How do you disguise your blessings so well?
For such a long time,
I mistook them for misfortunes.
As I searched for my way
In this desert of shifting dunes.
I took you for a sadist when
You disguised my lessons as tragedy.
Now I know you denied me my gluttony,
When I was just being greedy.
I found you to be a killjoy when
You built me the guardrail,
Till it saved me from crashing
Right into a bottomless hell.
I took you to be heartless when
You locked the door to my own home,
But you saved me from
The choke of the smoke..
Of the fire eating up old plans and hope.
I thought you little more than a pyromaniac,
Who with fire loved to play
When you burnt my bridges down,
As I looked for a path back
To go where my doom lay.
You closed the doors behind my back
So I had to forge ahead in the dark.
Blew the directions away in your storm
Forced me to make my own mark.
And you hoarded my fortune
When all I had wanted
Was to splurge it away on trinkets.
But one can still get tired of the strife..
And so I ask of you today, Life,
Haven’t you got some of my old luck left?
Let me then encash some of it..
Buy myself a balm for my pain,
It’s been dry for far too long
This monsoon, won’t you let it rain?
—-
AKS. Bengaluru. August 2021