Poet’s Bio: Tina Mukerji Mehta has been a screenwriter and content writer for nearly a decade, and has also been a juror in numerous Film Festivals and Screenwriting Competitions, Endas Screenplay Competition and JNU Filmfest. She has worked with auteurs like Ketan Mehta in Indian parallel cinema. She makes documentaries and does photography as well and has pioneered 3D work in India. Her life consists of her rhymes and words, her thoughts and ideas, her D800 and her lens kit and typing away fervently or jotting down thoughts in her notepad. She’s a vegan and animal activist and just became a mother, compassion is her religion and love is her essence. Her first novel is finished and ready for publication.
‘Ontological Musings’ by Tina Mukerji Mehta
I exist, or do I?
Is it because I think I exist, I find myself existing?
Is it because I feel pain and longing that I exist?
Is it the mere thought or feelings that makes me want to exist?
The misty raindrops on my face, the scorching Sun on my skin,
The filth and stench carried by the howling wind,
The odoriferous plants, all green,
The mellow evening Sun akin,
To the hollow thoughts and dreams which grin!
The infinite Universe,
Glimpses of which I hold,
The Hubble spacecraft shooting awesome pictures of creation,
The images of deep, dark space, peopled with magnificence, behold!
Drudgery, routine, boxed-into existence,
Forced to follow, comply and conform.
Does this make any sense?
Is this the general norm?
In my innate stupidity, I seek out freedom.
Freedom for a slave?
A debt slave, a thought slave, a dream slave.
It’s superfluous, it’s random.
What does it all add up to?
This hallucination, this dream.
It’s infinite; ghosts that deconstructs themselves in the dance, the existential scream.
They desperately haunt us, the ghosts of the past.
It’s all a freaking paradox, it’s hauntology, says Derrida.
Are you aghast?
The ghosts of Gandhi, of Nehru, of Subhas Chandra Bose,
All occupy bits of our stagnant brain,
The Sonias, Modis, Advanis,
Pieces of information to keep us harassed.
They exist; yes they do, in our psyches.
This my friend, is the waking sleep,
A sleep-walking of numberless eons,
Of the existence of space-time in the deep.
I marvel at its vastness, like an endless black python.
Creeping and crawling to devour existence.
War, famine, disease, this is the reality I see.
Yes there are pretty things, yes there are luxuries,
But not for me.
The shining diamond oozes blood of the innocent children,
The chic clothes smell of hunger, depravation, exploitation,
The leather feels cold, yet, alive,
I feel barren.
The smell of death, the touch of suffering,
The hungry mouths, the tired bodies,
This is reality, wait, its buffering.
This is what it embodies.
The sleep, the dream, the dream in the dream!
I shout, I see it, I hear it,
The pain, the atrocity, it exists.
But where?
In my eyes, in my ears, in my bloody fists.
The efficient nerves carry this vibration to my brain,
It is information,
A validation,
That yes, this is the reality I see, I experience.
AND THIS REALITY EXISTS IN ME!
THIS REALITY IS ME!
Am I creating this incessant vicious cycle of suffering?
Am I responsible for this awful mess?
The screams, the shouts, the pain, the deaths,
Yes they all exist in ME, none the less!
The sense and the mind manifest space and time,
It’s philosophy, its Kant.
I read and re-read this sentence,
Imbecile that I am, I can do nothing,
Just rave and rant.
Enough of the ghosts of the past,
They never last,
Not even for a brief moment.
Enough of pedantic Philosophy,
Enough of cowardly Masochism,
Its choreography,
So enough of the anachronisms.
Ideas are outdated, thought is over-rated,
Feelings are not to be trusted.
Why? You ask.
Look around.
What have I created?
Apathy, misogyny, misanthropy, communalism and Xenophobia,
To name just a few.
The Universe is inside me,
It’s not something which I can eschew.
Nothing exists out of me,
Not you, not this world, not this poem,
All of it just boils down to sensory perceptions,
Do you see?
In solitude I see,
There is no such thing as you or me,
Nothing called space and time outside of me!
First published in the blog Speakingtree.