‘The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of individuals composing it….’

Peter Gill

Peter Gill, rising hernshaw, India Inc,

MD Trill. Sports a Raymond Weil

On his wrist. Subsists on beverages such

As lemongrass, iced tea – on an average

Six cups a day. Heir to papa’s empire

Of charge chrome – favourite drink, Vodka Beluga; often

Shuttles between Hakkasan London, Sofitel

New York – dines at weekend on Mumbai’sTaj

Or Zodiac Grill. A fastidious groomer

Is Peter Gill. Shampoo – Killer Strands,

Moisturiser – Schumer, Perfume – Bulgari and Brods;

Footwear – Berluti, Tod’s. Commands an opulent

Wardrobe of tuxedos – Dolce and Gabbana,

Gieves and Hawkes -Attolini and Piana.

Sneakers – Nike and Bawana. Peter Gill,

Polished Wog, lives in capital’s Malcha Marg,

Hooked to stereo-telly, Olifben and Bang – and one

Shaggy poodle, Shang. Every morning in silken bathrobes

Browses through the Wall Street and Forbes. Has a flair

For the au courant gadgetry – i-phone, i-pad,

Blackberry, two Macbook Air Laptops and now,

The newest Windows-8 as additional

Prop. Nothing is haphazard, hotchpotch

In his climb to the top. Peter Gill will

Leave every Jack & Jill behind. Just

You wait and watch.

Elegy on a Youth Killed While Over-speeding

The car is a raddled ruin against a tree,

Quadruped of steel turned turtle; he lies

Upon his own map of blood as

An uncaring hoi polloi

Stares at him with schadenfreude –

A hobbledehoy

Raised on easy money

Who spent the day chivvying

Bints or racing cars

Smothering scores of fags

Between fingertips – and his girl-friends

With kisses

Who took him for a lover. Brooding

Gravitas! So supine

Upon the windshield’s slivers

Of deckled glass, how do you

Feel now being kissed by death and no dolls

To show their faces here?

I’ll tell Mom and Dad

Wherever you go

No calamity can befall you

That has not befallen

Other men before – things

Remain as they are. It matters little

One Lamborghini less in the traffic

Passing between the legs of India Gate.

In a splash of splurge you, perhaps, forgot

Living, a skill dad’s lucre could not buy,

Nor a brash and branking gesture make dying an art.

A 19-year old son of a reputed property dealer in South Delhi was killed when the Lamborghini he was driving crashed into the railings adjoining a bus stand in South Delhi — apparently due to over-speeding. Recent Delhi Traffic Police survey has revealed that every second offender challaned for drunk driving falls within the age group 19-25. The young drivers almost always belong to uppercrust families.

Advice of a NMML Fellow to a Researcher

 In recent years, no history topper

Wrote on Indus Valley or Harappа

The ancient Hindu civilisation

Is about this or that god’s visitation.

Omit, too, the age medieval

And Mohammed’s early raiders evil.

If you are sagacious career-wise

The Moghuls are what you should eulogise.

Magnify Akbar, Shahjahan, please.

Whitewash Aurangzeb’s atrocities.

(Oft, when we write history books

Icons we make of errant crooks!)

Since Nehru Memorial is colonised

The British Rule is never criticised

In pre-independence era, Congress alone

Challenged the might of the British throne.

But should you pick a Non-Congress hero

Play down his role – minimal to zero.

Hold that after 1947

India, indeed, is such a heaven.

Hype the Nehru-Gandhi clan,

And you’ll be an acclaimed historian, Man.

Manmohan Ghose

English was not the tongue of his mother

Yet it was Albion he loved and loathed Bengal

Despising the self and wooing the other

Could there be a more ignominious fall?

* Manmohan Ghose – A real ‘Coconut’,if there was one (brown outside, white inside). Here is a letter he wrote from Britain to a Bengali friend in Calcutta. ‘There is nothing I dread so much as going back to India. I am four-fifths an Englishman and feel quite at home here. There, I should be utterly out of sympathy with everything. …. I know neither the people nor the language.’

Yuppies’ Song

Friends are jealous.

Relatives hate us

For we got the dough

We got the go

We got status.

They bill us tadpoles

Contending in a well

Measuring our leaps

From stone to stone

They haven’t known

Our cut-throat hell

Judging through peeps

Of their two-room holes.

They call us whiz-kids

Look at us hard

Say, we are a pattern of holes

Just a pattern of holes

In a market-research punching card.

May be it’s our goatee beards

May be it’s our ritzy faces

May be it’s contact in high places

We get things done at a pace that’s weird.

And they fling us taunts

For our foreign jaunts.

