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 SONG OF PRAYER

Ye up from bed, it is prayer time,

Pure in mind, raise your voice in His praise,

It is 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

Instils 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

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,

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 the back door methods

Or by wading through a pool of blood

Prayer the biggest antidote to mitigate sin

And to escape it’s after effects

While achievement sought grooved in sin

Is a life condemned

Acts marking success circumventing sin

Will tank 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 from the quagmire

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.

R. Suryanarayanamurty,

Hyderabad – 500 007

August 04, 1997.