A jumbled dream mingles with the disturbing reality of war and communal tensions that hang heavy in the air prompting writer, poet and artist, SEEMA MUNIZ to pen down her confused emotions
My head hurt. The air, heavy with incongruity, was wired with tension and fears, hopes and prayers. Television channels alternated between the frenzied coverage of the ongoing war in a foreign land and the blaze of communal antagonism and revenge sweeping the home front.
I watched the birds diving and soaring against the infinite canvas of fizzy clouds, abundant in their expression of unsuppressed freedom. A jersey cow, visibly pregnant chose my meagre classic syngonium plant peeking out of the railing, to feast upon over the plethora of wild and indigenous flora strewn across her wayward path. The sun set, gloriously round and primeval.
A Dream: I am drowned, now in a pall of a muddled, subconscious world, in which terror-stricken by some ongoing war, we are coerced into living underwater. Living is an overstatement; surviving is more like it. “Just like a muskrat”, I think to myself. Wind in the Willows comes to mind, and scoots out immediately, chased by the loud music bounding off from the temple a km away. Traveling down the night-infested road, it has managed to incite my eardrums to vibrate. It seems so close, I can almost touch it, and gauge its musty thickness.
As my conscious mind takes the front seat, I realise it is the muezzin summoning the faithful to the adhan from a mosque situated 3 km from where I am…who at this unholy hour could be tempted into seeking salvation?
Again, whirls of sleep take over. World goes on. The wars, the parliaments, The Kashmir Files, sloganeering…I keep sinking and yet something inside attempts to stay afloat, pretending to be a muskrat.
Seema Muniz, a feature writer with the Times of India group in the nineties, is an avid reader and educationist, who homeschooled her son until tenth grade, while drifting between New York and Alaska with her family. She is also an artist, with a few solo and group shows in Albany, NY, to her credit.
Featured image by ELG21 from Pixabay
Very beautiful, soulful presentation of the reality today…
Reality has become very abominable indeed, but ironically enough, the world they say, belongs only to the dreamers 🤣
…
who wages war
and who at all
calls
for peace talk ?
in a realm of
double standard
and
in a land of
all double talk !
tell me who is
here
apostle of peace,
and
who is the hawk!!
the dreamer alone
is
the casualty here,
alas!
dreams are made
of such a stuff 😂
and yet,
hoping against
hope,
the poet sings
song-of-peace,
for,
such is the way
of the poet,
as is the way of
the muskrat 🤣
Omg, I am thrilled beyond words to think that this beautiful poem could have emerged from my short spontaneous write-up. May be this is what we call ‘a literary evolution’.
Thanks