A Vision or Nightmare

K. V. V. SUBRAHMANYAM

Nascent statehood gave us a luminous vision
Of glorious growth wrought with BLUT UNDT ISSEN:
Me thought with sweat of our brows, anything grows
But passing of decades saw our foreheads with furrows.

The vision was fostered by the moulders of our nation
Little did they dream it will be smoulders and damnation
All the bitterness and hate, scams and scandals
were not the work of the beacons of hope that lit liberty’s candies.

In vain do we search for a glimmer of hope
In the enveloping gloom, the underdogs see tightening of Rope,
Like the hangmen’s noose of oppression and blight,
Their chances of survival seem ever so slight.

Was the earlier vision a mere delusion and day dream,
Will our children’s children discern a speck of gleam?
Our masters political and social are busy with raving and ranging.
Let the labouring swain continue their state of panting.

Jobless in their meandering serpentine queues a nightmare.
The presiding bureaucrat with an air of devil may care;
The prickly thorns of coldness and indifference greet
The taxpayer, the vote giver and the man in the street

Is there no finish to this sorry state of the common man?
To relieve his misery the eggheads and pundits work and plan;
Projects of mega level range and grandiose schemes.
All this gimmicry seem empty and vapourous dreams.