They call it a folly

Our yen for lolly

Deem it ill-gotten

‘Cause we don’t keep a house

‘Cause we don’t stick to a spouse

They call us rotten.

Friends are jealous.

Relatives hate us

For we got the dough

We got the go

We got status.

Tycoon’s Son

Call him ‘sunflower’ who blooms

In a bed of dad’s garden. Don’t ask

What he did to step into dad’s shoes.

Powershoes, yes. Now he proclaims the Belvedere’s

Club membership, Diner’s Card, Ferrari,

And that lotus-face dipped in pond-scum.

In this land of flood and drought, dust and heat,

Is there anything scarce or dear? He strides,

A rich tie noosing his fat neck, in bulging Charaghdin

Like a taxidermed wolf, his ear

Still tuned to the stereo of his car. Does he

Hear the gravel scrunching under his feet?

Lawyers – Patiala Courts

Only the ill-fated

Go to these court-crows

In black coats

Who will caw caw for them

Before some judge

Or magistrate.

Well do they know the litigant’s

Voyage of travail, procedural

Delays, routine adjournments, and

All the labyrinthine ways

They will carry him year after year

Piggy-back as slimy snails.

Handouts to the clerks, payolas to the notary.

Freebies to the criers. ‘Ah, the system

Is so rotten these days’, an advocate rails

To his client, ‘Your case may be strong… but the Bench

Is as crooked as the one we sit on. Who can

Rule out some insidious tilt in the scales?”

 

Medical Specialist

When I passed out of college

With all my medical knowledge

I found I was quite out of luck

For a man of any station

Pursuing any vocation

Was making a faster buck.

Without being a cynic

I opened my clinic

By tenanting two modest suites

But a plain MBBS

Gets no patients more or less

I was soon thrown out on the streets.

Then I spoke to my father

I’d go overseas rather

And acquire a higher degree

So he paid for me to New York

Where I sold icecream in a park

And returned after two years or three.

Again a clinic I set up

Improved its overall get-up

Being a specialist now from the States

O the Hippocrates’ oath

Is bad for money growth

My palms itched for easy money, Mates!

I abandoned the poor

As clientele for cure

From now on I’ll fleece the rich

The contractor and trader

The perpetual tax-evader

Yes, every filthy son of a bitch!

 

 

Broker – Stock Market

You may not know or perhaps you do

Stock market deals with stocks and shares

If I say it harbours bulls and bears

Don’t mix with circus or a zoo.

The bulls unload, the bears hammer

It’s they who cause all the clamour

 And many a seismic fiscal-tremor.

Lucky those who make profits plump

By assessing market sentiment

Others by mere presentiment

Can guess the coming market slump.

Most despite handy tips

Say, who knows when market soars or dips,

It’s easier to presage tides than scrips.

Stock market is a capricious lake,

Infested with business crocodiles.

They seem to keep low profiles,

Always sharp – though half-awake,

Promoters all, a breed of windbags

Splashing issues in tabloids, mags,

Promising gold, if you’re in rags.

I do not mean to stick a spoke

Investor, in your enterprise

I mustn’t fail to put you wise –

Good brokers normally leave one broke.

So to prevent a misadventure

If you are new, don’t chance to venture

Beyond a safe long-term debenture.

* As many as 35 stock brokers were probed by capital market regulator SEBI for possible lapses in controls related to insider trading, money laundering and terror financing. – Indian Express 10 September, 2011

Loan Department Incharge (ICICI Bank)

If you’re wise, you earning guys

You’ll come to us for house & car loans

But should you default paying EMIs,

Our goons would break your bones.

* One Harsh Sharma complained to the court how he was beaten up and his new Maruti Swift taken away by a bunch of bouncers of the ICICI Bank, when he missed paying two loan instalments to their South Delhi Branch (News Item 05 Oct 2010).

Chartered Accountants

These glorified articled clerks

Often act as Tribunal sharks.

Facilitate books being cooked

Alas! Such crooks are rarely booked.

* An Accountant Member, R P Rajesh, part of I-Tax Apellate Tribunal wrote several judgements in favour of Corporates (with NL Dash as Judicial Member) that caused loss of crores of rupees to the Exchequer. – Indian Express 19 Nov 2012

Realtors

Their schemes are like blueprints of dacoits in a den

They promise you a flat and hand you a sheep-pen.

Young Turk

Some mummy-daddy’s clone, this Turk,

Ubiquitous at dos – all play and no work;

Year-long you see him scrounge

In Lok Sabha lobby or 5-star lounge,

A hanger-on, a dandy and a jerk.

