Lost Across The Universes

 

I had a South Indian origin and name,

But I was born and Schooled in the north;

One sunny afternoon, post our History class,

My friends realized that I was a ‘Dravidian’ and hence was different;

I neither spoke Tamil nor carried any baggage but I was named,

I was named and called a ‘Dravidian’, and I felt lost amongst my ‘Aryan’ friends.

 

I studied hard,

I wanted to make a career;

But I didn’t do good enough for them,

For, they called me out, they called me ‘privileged’ and  ‘upper’;

I was named and called an ‘upper’, and I felt lost in the battle of classes.

 

I was a moderate but I had my viewpoint,

I never aligned but I expressed my opinion;

When I found someone precise, I hailed it right,

When I found someone wrong, I called out strong;

I believed in multiplicity of ideas,

And in diversity of thoughts,

They only propagated binarism of followership;

They kept drawing up battle lines,

And I didn’t want to be on either side;

They all longed for my extended hand,

But wanted me to exit the no-man’s land;

And I felt lost between the lines.

 

The Cosmos is a myth, or ethereal at most,

And I have realized, through a lifelong dilemma,

That we are just a collection of parochial universes;

Universes of class, colour, creed, region, language, polity and cults,

And there are no intersections designed in these venn;

For, there is nothing universal,

It is just your universe versus mine;

And I feel lost, like a miniscule fragment,  across these chasmic universes.