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.
‘Wasted Lines’ by Tina Mukerji Mehta
Why do I bother?
A paper and pen in my hand.
What is it I hope to achieve?
Jotting down some wasted lines.
What do I know of poetic fervour?
When there is abject hunger
In this world- in my soul.
I am incomplete.
What can make me whole?
I seek equilibrium,
I seek bliss,
But what of famine?
What of wars?
What of children molested and raped?
How can I sit pretentiously?
Profess to be an intellectual, a poet!
Words from my mind drown
In the cacophony of despair.
It’s just Ego!
I know nothing of Art, of civilization, of culture.
Just death, devastation, destruction.
I am a New World Vulture.
Why do you expend your time reading these wasted lines?
What philosophy can I impart?
That is not already present in your psycho-somatic makeup.
You know it all, the knower, the known,
This is the art.
Why not hold the hand of the child abused?
Is it baser than philosophy?
Why not help the blind man cross the road?
Is that not spirituality?
But here you are, ready to erode,
The human-ness of humanity.
Destroy civilization, destroy culture,
Destroy the mentality.
That is affected by innocuous profanity,
But not wars, hunger and exploitation.
It’s my damnation,
That you are here,
Reading these wasted lines.
I wish I could tell you about the Dharma,
I wish I could tell you about philosophy,
But lost I am in cries of hunger and pain.
Nothing else can I write.
Do not waste your time,
Reading these wasted lines.