God was Murdered

After working with Fortune 500 firms that employ 10,000-odd people [or ‘resources’ as they prefer calling humans], I’m now with a firm that employs 10-odd people [implied ‘naukars’]. Here, everyone addresses the ‘director & owner’ of the firm as ‘Sir.’ I blasphemously break the norm by addressing him by first name. Whenever I’ve asked anyone why don’t they call him by his real name. They unanimously answer: We call him Sir to show Respect.

Let’s go all the way back to the origins of the word Respect [in my life] My earliest recollection is at age 5. My mother gently told me off when I pounced on Coke [Coca Cola not Cocaine] instead of pouncing on my maternal grandfather’s feet for customary aashirwad when I entered his house. Touching my grandfather’s feet or calling someone ‘Sir’ has nothing to do with respect. The same way a girl’s love for ‘breaking the bed during intimacy’ has nothing to do with the burqa or skimpy dress she chooses to wear. But I was five, and I belie...

1981. I was born. I’m part of a generation, who saw too much. When I began my teenage years [1994], no one had heard of the internet; by the time I finished my teens [2000], internet had become as common as americans smoking hash in rishikesh. Turn of the millennium wasn’t merely symbolic, it was revolutionary as pre-marital coitus. A word that took birth in the dainty, cold-as-Miss Havisham, Finland, became the word that was engraved on a plastic device we all started carrying in our pockets & purses. Nokia. For seven back-to-back years, Nokia was the word of the year alongside Mum & Eminem. In 2007, a fruit was reborn in an alternative avatar. Apple that calls. A month ago {12 Sept ’17}, it gave birth to its first ever twins -  iPlague 8 & X Since 1994, we, humans, have progressed at the speed of light on cocaine. We no longer burn our precious time standing in queues to pay bills or buy flowers; we shop online & order in...

When I worked as a casual employee at the mammoth hospitality firm - MECC in Melbourne, we all got paid a set hourly rate regardless of our ability, gender, intellect, age, or passport. It’d have taken a rather complex algorithm to formulate to pay fairly to all the employees - paying equally made life easier. It avoided discrimination lawsuits by the turds [that’s most of us] who wouldn’t know the difference between a caramel donut & medu vada even when they were eating one. At MECC in 2003, I was getting paid a ridiculous $35 [Australia has the highest minimum worldwide] per hour [on Sundays] to fold & move furniture on trolleys. In case you’re thinking it must have been a difficult, specialised task - it wasn’t. It was an outright unskilled job; even a tipsy, semi-retired, slacker-for-life monkey would’ve done a better job of it than me. Yet, I pocketed a solid $280 after an 8-hour shift - exactly the same amount as Benjamin, who moved 155 pieces of furniture. I m...

One day, while standing roadside next to - a whey-abusing gym-monkey throwing banana peels everywhere with gay abandon and a 14-year-old spitting chewed gum & wrappers straight onto the road joyously - I watched the cars, that floated by, spit out empty water bottles & red bull cans; I serendipitously witnessed a car, whose driver was Instagraming, bang into another car. Smash! The bumper came undone & it quickly blended with the gum, peels, bottles, cans, wrappers. In a civilized country, the Instagramming-dude would’ve come out furiously apologizing followed by immediately sharing his third-party insurer’s details for the repairs [I’ve even seen 19-year-old teenaged Indians do that in Melbourne]. He [the instagramming dolt] came out of his car - all red & stunned - & quickly began accusing the victim that he was driving too slow & not letting him overtake. You know the rest of the story. In that glorious moment, I had an epiphany & I swiftly jotted ...

I've gone through life Committing legalized crimes Mirrors shiver at my sight Sitting here, I'm contrite Writing this poem to set the record right i’ve overlooked cow vigilantes, when they butchered minorities i’ve orchestrated gaslighting, when i made her doubt her own sanity i’ve executed fatshaming, when I trolled fatkid Sonakshi  I've seen women hurt and strike mentally torment men & stood bemused i’ve seen eve teasing & sexist jibes  Instead of intervening, I turned gutless mute for the longest time,  i didn’t rise for mom against dad’s physical abuse I can say I was too young to put up a fight but that’s just a sissy excuse in high school, i fell in love with this girl but i didn’t reveal my heart to her because i was too scared of the outcome what if she didn’t reciprocate my love;  what if she didn’t think I was her one. I've lied & said 'I love you' not to break someone’s heart I'v...

Two humans I know, Niks {sister} & Ria {sinister}, aren’t artists. They paint pictures that are beautiful; they’re craftswomen . Michelangelo is an artist. But for someone like me who can’t draw a rectangular touchscreen cellphone without people confusing it for a sanitary pad having a public meltdown, the difference between a Michel angelo masterpiece and a drunk doodle by a 17-year-old Michel is indistinguishable. Most of Kaur’s readers are like me - clueless about what poetry is - looking for instant gratification and validation from someone mildly famous who’ll say anything nice about them in pretty words & sketches without asking them to change anything about them and assuring that everything that’s wrong in their life is someone else’s fault because they’re beautiful - why - because they were born a woman. I first consciously became aware of Ms. Kaur at a park during a book club gathering where I noticed a privileged human clutching a status-symbol phone in o...