Static Equilibrium

This is a poem I wrote when I was working in a city college in 2004. One of my students – Mary Shirley (B Com 1 year) – had gone to Vailankanni for Christmas. She was swept away in the tsunami the next day. Of her family of eight, only her little brother survived. The enormity of this event left me awestruck. Here was a girl – my student, much younger than I – and she now knew what lay on the other side of death. She was a good and honest student, and I knew that whatever accounts she rendered up to the Hereafter, they would have been positive and utterly blameless! Even today I wonder where she is! But the Principal Sister Superior carried on ………

“Plink … plonk … plink”, the bell sounds – “Girls!
We have a special assembly today.”
So how’s today different
From every other day?

For thirty years she’s worn the same
Plain beige blouse and saree.
Shunning colour, hugging faith,
His Cross she wants to carry.

This little dolls’ house with its flowers,
Its hedgerows all in order,
These classrooms where her girls are taught
To prepare for the life hereafter

Flowers of varied colours, these girls
Become women, mothers, chasing careers
In a dynamic, relentless, unforgiving world,
Like Charybdis, swallowing up the years.

Year after year, like her spring flowers
Her students come and go.
But “Plink … plonk … plink” still rules her life
In rhythmic ebb and flow.

A little dolls’ house, a school
Where all the classes are scheduled
No late assignments, no slacking off,
No rest from following rules!

“Plink … plonk … plink”, the Assembly
Today lasted an hour,
To mourn the passing on of one –
A bud nipped before it could flower.

Outside this sheltered world she went
To pray at Vailankanni.
A day after Christmas, she was swept away
By the unexpected tsunami.

One little boy stared bewilderedly.
Where was his family of eight?
Some kindly aunt then took him on.
But he’s still dazed at Fate.

He was the only one to grab
A floating wooden door.
His sisters, parents – all were lost
Forever on the ocean floor.

“Plink … plonk … plink”, classes go on,
Their lost friend they have mourned.
Now back to Science and EDP,
The dreary, predictable sojourn.

Syllabus, semesters, internals
Must nevertheless go on.
Routine shall measure the pulse of life
With plink … plonk … plink each dawn.

But, sister, what’s this perfect world
With nothing out of place –
Not even a fold of that beige saree,
Which you’ve worn with so much grace?

One day this little clockwork school
Will no more be the same.
Lost in that awesome tsunami –
An infinity none can tame!

For what is life but a molecule
Suspended briefly in Time?
Yet we want to perfect it
With rhythm and with rhyme.

But the most “perfectest” things
Are found in randomness,
Unpredictable, irregular, unruly, wild –
Fractals of wilderness.

So it really does not matter much
If schedules are out of sync.
They are just infinitesimal pauses
All disappearing in a blink.

Just like little match-sticks, lives
Are cast out into the sea.
What do moments of perfection
Matter in that infinite tsunami?

If you just take the time to think
Of when life all began –
What came before the Beginning? –
The Ultimate most certainly isn’t Man.