issues are more tangled,
We may be hoping we are at the beginning of the end
But end only where no end is seen;
We claim it is typical of our studies
Where glory and power collude and reign.
3) But where power corrupts, glory depts.,
And blemishes are galore where ends only count,
But all this is our preserve, we hold dear,
To stigmatize or eulogize, to cover up or dress up,
But always the motive with no one to suspect
As ours is the last word, with no ax to grind,
The gospel we proclaim with all our strength,
“There is nothing heinous in the pursuit of power
The shield we provide is the shield of Art
And swear always we are guided by truth”.
4) Still, we lay claim to the portals of science
Building the biggest bastion of variegated colors
Portraying the expanse of the human mind
And of achievements in Peace and War
Of infinite variety and ineffable charm
No other science to compete or compare
To scale the heights, or see the grandeur around,
But dealing with those in the corridors of power
Is our hobby and our pleasure
We make the laws and give the judgment
And confer greatness where it is due
While many a Utopia of a distant dream
Ushered with fanfare and held aloft,
Marking the dawn of the Millennium
Lie disheveled, disrobed and smothered,
Smitten to pieces under the quicksands of history
But inspire still, defying time
Sparkle and glitter in their broken might
With their message all too wise,
“Past is to dead and never will die,
And shadows the present and is very much in the Present”.
Dt. June 09, 1993 Hyderabad – 7
R. Suryanarayana Murty
I AM A TEACHER
A PROSE POEM
I am a teacher and destined to be one
For me to be a teacher is a matter of pride
I find no need to covet another’s wealth
As the wealth, I won is itself so vast
The more I draw on it the more it grows;
Nor need I speak anything verging on falsehood
Since my job is to disseminate what all I know
Which is all culled from different masterminds
Whose sense of veracity was never in doubt;
But never I own this knowledge as a monopoly right
To be used to expose or exploit or make fun at someone
Who revel in ignorance giving ear to none;
Nor am I to strike awe and wonder in gullible minds
It is not to seek praise nor win glory I teach,
The knowledge I have I hold in deep trust
To be called a Trustee in the true Gandhian sense
To make it available to as many as desire
And as freely too as the rain that comes
Making myself available even in odd hours
Using sparkling sentences and phrases conveying deep meaning
Always ensuring I am clear and carry conviction
The greater the knowledge and larger the circle it reaches
Greater is the joy and the Peace that ensues.
2) But there is an ultimate to what one professes to know
There is a limit beyond which mind refuses to be strained
To be ranked among the Grand Masters is given only to the few
They are the stars which are resplendent
Theirs is the luster of the Divine Grace
To become a teacher one has to learn and learn
But as something new is added something may also go
And as the age advances the problem complicates
And makes you realize that the tree can grow no further,
But for the art of spinning and weaving words
Making a garb of great beauty and charm
There seems to be no limit to the foliage it puts forth
Ranging in colors from crimson red to dark green
Oh what a joy it gives to make a thundering speech
Using flowing words sparkling with deep resonance and pellucid thought
It is a gift which can make angels envy,
But here lurks the danger of getting engulfed in pride
For one may occasionally fumble and mumble
With thoughts getting jammed in a gorge reaching a dead end
The patience of the audience getting sorely tested
A sensible teacher guards himself against all pitfalls
And is rarely jubilant even when the audience gives a resounding cheer
And grafts in the subconscious the homily of the Mean
That anything going to the head will have its fall.
3) There are some teachers who excel as preachers
(and there is an element of moral in all good teaching)
But to be a moralist without being truly moral
Own make you sound hollow with derision to boot
For it is always better to be a moralist in thought and action
Then pretend to be naïve while preaching so many isms
\But where a teacher has a message to convey
And knows he is sure of his ground
His message conveyed in golden letters and in glittering print
He has no fear, his bonafide is above board
There is what is called the courage of conviction
Then the teacher ceases to be a mere preacher
He will attain a stature which is all too different
And when he departs shedding his earthly coil
He will be remembered as one who toiled hard
Leaving many a footprint on the High Road of Eternal Quest.
By
R. Suryanarayana Murty
The Rudi-Grant Connection 