Maharaj Kaul

In our hyper-convoluted, super-charged, and un-symbolic life
There is not much respite from the perversity of the world.

When the spirit sags the world prescribes a set of fixes:
The most popular is a to-do procedure, mechanical in nature:
Keep busy with anything and let the time go –
A soulless remedy to a spiritual malaise.

Life comes naturally with passion and glow,
Imprinted by nature for it to survive.
Man has made the world such that
In many cases it tramples these.

In today’s world you try to keep away from others,
Lest they see through your façade and emptiness.
We run around meaninglessly for good amount of time,
Till tiredness forces us to sit and then we wonder on the
Insanity of running in the first place.

Amassing money is the chief value of our lives –
Though never knowing what to do with all of it.
The illusion that money equals happiness is the
The cruelest dagger that has penetrated the modern culture.

People endlessly acquire material things thinking they
Are building a grand edifice of joy and contentment.
But when the edifice is found to be vacuous and weak it collapses
At the first heartbreak the world gives, everything looks futile and meaningless.

Mechanical pursuit of sex is another vaulted value of our times.
Its power lasts for sometime but it can never satisfy a man’s soul.
In spite of its illusory nature greed is a supremely powerful elixir,
Like evil it is born again and again endlessly.

Loneliness, the invisible environment of our times,
Remains often hidden under the shimmer and clamor.
Our values, culture, work, and society contribute to it.
Man has yet not learnt to live with it and never will.

Modern man is tired and trapped, beaten and fearful.
He is stressed though still energetic. He is intelligent
But uninspired. He is healthy but not happy.
For he has tampered with his nature in blindness and greed.