“Oh Unmerciful God! Thank you” -III

Oh! An unmerciful God,

You were so cruel enough to deny

Even minimal time to pray and cry

For your divine intervention to

Save your own ardent discipline

But my Lord, I shall not

Forget your benevolence,

Your hard hearted grace,

In bringing my parents I love

To cry with arms around me

At that time on that fateful day

Thank you Lord! Thank you.

Like dhobis dipping the clothes

In water and then beating them

On the stone in the river bed,

Rhythemacially, continually, and forcefully

I have been beaten now,

But never will be torn by much needed welcome tears;

Shattered, beyond repair, through,

I ‘ll survive more defiantly,

Not yielding to depression and despair.

Goats are not like clothes,

Can they be dipped into water,

Beaten on the stone and

Thrown on the bank dry?

Certainly not.But an ancient

Mythological story talks about

This naïve act of one foolish fellow

While proceeding to marry a girl

By sprinkling turmeric, proved

The scattered flesh and the

Bones of washed goats,

Could be brought back to life;

Goats there did come to life bleating

Here I must live and labor through life crying

By thinking and forgetting, all good and

Bad memories,

The ashes of memories of the past

Allow me to have a full cry now.

“Oh Unmerciful God! Thank you” -II

The sky appeared blue, always

Bright and colorful, without any cloud

Stars danced in the sky and

The trees on earth bloomed with flowers,

A multicolored rainbow like

Life did envelope us fully and forcefully.

His was really, incredibly and unbelievably

A fast paced, hi tech life,

Always fused with humility and spiritual tone;

Why did it abruptly, unexpectedly

Suddenly came to a grinding halt.

Like a bolt from the blue

My poetry and philosophy of life,

My friend, my treasure, my love

Was snatched away from me

By the cross currents of water

How can I wade through my life?

The two tender creepers now

Are struggling to anchor themselves

Without the comfort of father

The performance ended abruptly in the

Middle of a song,

While all of us were really on song

Flung by fate and driven to despair

We have endured that dark night

Of the soul,

And a series of sleepless nights to follow;

Stumbling from“As flies to wanton boys

Are we to the gods”?

Yes, “There is a special providence

In the fall of a sparrow,” you would say

We are all made to believe now.

“Oh Unmerciful God! Thank you” -I

In the early 2000s, my close colleague’s daughter lost her husband in a more tragic accident while attempting to save his friends in a water fall. The sudden loss of life shook all of us and after some time I wrote a few lines about this incident in my dairy. I don’t know where they are now. The following lines in free verse were drafted soon after the tragedy; mid 2002. The face of the tender girl, the daughter of that unfortunate wife was sitting on my lap for long time gave the necessary trigger for these emotive expressions. I revisited them on August3, 2003. With minor editing, I am posting now around 20.10.2010.

Life was Pleasant, fun and joy

Bought home, brought up children;

Comforts of life came,

Like unfailing southwest monsoon.

Always addicted he was to work

That obsession was hardly an inhibition or irritation

To passionate love, big kisses and warm embrace;

Always guaranteed to a massive annual hike in pay and perks,

He hopped from one job to another,

With cultured silence and measured aggression, and

Without wounding the finer sensibility of his employees.

Scarcely I could bother about my own engagement

With work, as my companion husband

Did all the work, including that of mine

More than decent income he earned

Was more than sufficient

For a better and decent living.

In an ancient metropolitan city.

Giving birth to two nice kids, and

Taking care of him profusely with love

Tenderness, friendship, and all the time

Blanketing him with emotional warmth,

And watching the children play and grow

My time was both consumed and invested away

In a more productive and constructive way.

The denial of my professional growth hardly depressed me away.

When Life has began at Sixty, I won’t abandon that, that easily

For a long time, a very long time I have not written in my blog. The blog was created to write more about developments in my area of International Finance but fortunately or unfortunately, it has now become a platform to depict my falling and failings in life with occasional sweet or bright news. In any case the blog writing keeps me in touch with my students, whom I love most, as I love my Economics discipline.

The administrative position in the last five years has distanced me from extensive reading and writing. My journalistic writing in Business line stopped long ago. I know I must revive it. I only know how much that column took me to different parts of the world. Even a few journal articles I contributed on invitation basis had to stop, once the demanding editorship changed. As if to compensate all these loses, I had to lend a helping hand in doing lot of editing and rewriting of PhD student’s thesis, a fortnight ago. There was an unwelcome intervention in the form of escalation of B.P. to warn me that I should not be stupid enough or rather academically greedy enough to continue to lament that I am unable to read or write. I know, I must moderate my academic anxieties.

