NUTS & GUTS

Some parents say: from your roots don’t go astray

Education in the mother-tongue is the need of the day…

Other parents say: let our children have our way

Education in English will ensure an apt global pay…

But heed the children and what they have to say

Surely they would rather learn only the fun way!

A real mess is served in the education tray…

where the nut gets screwed and the gut gives way!

The syllabus is a maze real knotty, and hey…

Queries are termed naughty in the class bay!

Self-esteem is eclipsed in the mind where it held sway…

As irrelevant leads to irreverence with every passing day!

What’s the point of learning Geography, if on eclipse day

… parent and teacher retire to the dark superstition bay?

What’s the point of testing data from the Science tray…

…if the permission to experiment is stalled by a ‘nay’?

The wonderful world of mathematics goes regularly astray…

the mechanical obscures the elementary, every single way!

Dates and details get hammered into a mind turning clay,

as History lessons defeat the message in the factual fray!

Not just black on white, prose or verse is really about grey

… unbridled is imagination, but education narrows the way!

Why the compulsion to learn by rote without going astray?

Theatre-fun would be better for the Bard to seize the day!

Learning is directly proportional to the fun, they say…

Yet book is thrust in the hand that must play with clay!

‘Leave the kids alone’ sang Pink Floyd on another day

Languages are the drapes for expression, just another way

What use is the nut when the gut gives way?

What use is a label with learning far away?

The language is second to what the syllabus has to say

Education must empower the nut without the gut giving way!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

23 March 2011

WHY?

Words wander away when departs a little son of a dear friend… from the old college days a poem resonates with questions that arise when a life dies young…

WHY?

Why death?

Why life?

The sun sets to rise again,

Does Life die to live again?

If it does, why death?

If not, why life?

- Pravin Sabnis (1989)

Holi

Leaves sprout… flowers bloom

Trees smile and chase the gloom

Spring is here to spread the cheer

Shed your inhibitions, have no fear!

Here’s the flavoured milk, say cheers

For the veterans, open the bhang & beers

The fire’s going down, bring more wood

There it lies where once the tree stood

A full moon looks on as winds stoke embers,

in the season of spring, trees get dismembered

Wood chars, so does the plastic trash

flowers singe smearing earth with ash.

Next we get to spray the colours everywhere

Made from mud, paint and chemicals not very rare

But don’t you mind the itch and the stains

It won’t happen till spring comes again!

- 3 March 2007

It would be better for bad thoughts to burn

Instead of screaming abuses around the fiery urn…

It would be better to celebrate the colours of life

And a resolve to shun discrimination and unjust strife!

- 1 March 2010

- Pravin K. Sabnis

what's your religion?

One day,
we may be stopped in our tracks by a maniacal mob…
… and be confronted with the Questions…

“what’s your religion?
Same as ours?
Or different like theirs?”

And our lives will depend
… on our answers
… and their religion!

We must ask ourselves whether we have learnt any lessons from the numerous killings, brutal attacks and rapist rioting, born of divisive religious fanaticism…

Thoughts of Mining Terrorists

Good! The politician has raised the scare
And proclaimed our villages unsafe out there
The issues are not as simple as they look
These villagers are terrorists and crooks

That farmer insists that we cannot transgress
Surely he is an obstacle to our true progress
The land may be his, but the lease is mine
How dare he say, “To hell with the MINE”

Our farmers, our villagers are no longer the same
They are terrorists playing a deadly game
They are moving ahead to breach our peace
Do something now, do not suffer the siege

The plot it thickens and so does the stink
Especially that guy who tells them to think
He is training them to use dangerous arms
If they take to thinking, we will be forced to alms

They who think are the most dangerous
Their questions are the most furious
But questions are not the only artillery
They have cameras too in their weaponry

Worse they have lost all sense of shame
They are giving our nation a bad name
Screaming across the world wide web
About things which are best left unsaid

They are dangerous and we have to act with speed
Their increasing solidarity is precarious indeed
Round them up and expose their terrorist connection
Every arm that is raised has a weapon-association

People are yet to hear what that teacher said
That mining terrorism will have everyone dead
Beat them at their own game and spread the news
That they share the distant terrorist’s views

Throw them behind bars and black them out
We must finally erase every rebellious shout
The gullible rest will swallow our nationalist con
With greater strength our Mining terrorism shall go on!

- Pravin Sabnis (20 June 2008)

Written to counter the malicious charge of the politicians that Naxalites are part of the growing solidarity of Goans against fraudulent Mining that is trampling human rights and the laws of the land due to the patronage of the conniving administration. Researcher-activist Seby Rodrigues, farmer Rama Velip, teacher Ramesh Gauns and their determined tribe cannot be demolished by deceitful labeling by the agents of Mining Terrorism

itna bhi mat rulaye

here is my first Hindi verse written at the western Consultation on SEZs (it was inspired by a video and spirited presentation of the fight against SEZs in Gujarat):

itna bhi mat rulaye, ki aasoon sukh jaye...
aur sujhi huyi ankhon se lava beh jaye...
itna bhi mat sataye, ki har path bandh ho jaye...
aur sar pe kafan bandhne ka vikalp bach jaye !

the english translation would be
Do not make me cry such that my tears may dry...
it is lava that will flow from the swollen eye...
Do not trouble me such that I run out of roads
save the one of tying the Kafan on my head...
(Kafan-shroud)

-Pravin Sabnis
25 April 2008, Pune

ME & MINE

I woke up in a different age...
I woke up in shock and rage...
Ten years further to today...
My village had gone astray...

It was like a fairy tale all gone wrong...
Where cacophony posed as a song...
Gone were the fields that were mine...
My land, my village was just a MINE!

I went to the authorities to complain
Hoping for justice to relieve my pain...
They asked me to prove my citizenship
Without my village, how could I exist?

I said forget about me, have some shame...
What about the villains and their devious game?
First they paused and then laughed aloud...
“It was you who contributed to the deadly shroud”

“How me?” I cried at the twist in the tale
My land I had never put up for sale...
When they came to me, I had said a clear NO
For me my land was my life, how could I let go?

They looked at me and laughed once again
“He thought it was never going to be his pain
Since the lease did not cover his land
He thought the problem was not his to fend”

“They first mined elsewhere, but he said that land is not mine
Then they mined closer, and he said that land is not mine
Then they mined next door, yet he said that land is not mine
And now look how he protests when his land is a MINE”.

To the dissonance of their accusing mirth
I woke up from the nightmare’s girth
But the future continued to resonate in my ears
Urging me not to ignore the approaching fears

It was futile to think of me and what’s mine
And ignore the killing moves of the MINE
For it is not an activity, it is really an attitude
That seeks to crush rights, dignity and aptitude

It is all about the important lesson
A truth that can never go out of fashion
We must go beyond what is “me and mine”
It is not just about what’s mine and thine

Lest our future is buried under the remains
Let’s consolidate solidarity’s gains
Let’s make the resolve to connect together
Instead of “Me and mine”, “we and ours” is better

Without the sweat of solidarity, community cannot shine
“We and ours” can defeat the onslaught of the MINE
Let’s together defeat the abusive merchants of dirt
Let’s ensure that green remains our valley and earth

Pravin Sabnis
4 April 2008, Goa