Pawning senses to dreams

A sentimental bloke must you be, Tamizha!

A boiling pot of emotions and

A cascading falls of passions

Celluloid heroes you worship;

For heroines built temples and

On their images abishekams* you do.

Watching half-clad chicks dance on flicks

Crazy you become. And to their curves

Loose all your roots and marks,

Which, pitiably, you search them everywhere

Save cinema halls.

Now in your heart blooms Namitha who,

With her killing contours and teasing eyes,

Make butterflies flutter in your heart.

So, sleepless you become

Cud-chewing her mien all through nights.

To watch a Namitha movie spend you

A lot, making more hollowed your pocket

And stand on queues for hours and hours

Not minding whether you sweat or shiver.

But… but taking your sick mom to a doc

You avoid; mawkish, and scold her

Sending the poor lady to tears.

Why Namitha Tamizha?

Why not mom?

Quite natural were your big tears when

For Indhira and Rajiv you’d wept.

But, why moist become your eyes

When a screen dame dies of boozing.

Feeding on emotions, my dear boy,

Rudderless you turn and

Nebulous become your heart.

A poor and debt-trapped soul

Your dad ploughs lands to grow you big in life.

A few hundred bucks, reeking of his sweat,

When he earn out of his toil

Fall in your hand as you rob them

Not to feed your empty stomach or to buy books

But to launch you in the tinsel world and

To clad nice your celluloid dreams.

My god!

When arc lights are still evasive

And your dreams become bare

A stick in the mud you remain.

Now, futile go your dreams and

Up you wake with a bang from them

Seeing again your godly moorings

And grasping at your senses at last.

But sadly,

Long gone, by now, the Lady of Time

Leaving you grayed and wrinkled.

Realities too begin to slap you blue

As you now feel the ground beneath your feet,

Which remain grown with grass

Since flying you were long over your dreamlands.

A boiling pot of emotions and passions

Never you stopped to pause while riding

On the wings of dreams- and thoughtless

You went your heart’s way only to become

A derelict and desolate.

Tamizha! All these could you’ve avoided

Had you thought things thro your head

And not thro heart.

*

*Bathing idols in water or milk.

[I always have great regard and respect for the Tamil youth. Remarkably industrious and amazingly smart and intelligent, they’re proving their mettles both in India and abroad. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the youth achieve such a feat, a majority of others, consumed by celluloid dreams, go off paved paths and bring woes to them and their families. So here fit in my poem whose aim is only to wake up the lotus-eaters from their dreams. Further, if, for once, any one feel hurt by my vers libre and find it unpalatable, I would only say to them: “ Take it easy”

easwar arumugam.