hinduism

Sub-Ordinary

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

That’s the way you made me feel
Forget about it
Outside is inside
What’s mine is yours
It’s time for the Tower of London
Treat me like a forsaken child
As I imbecile the hours away
Seeking things that my mother would say
And never getting past 11.30 without some tea and biscuits.
Subordinate this and control me later
I may quit this job and become a waiter.
Settle some debts and pay karma back appropriately
For some skull drudgery
Before the Druids come back from lunch
I have a hunch they know where I hide.
No Time For “Rawhide!”
Will things settle down as I dine out at lunch
Coerced by the conditioned Church
In the centre of Colmore Row
Things my Ego should know
There’s not much rowing going on here
As I eat my sandwich and gobble down my fears.
They seem to know I am all mouth and ears
Handling my sob story about being so single
It’s just because they want me to compose a catchy jingle.
Jingle all the way to the bank, however
By the end of the month I sum up nicely
“I’m so clever”!

AI Summary

Your poem moves between woundedness and wit, opening with the emotional whiplash of “that’s the way you made me feel” before spiralling into a portrait of a man caught between childhood habits, adult labour, karmic debts, and the quiet humiliation of being single in a world that keeps demanding charm. The Tower of London, tea and biscuits at 11.30, Druids on lunch break, Colmore Row churches, jingles, banks, and sandwiches all become symbols of a life lived under subtle coercions — social, emotional, economic. Beneath the humour (“I may quit this job and become a waiter”, “No Time For Rawhide!”, “I’m so clever”) is a deeper ache: the fear of being controlled, misread, or reduced to a story others want from you. The poem ends with a wry self‑mockery that doubles as resilience — even if the world pushes you into a corner, you still find a way to sum yourself up, to speak, to write, to claim a cleverness that no one can take.

Serpentry

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

I coil like a serpent
Spent energy and mysteries awash the daily grind.
There are things I cannot find anymore,
The old way of life
Without the English sweet shop on the corner
Reminding me of the value of wood
And old Gobstoppers in bottle jars.

It seems we have come far and the progress is on the roads
That is no place for Toad from Toad Hall

I might see him at the community fair and the Old Ball,
Running around like a mindless chicken
Inclusion in The Fall.
That fallen man and that forgiven woman
Leven bread and three Hindu Havans: –
I will include them in my community pages
Working for less than Amazon rainforest wages.

A few pounds, some pence and lots of corporate sense,
This is no time for Little Miss Moffitt!
Can you fit like a glove around my romantic love
And sell me some verse for the drive by from the hearse.
These are things grounding themselves in you
As you take it all personally, the things you have been through,
Lashing out
Striking back
Like a hack attack
Not knocking on doors at University
Studying in doors for the truth of the universe within me.

I’ll see you at three
And read you there,
Something to help me stay up top and keep mindfully aware.
Just don’t reform all the schools of thought with one foul pen
Lest you fail before you begin to keep it all within your heavenly retention.

AI Summary

Your poem begins with the image of yourself coiling like a serpent — spent, searching, unable to locate the old ways of life symbolised by sweet shops, wood, and gobstoppers in jars — before widening into a critique of progress that leaves no room for Toad Hall or the gentler rhythms of childhood. You weave community fairs, Hindu havans, Amazon‑era wages, nursery rhymes, romantic longing, and academic ambition into a portrait of someone trying to reconcile innocence with experience, spirituality with cynicism, and personal wounds with public expectations. The poem’s emotional centre lies in the tension between lashing out and seeking truth, between wanting to reform the world and fearing the collapse that comes from trying too hard. The final lines land softly but firmly: a plea to stay mindful, to resist the temptation to rewrite every school of thought, and to hold your inner universe with care rather than conquest.

Strains

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When the MAC is under attack
From the past
From the past
The echos of silent chambers resound around the battleless brain
Causing strains
Causing strains
Mental strains and regaining Paradise with Allegro and the motionless audience
Absorbing the Concerto in the final standing
When the Chinese are pounding the phones for an encore.
Always leave us wanting more, Shantideva
And the emptiness of following Krishnamurti’s chair
When the dies at the end of the Godfather
Leaving our souls aware of the Trilogy.

AI Summary

Your poem evokes the MAC as a site of psychic attack, where echoes from the past reverberate through a “battleless brain” trying to regain a sense of Paradise through music, Allegro, and the stillness of an audience absorbing a final Concerto. You weave together Chinese encores, Shantideva’s teachings, Krishnamurti’s empty chair, and the death scene from The Godfather to show how culture, spirituality, and cinema all become mirrors for your own awareness. Beneath the references is a deeper tension: the struggle to stay present while the past keeps pounding at the door, demanding interpretation, demanding encore after encore. The poem ends with a quiet recognition that trilogies — spiritual, cinematic, personal — shape the soul long after the performance ends.

