Poetry

The Emerging Babas

The other day the headlines read

Another ‘baba’ was caught and sent

To the jail where he cried

And rent the air

Filling all with disgust and dread

This one is a ‘flowering head’

Collects huge alms and builds his regime.

In ancient days the ‘babas’ all

Lived a plain and simple life

Dreading God in fear of hell, not fine

Like mushrooms they spring up everywhere

Fooling people ‘status’ and all

Politicians too, line up and touch

 Their dirty feet to preach untruths

They garland, bow, and secretly vow

To help erect their empire large

 Fiddling, twiddling, passing time

 Their secret funds rise up and fly

Rapes and frauds, murders unwind

When some girls begin to whine

Reasons there are beyond control

 For these very devoted girls

Fooled and trapped, screwed up for life

They whimper and recoil to fight

 Caught and lost in religious fantasy

 Fret and lose their life.

Too late the parents pant in vain

 Run here and there for justice, too late

Law is blind they do not know

The scales are tilted too late they opine.

                                   ~Shobha Diwakar

                                    Jabalpur, India

 * Babas are religious quacks

   garbed in wolf’s skin

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