The HNWI

The proles can scarcely gauge our hurt

(Their needs are few and budgets clearer

Save when onion prices spurt

Or, Mother Dairy milk turns dearer).

We breathe an atmosphere rarer,

The goodies we seek cause a bigger hole in our shirt.

Yes, the obolus might as well laugh

That yearly I change my chronograph,

Would soon replace my year-old Rado

With a bejewelled Rolex, carved like a dado.

Don’t think please, my tastes are starry

If I sip champagne and dine on caviar,

Chuck my Audi for a new Ferrari,

Or puff out a Cohibasiglo cigar.

My kickie-wickie, too, eyes pricey things,

Maquillage au courant, Sculptra facelift,

A Steinway piano, Tiffany rings,

And a Mediterranean cruise as her birthday gift.

* If rising prices of food and fuel are hurting the common man, the richierich (High Net Worth Individuals) club has its own inflation-related worriesthat is, in prices of high-end lifestyle products. The Times of India 03 Sep 2011

An MP Contends How *LAD Scheme Is Meant For Exclusive Use Of His Kin

To quarter on that social purse,

My nephews, nieces, sisters, brothers

So depend upon, while people curse –

Well, it has to be at the expense of others.

* Under the MP Local Area Devlopment (MPLAD )Scheme, an MP is allotted Rs.5 Crore annually to spend on his constituency.

MLA

A Minister’s son, a history-sheeter,

Or a student-union leader

When elected does greatly fancy

Each slice of his constituency

And sets about to plunder, pillage

Every tiny hamlet, village.

Neta

As every cobweb screens a spider

Behind every scam is this insider.

Before elections, he swore

He’ll work for us day and night

After elections, he shut the door

Turned into a felon and a parasite.

Now whenever he’s caught as a thief

He gives a long-winded Press brief;

Or over the telly-channel does brag

I’m abs clean, it’s the opponent’s locker stuffed with swag.

* Loot-paat karva do ghar-baar mein, Arey, dange karva do bazaar mein. Maine kaha, ‘kya hai paisa, Kuchh bhi kar doon aisa, Is Kursi ke pyar mein’.

An Offended Mantriji Addressing A Media Conference

Is it right that you growl and you whine

Over sale of some spectrum, or iron-ore mine?

When we don’t auction coal-blocks, you get into a tizzy

Not realising we allocate because we are so busy,

Nor do you ever calmly withstand,

If we grab thousand acres of some prime land;

And when the nation’s Public Debt mounts

Is it right you eye our Swiss Bank accounts?

Ruling Hands

In fealty to their leader not a moment do they falter

Congress their party (until the times alter)

Set aside their squabbles, swallow their pride

Expediency joins, if castes divide;

A harijan and brahmin squat side by side.

If elections are purple, a Congress ticket is mauve,

A seat on Treasury Bench, a treasure trove.

To keep the nation ahead, they strive so very hard

In a year of drought, they all jaunt abroad

Rain their fustian upon artless crowds

‘We’ve ordered import of a million bales of clouds.’

Spokesman Congress At A Mass Rally

He is a smart one, who speaks up for the clan

To justify graft is his diabolic plan.

Probity is not a marked feature of the common man,

If you stomach petty thieves, why grudge us brigands?

The benchmark by which you measure those in chair

(If you have to be just and have to be fair)

Must be the same by which you measure yourselves

What if we stack gold bricks in secret shelves?

Or in five star lounges tipple cocktails?

What if innocuous crooks cool their heels in jails?

We are the purveyors of power know this –

Law is a fangless snake that can’t even hiss.

By our fingers dangle the marionettes of courts,

And gold downs drawbridges of the strongest forts.

From party cadres are we all, there is a law we learn by rote:

Keep the wretched voter poor, then it’s cheap to buy his vote.

Campus Blues

I

Hooda’s Proposal

Daily I’m dumped by a “U-Special

Which runs along the Najafgarh drain

While you arrive after having a facial

In your Honda, with Pinky Jain.

It’s true your face is broad as a dahlia

But I go crazy, thinking of you, Miss Walia.

And I can swear by all the Heavens,

Every night you appear in my swevens.

Could I be lace to your petticoat

The hem to your padded bra

(Mind not, Miss, these coarse reflections,

For the youth of Haryana are raw)

But my sentiments, do please note,

If ever you contest elections,

Kasam se, you will have my vote.

* U-Special University Special Bus

II

A Friend’s Advice To A Lovesick Romeo

You are a damn fool

To persist in your folly

To dream and drool

About your fickle dolly.

Ere falling in love madly,

With that crafty kitten

You never thought how badly

You’d be bruised and bitten.