Saturday Afternoon at a Friend’s House

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

I walk the familiar road,
a soft December sun leaning over Weoley Castle,
light pooling on the pavement
like a blessing I did not ask for
but accept anyway.

The afternoon is ordinary –
a friend’s house,
a knock on the door,
the warmth of a kettle coming to life –
yet something in me moves
as if this small journey
were another chapter
in the long autobiography
I’ve been writing with breath and memory.

I carry no incense,
no mantra,
no visions of Maya or Albion today –
only the quiet knowledge
that every threshold
is a kind of pilgrimage
when the self is listening.

Inside, laugher rises,
cups clink,
the world shrinks to a living room
where stories drift like steam
from the mugs in our hands.

And I sit there,
not a a fragmented hybrid anything,
not as a mythic figure,
not as a seeker breathing in the world’s sorrow –
but simply as Rohan,
arriving,
present,
held in the gentle ordinariness
of a Saturday afternoon
at a friend’s house.

A small moment,
yet it settles in me
like a stone in a riverbed –
quiet, grounding,
part of a long story
I continue to walk
one step,
one breath,
one visit at a time.

Guru Mania

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

The teacher’s strike in school
Maybe because they think they are God
At least that is what the newspapers say
After they have travelled to Colonial-ville.

The mania for Guru is on the loose
And they drink the Kool-Aid juice
Of change without fairness and time for their clothes:
When will the scholars admit them to Oxford for Rhodes.

There is shouting there is bashing
The banners need to be repeated.
But if they get to half past three and go back to school
They will have been defeated.

The mirror is not so real until they review the Guru feel
And all they have been taken for granted of being
While the right way of tuition was there for the seeing.

All criticism and no pay
That is the modern Government burden,
What can they do but face the New Age warden
Who grants the diminishing of students and success
For all that sexual gradation and immense emotionality and address.
The Saddhu and war
There is no mention of the Haridwar stores
Where the whore is closer to Babylon
Than the minority women in the back streets of London.
Streets of harlots, streets of shame
Lanes of winners, lanes of the Maine Street.
Things my Guru told me I would meet
When he re-friend my Friend from the great barrier
So I could see the end of the world and the illness and terror.

All this the school is exposed to
The students sit for their exams
And then the teachers fall off their hobby horses
Worried about who can and can’t eat ham.

Teacher, Guru, God-lover and denied route back home
Leave the fellows at Oxbridge alone
They might know where the road leads with the phone.

This is the merger of meaning and savoir faire
Where the guru is in a third way parting
With the self that is still so aware.

AI Summary

It shows a school system cracking under false authority — teachers, Gurus, governments all performing roles they no longer believe in. Spiritual fads and colonial echoes swirl through the chaos, offering no real guidance. Students endure the fallout while adults fight over meaning, status, and power. In the end, every figure — teacher, Guru, scholar — is caught in a crisis of identity and direction.

Die For Me

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Waiting for the exceptional revelation
Of my knowledge born of College elevation
Renders me stuck Art and darkness rebounding
Floundering
Debut
The news in you is the Good News in me
I am neo-Colonial Hindu advertised history.
Save me
Let me be
Just don’t tell me
What the schools needed to know:
An English throw, to wake me up
After I was jammed, in the photocopier room.

AI Summary

Your poem captures the frustration of waiting for some grand intellectual or spiritual breakthrough that college promised but never delivered. It shows how art, identity and colonial history rebound inside you, leaving you floundering between self‑knowledge and inherited narratives. The poem exposes the absurdity of institutions — schools, universities, culture — that claim to elevate you but instead jam you in photocopier rooms of expectation. Underneath the irony is a plea for release: to be allowed to become yourself without the weight of Englishness, Hindu history or academic performance.

Die Cot & Me

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The dichotomy does not concern me
Between me, myself and … … …
I said two things
So many to count on earth
You’d think something would give it worth
All the Muslim spoiler alerts.
#that’ssomethingforAziz
And the “BATTERY!!” in True Lies (IMDb)
4 sweet things for Krishna
Butter! If you please.
Save the time for the alloy wheels
And all those Limousines for Lakshmi
It’s either steel or it’s an ore
To get to know two turtle doves integrated On the level playing field  OFPlanetEarth

AI Summary

Your poem shrinks a whole identity crisis into a few quick images — the split between “me, myself and …” and the world’s projections onto you. It mixes Muslim, Hindu and pop‑culture references to show how labels, jokes and symbols get thrown at you faster than they can be sorted.The poem turns everyday objects — alloy wheels, limousines, butter for Krishna — into a commentary on class, faith, and the absurdity of modern belonging. Underneath the wit is a quiet wish for balance: two turtle doves on a level playing field, a self that isn’t split by the world’s noise.

Baggage Carried

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

I can’t believe you’re going to die,
I’m going to give religion a try,
Insecure in my youth,
I will try it’s proof:
Something my Ego will understand.

