SKITTERING HENS VERSUS WAR DRUMS: Santosh Bakaya

SKITTERING HENS VERSUS WAR DRUMS 

Santosh Bakaya

Life is full of nightmares. So gut-wrenching.

The old woman tightly closed her ears to the sinister sounds

of fighter planes, raucous beating of drums,

and the vicious flaunting of muscles.

She found the thundering turbulence beyond comprehension.

She shook herself and tried to listen to different sounds.

But enigmas beguiled her.

Monsters stalked her.

Suddenly, soothing and serene sounds fell into her ears.

There was birdsong everywhere.

Chirp-chirp, twitter-twitter.

The briny breeze whispered ballads,

singing the refrain of the good old days.

But she felt bitter.

The raucous roars were yelling for gore.

More, they wanted more.

She plugged her ears.

Then crept the darkness silently, but surely.

No smile lurked in the fossilized layers of her heart.

No sliver of hope in its murky corridors.

But an old song sheltered softly in her heart.

Quiescent.

When the world fell asleep, and the guns also fell silent,

her heart sang, stirring the volatile microcosm

of her inner consciousness.

Morning came.

She opened her eyes, gasping at the multilayered wonders,

and skittered with hens and chirped with birds.

The war drums had fallen silent.

She could no longer hear the drones.

(Santosh Bakaya, PhD, is a renowned poet, academician, essayist, biographer, novelist, columnist, literary critic, and TEDx speaker. Internationally acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu, as well as her work on Martin Luther King Jr. She is the author of 32 widely celebrated books across diverse genres. Her TEDx talk, “The Myth of Writers’ Block,” enjoys immense popularity in creative writing circles.)