Leave some sugar in a jar,

And don’t put the cover tight

The wind will enter

And you won’t know from where

Some insects would be born.

Dr. Jernail S. Anand

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, a renowned poet and writer from Chandigarh, India, shares his mystic poetry

Dr. Jernail S. Anand is a Chandigarh-based socialist campaigner, an ideologue who heads the International Academy of Ethics and authored 170 books. Winner of the international award Charter of Morava, his name is inscribed on Poets’ Rock in Serbia. A rare achievement for an Indian author, who was the only one to be honored by the Serbian Writers Association after Rabindranath Tagore in 1926]

‘INSECTIVITIS: THE UPRISING’ explores a new theory of human evolution, away from the Big Bang and the Theory of Evolution propounded by Charles Darwin.

Image courtesy: Natural History Museum

INSECTIVITIS: THE UPRISING

Leave some sugar in a jar,

And don’t put the cover tight

The wind will enter

And you won’t know from where

Some insects would be born.

It means insects were there

Either in the sugar contained in the jar,

Or in air, in which

We breathed freely,

Unaware of its potential insectivitism.

Gods might have created this earth

And placed it in a jar

[Read atmosphere] and released

Some air,

And the insectalia came into existence.

We may not realize it,

It was neither big bang

Nor Darwin’s theory of evolution,

It was simple mixing together

Of the earth and the wind, in a tight embrace.

I do not deny the presence of sunlight

But insectile growth prefers

Dark conditions,

Only the earth knows

From where they come in hundreds.

We who are in billions across the globe

May have our identity cards

As bona fide residents of

This or that municipality,

Essentially, we belong to the base gen of insects.

I have one more evidence

To prove that insects are man’s ancestors.

They have a weakness for light,

Which blinds them,

And they don’t know when they grow wings.

What can be more proofitable*

Than the passion for the flame

Which insects carry,

And get themselves burnt

In their blind passion for extinction.

[*Proofitable: relates to proof worthiness]

***

‘THE JACK OF ALL TRADES’ breaks into the prevalent idiom, and imparts it a new significance. Jack becomes an object of sympathy and the poem underscores how the poor people are reduced to Jacks so that some ‘masters’ could prosper.

JACKS OF ALL TRADES

Our Jack belongs to all trades,

Because he is master of none.

But we have never thought

Why he belongs to all trades

And why he is not master of even one.

Now, forget Jack as a human being.

Just imagine a tyre being pulled up

With a Jack,

Repaired and then

The Jack is removed.

I am also reminded of the

Multiplicity of Jacks which are arranged

In a systematic manner over which

A plaster sheet is spread,

The roof of the house is ready.

The jack is removed,

Leaving behind a wonderful building.

The masters in this game

Are those who can use

Some other people as Jacks.

So, the Jack lacks the wisdom

Which makes men masters,

Because he is the raw material

Which is discarded

After it has produced master copies.

So many people

The laborers, the office workers,

The ordinary men in the street,

On whose support

Some others build fortunes

Are jacked in their lives,

And lie packed in shanties

From where they are summoned,

Whenever a new building

Is going to be made.

Some of the jacks are in the form

Or bamboo sticks,

And stay in broken homes,

They languish in hunger, while

The masters of the trade build tower.

________________

Published under International Cooperation with "Sindh Courier"