A friend “wants to share
On topics other than spirituality”.
When did I ever prevent him?
Just a couple of weeks back
He called me from the US
We spoke for four hours
Yes, four hours straight.
Now, you might start pitying him
That I troubled him to no end
By talking about spirituality.
Far from it, far far from it
I let him do the talking
Taking a keen interest
In everything he had to say
From the close bond he shared
With his dad, who was in the judiciary
With whom he had long and interesting talks
(Lucky you, I told him,
I spoke to my father
No more than 30 minutes
In my whole life
That too on the latest cricket score
And the marks I got in school).
His father was a maverick of sorts
And pissed off PV Narasimha Rao,
Who was the then CM of AP,
With his intrepid and nonchalant actions;
How his dad was a close friend of Raji Reddy
How they both shared in the life of the intellect
How Raji Reddy had a big library
How Naxalites burned down that library
How Raji Reddy’s three children
Are all PhD scholars, settled in the US
How someone wants to write a book
On Raji Reddy.
And how his son and daughter are now
How they have a mind of their own
Quite offbeat and non-materialistic
How he lets them be their own selves
How his wife, a PhD who still works, and he
Share a great rapport, and he is now retired
Helps out a great deal with social causes
This buddy who was my classmate in school.
How he spent considerable time in China
How this Canadian-born Chinese
Dan Wang, got educated at Yale
Visited China, studied it closely
And wrote a seminal book on it
“Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”
Which I laid my hands on to read later
And how he views China’s economic miracle
As also its downsides, and what we Indians can learn
From China’s Big Leap Forward.
I think you get the picture.
Now, you tell me
Am I stuck on spirituality
Am I going round singing
To the spiritual deity that there be
“I’ve got my mind set on you.”
Neverthless, I am tired of it all
I will let you all be however you want to be
Go wherever you want to go
Take interest in whatever you want to
How does it matter, it’s all a play
And you people are actually the lucky ones
Unlike me who am a coward
And never want to be born again.
Know Thyself 