The Ole Man and His Karma The year, 1934 Undivided India Before the Great War

In the plains of Punjab A boy is born To a wealthy family Overflowing with granaries Tumbling into teens He is a refugee And the eldest of a landless family Partitioned, Independent India In the plains of divided Punjab He educates himself Discarded chalks, broken slates Lugging borrowed books Treading bare foot Schooling under the banyan tree Returning home late evenings Teaching kids his own age To get some dough home For the refugee family Childhood lost Before he knows, he is a man Immersed into borrowed books Acquiring degrees Soon he is the village teacher The toast of the hamlet Tutoring kids With impartiality of faith and creed The eldest of four siblings It is his karma To educate and settle his kin In his early 40s Stolen childhood, forgotten youth He makes his break in the late 70s To the Dark Continent The land of remarkable potential And oil rich, educationally poor Nigeria He makes his mark As an expatriate teacher

Supporting his kith and kin For decades from overseas He ushers in prosperity To the extended families His education to his own kids Are not books But life in totality Paying scant regard to saving For a rainy day He takes his kids out To feel, to touch and play in the rains Taking them places Exotic, tourist, mystic Africa, Europe, Asia Every nook and corner That deserves to be seen Putting them in 5 stars With a pinch So that his kids know what a 5 star is And to see it all From the mighty pyramids To the Big ben, From the peacock throne in Iran To the Eiffel Tower to Beirut They see it all He never sermonises Instead, leads by personal example Of honesty, integrity and simplicity Responsible son, loving husband, Quiet but caring father His own weaknesses Are just games of chess With anyone who is game For a one on one And listening ghazals It is the 80s and onwards His own kids The eldest, a girl Is married off badly The middle one, a son Too engrossed in his dreams A misfit Joins up the Army And is off to distant lands The youngest, a son again

The forever baby is closely clutched Mentally dull, the darling of the family In the last decade of the last century Despite being a mathematician He has no sense of money All spent in good deeds and charity And trying to save his wife From clutches of cancer His companion gone, In a huff, the baby son Is married to bring home A woman, to care and nurture The son and family A bad decision, setting off Lives of regrets The granddaughter born Is blessed with Downs syndrome Into the 21st century With scant regard to possessions He is soon dispossessed Of material things The eldest daughter and son Divorced and on their own The extended families All broken, a trail of mess He is reduced To being a figurehead You can catch the ole man Any time, any day He has nowhere to go A stranger in his own little home He has time for chess always He can teach you, Many a great opening moves He wavers in the middle game The blitzkrieg is too much strain For his asthmatic aged lungs He stumbles in the endgame, It is the cataract in his eyes He cant identify friend from foe For long, and says jovially In chaste Urdu Dont they all

Fall together Into the same box eventually? In his late 70s, now He takes recluse in books of faith Borrowed books, unwavering faith Wearied, yet with karma strong My ole man goes on. Yes, they come to him flocks The daughter, son Sisters and brother And their kids too Occasionally on events Good and bad For inspiration and To draw strength from him To ask of his well being Yet he is so alone We are all alone Karma or not Yes, I am proud to be his son. Not half a man of what he has been I learn loads On shouldering my karma From him! Shyam 19th April 2012 Foot note- The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. The structural requirements of the ghazal are similar in stringency to those of the Petrarchan sonnet. In its style and content it is a genre which has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central themes of love and separation. It is one of the principal poetic forms which the Indo-Perso-Arabic civilization offered to the eastern Islamic world.