Marching with Renewed Motives! - Theophine Sj

 

Marching with Renewed Motives!

Untouched is the world

            Caused by a coronavirus pandemic.

Baffled are the people worldwide

            To comprehend, combat and cope with it.

Broken is the long-preserving philosophy

            Of religious faith practices, traditions and patterns.

Boisterous are the wild and domestic creatures

            As no human is found on a road to deprive of their freedom.

Far-fetched is the loss of economy

            At family, corporate, national and global level.

Could this epidemic be considered rather a third world war?

            The whole world is at stake now.

It is a terrific war not between the resentful countries

            But a living and killing entities.

The battle is historical and actually unprecedented in modern times;

The daily occurrences, what we hear these days, happen beyond limits.

Ideally, the world goes indoors and prolongs its lockdown,

            Pragmatically, the poor have no doors and live unroofed.

The politicians are unprepared and retrogressive in fighting against COVID,

            Consequently, their original capacity and commitment have been disclosed.

On the contrary,

The growing problem of domestic violence has no end;

            Casteist atrocities, abuses, rapes and deaths are unstoppable even at this menace.

It makes clear that COVID’s social distancing is less cruel than Dalit’s distress;

            Untouchability is more discriminatory than physical distancing.

What we go through a kind of social distancing is slightly similar to

What precisely the exclusion of the marginalized for ages.

COIVD unwontedly put us all in experiencing the Dalit way of living

            The way we live today will expire at some point but no longer for the Dalits.

A common affirmation of an absence of one’s existence stands up while staying indoors

How it will be then for Dalits being contrived for generation after generation!

Dehumanized, victimized, oppressed and marginalized are the Dalits;

            The adherence to a caste system is more venomous than Coronavirus.

Casteism and apartheid as a virus killed more in the world than C-virus

            No vaccine been found yet to terminate neither of them.

The road to life is apparently messed up and our lives become stagnant;

The change needed is really in our hearts and not elsewhere.

It’s time to deconstruct the driving ideologies and traditions critically,

            In order to reconstruct the just human-society universally.

In addition,

COIVD prompts us to move from the era of change to a change of era!

Let bygones be bygones

No matter what we lose during the quarantine

No wonder what we gain at this juncture

What matters is this…

The audacity to hope!

A daring dream for better future;

An optimistic outlook to step forward;

Let’s get down to a new normal.

Keep your pecker up! 

“The roads are not diverged but muddled up at present.

I am sorry and perplexed that I could not tread ahead…

At one point, I thought a while and endeavored to create a unique path

to march with renewed motives.

And so, I rediscover my way steering - striving & shining!

P. Theophine Michael SJ