Happy New Year 2022

Tonight, we are putting ourselves into a new year
And we shall move forward with all things dear;
Happy New Year 2022 and a happiest weekend
And may your aspirations continue to ascend!

Time spent cannot be retrieved as it’s the past
While the present has, truly, a split-second to last;
The future approaches with each regular tick
With the time’s click as it is encroached in a flick!

If time could be stored, where and how could it be?
Best in the mediums of art and history!
It is only in the many forms of the past
Where we delve ourselves for the times vast!

Time speaks and it is loud and clear
Of palaces of love, hate, peace and fear;
Layers of times are embedded to influence us
And the future is what we build despite all the fuss!

We transform with time
Along with things odd or even, unruly or sublime,
The clouds above, the waters in the seas,
The humming birds, butterflies, the buzzing bees…

Once again, Happy New Year twenty twenty-two
And may it bring out the best of best in you!
The world means the past, present and future to cherish
And may the year ahead, like none other, flourish! !

Photo: Sunrise from my residence, Gelephu; December 31, 2021

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Holy and organic

My childhood spent about five decades ago
At my parents’ place then; how did the house show?
We lived in a house of stone walls, gaps mud-fed,
Mud plastered, and mud-painted: half white and half red

The floor, too, was mud and cow-dung coated,
Wall edges at floors were with red mud, mud-red!
White lime was obtained from around the rivulet far-flung;
A hut-house perfect on a hilltop but never ever sung!

A type of grass covered the house for roofing,
Ignored stood the dampness and termite-proofing,
No glass then, no imported material,
No good workmanship as well and everything surreal

There were no house drains
And yet it wasn’t a problem in times of rains
As most of the storm-waters percolated into the ground
Or trickled down on the slopes to the streams around!

The plastic and cement used therein were none or scanty
While availability of bamboo and timber were a plenty;
It was a “giving-back” to the mother earth in the state that we took
And a way forward to keep her organic in essence and outlook!

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