For the first time in my life after reaching sixty, I realized that I am no longer a young fellow and that I have physical constraints. But I must confess no matter what the B.P reads and no matter how much physical or financial discomfort I will experience, I will subscribe to the view that I am getting old. The most pleasantest part of my sad and sorrowful life is that I will continue to feel young which I fully realized in MBA classroom today. I could deliver in my usual atyle.I only need the zest in life, the spring in steps, to be academically active.

But in the last fortnight I felt that all my friendly and pleasant aspects of my life appeared to be coming to an incredible end and that a new era of life had already begun. Out of desperation and frustration I wrote a few lines in my personal diary not meant for blog. Some excerpts from that:

“I only now wish and pray that the wise and benevolent destiny will not abandon me when I find myself restless, clueless and helpless to withstand some mild discomfort in life. All these things are not new to me . They are as old as history and I am still naïve enough not to take any remedial measure. Hence forward I must do and I will definitely do some minimum things like walking and dieting, which I had failed to do or forgotten to do in my life. There are certain things like walking, drinking adequate water, and doing some minimum stretching exercise etc. should have become a habit by now .But my typical disorderly orderly nature has mysteriously distanced me from walking , the consequence of which I am now reaping . In the last few days I am trying my level best to remember to walk so that I will not be a burden to anyone who is near to me.

I have burdened many, depended on many all through my sixty years of life. I am greatful to everyone who has helped me to grow thus far. I am still unsure for how long I will have to depend upon a few more good souls to sort out certain messy things in my life, especially my administrative life , that is, bringing all my past services to my current work place. My current ailment, which is not very burdensome but definitely appears to be a risky one in view of my experiment with low dose of medicine, has taught me a lesson that I will be more cautious and careful in seeking help from others. Alienation from many, especially from those whom I have loved most and will continue to love them is not deliberate. Indeed I am getting liberated from possessive love. What right do I have to demand the time, the emotion and the energy of people who are not my relatives. Let the supreme give me physical strength and mental stamina that I will not even seek help from my close relations because I know from the reading of literature and the actual happenings in life, no one will be with us if we are in perpetual agony and ailment. Again I am grateful to everyone, all the forces under the Sun which have shaped and swayed me all along my academic career. I will not be a burden to others.

The inner agony, the inexplicable sadness, the turmoil in the heart and the uneasiness in the limbs are clearly visible on my dark face and that revealed to all who are very close to me. I will try to reinvent my natural disposition and appear cheerful and sometimes even pretend to be more cheerful when I am actually not. More meditation, more listening, more tolerance, more accommodation, more forgiveness and so on will give me more peace and balance in the rest of my life.
The German novel, Siddharthan written by one Noble Prize winner, Hessay in the 50’s gave me more confidence and comfort during this period of nervousness and helplessness .I know my asset is a huge amount of social capital that others have built for me. There might be some small erosion or a mild depreciation in it. I am not losing my hope. I will put more order in my academic debris at home and enable God’s order to prevail, “Mr.Sam ! you are not going to change any thing in life, that which has been ordained already will flower or bounce back with inherent physics or force at the appointed hour of destiny. Until then, Wait. Not just wait foolishly but take some courage and will power to write :
What is happening to the world’s Money?
Making sense of the currency crisis of the 90s
Why the current crisis cannot be a Great Depression but still indeed it is great grand father’s recession
Why China’s Renminbi will be at the heart of the Currency war
When will devaluation work
Can we really understand the Real Equilibrium Exchange rate
Understanding Globalization and towards a alternative Globalization
How Ricardo is right and wrong in a Flat world
Is there any crisis in Macro Economics
Growing discontent with Macro Economics
Paul Krugman - A Reader
Joseph Stieglitz –A champion of the Poor
Samuelsson’s corrected version of David Hume’s mechanism; a friendly quarrel.
Revisiting Lawsen Meztler sohmen’s effect
Can a Newyork university professor introduce devaluation in a classical model
Living with disequilibrium exchange rate,
The existential dilemma of Euro
when will Dollar Die and so on.