Wake Asia Wake - Part One - 8

Wake not to feel that all is maya all futile all cyclic dust even if it were so the pain lingers pain is cantankerous in the beggar’s strife-torn eyes in the child’s fly-infested blown belly Wake! India! Wake! All is not illusion all is not fake all is not a passing phase the hurt lingers on in the memory of those who died in pain forsaken forbidden trodden on and driven under Wake! India! Wake! To lose even a day no to lose even an hour is to put millions on the block is to set them back by aeons Wake! India! Wake! Rise with the sun rise fresh from yesterday’s toil from poisoning TV commercials and commercials’ mightily airy-fairy movies from jingling song and bill-cooing in gardens from worshipfuls of Bollywood idols Wake! India! Wake! Lull not your finely-tuned senses in lilting goose-pimply melodies let not your far-sighted perceptions become dulled in spurious imitations here in the West they marvel at the speechless facial rhythms of a Satyajit Ray Wake! India! Wake! How do you manage to listen day in and day out to the sentimental romantic quatrains set to rumba and samba cinematic background less-than-roaring forties’ dance music under a decor of piped sky-lancing and prancing tinny gushy melodramatics Wake! India! Wake! Before your children grow up thinking reality is a coloured film-strip in hot gasping halls where plumpy heavily mascara-ed curly moustachio-ed pot-bellied half-men chase blown-up versions of the eternal Sita oozing midrift flesh heaving in rosy gardens Wake! India! Wake! Wake and take the future by the horns it’s no toro that will gore you into the past you need no muleta for a faena with the dark and terrifying future the future’s just a bull raised on cow’s milk in green pastures Wake! India! Wake! (Continued in Part One - 9)