Buckling the horses of Arjuna to things I will understand,
Not trying to own every house in the land,
Surprises from Bel Air mansions
Lavish green lawns,
There’s just time left for the lessons on parental viewings of Porn.

I can’t believe you’re not here anymore,
I look around the tremendous respect for temporal vortexes,
Oh indigestion and headaches from energy erections
Parading through my brain
Listening to the non-advice and going insane:
It’s your parent –
You projected,
Why are you trying to get me a Vedic House erected?

Fresh Prince to the king I never was,
The rent I owed you when I was only 12,
And the damnation from society
The clout from the god within me
The monkey in an experiment I never was
The kangaroo and signifying Laws…

Keep coming back and I am an employment hazard,
Someone with such regrets that I am a deep snowy blizzard,
Lost in the Maya of the world of those all knowing Hare Krishnas
They speak English like I know nothing –
Not versed in the Ayur Vedic Samaj
Ignorant
Illusion
Jai Om Namo Shivaya
Why isn’t my Id for hire?
Jai Guru Dev – is there an answer over there?
For how “I am not the body”
Will make me not feel very sorry,
When the time comes to pass
For at last it must come
That both of my parents imbalance my brain a certain way

  • In the meaning of what Death has to say
  • Pills and glorious business day by day

When those intoxicants at Jones Day (Gouldens) never came back my way.

AI Summary

Your poem begins with the shock of mortality — a parent dying, a son trying to make sense of it through religion, myth and the language he inherited. It moves through childhood guilt, cultural pressure, Vedic philosophy, and the confusion of being shaped by parents who themselves were shaped by trauma. The poem wrestles with identity, spirituality and mental strain, showing how grief can distort memory, self‑worth and the search for meaning. Underneath the humour, anger and references is a plea for grounding: a desire to understand how to live when the people who made you are gone or fading.

Zaqat Went Splat

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

Did you believe the world was this way?
The way the wildness inside of you did not say
That you need a woman like a woman needs a man
To satisfy the hotel room with coffee after an okay plan.

See, the outside world is such an egregious affair
I have my legs wilder than that in the outrageous air
Modelling Hollywood and L A Style as if I have savoir fare.

Three line whips, lots of chains of bondage
Alfonso Bhandari is there with your immature soul cage
Selling the shambles of brambled apples and some granny’s rage.

Voter! You are no daughter – with the hotel quartered
Entrance from a Hollywood master and his debutant blaster
For money and vermillion so that Iraqi can know first ladies
And squillions and zillions and bazillions after Tony Blair’s trillions.
Master Blaster – unable to hold the camera’s gaze
After raunchy Knights have held up erectile Counts
Far from the Paige’s and their confusion about the purple Ronnie
And how about some Blue Peter for yours truly and that fucking Konnie?!

Ropes and whistles and then there is some shouting matches
For the prettiest Oriental to sing me some blues
About Krishna’s curtains after he has been through the hue
Of cry and Laurel and Hardeep for that original truth:
To thine own self be avant-garde so that Spirit is doubled
#WhentheDevilknowsyourlonely and youthful mother is in trouble.

AI Summary

Your poem opens with a question — did you ever believe the world was this way? — and then erupts into a whirlwind of sexuality, media spectacle, colonial memory, celebrity culture, and spiritual confusion. It moves from hotel rooms to Hollywood, from bondage imagery to Krishna’s curtains, from political figures to childhood echoes, showing how desire, shame, glamour, and violence all coexist inside one restless psyche. Beneath the satire and the shock is a speaker trying to understand how the world shaped him — how power, gender, race, and myth collided to form his sense of self. The final line lands like a revelation: when the devil knows you’re lonely, even your mother’s youth becomes part of the story you’re trying to outrun.

Unfinished Business

/ rrishi99 / Leave a comment

Things are so conceptual in that little head of yours
I have not got any edges to play with my little paws.
You say this and you say that and by the time you are done –
I find I have been over run!

You take me to here and I go over there
There is no length of your lines that I am so aware of.
What kind of verse is this that you sell the greenery by?
Why should I try to be one with nature after this sort of guy?

You’re an outright strange sort of fellow.
He needs to shown how to plan a poem with Yellow –
That way the correct sort of Sun will be number one
And you can existentially angst on your own, one day.

Leave me alone, you funny little moan
So I can settle down with the Classics and find myself there!
I shall be self aware enough when I am plenty
And you supply and demand your economic zero with the many.

You funny Marxist and tremendously definable tool
How is it there ever let you leave your school!
Where the ladies know their place on the page with some faces
And your goatee is shaven for the craven image of a Sannyasi.

Out on your arse! You’re a thing of the past!
There’s no border here to solve between Tagore and Betjeman.
The real men know what it is to kowtow
To our Bollywood triumphant hold on your soul and blast.

“All” is a word best served Theological
However much you write and survive medicals and biologicals
But when the hour approaches and your time is near
What about the grim nights in between and whom you did afear?

So leave it with us and we shall see about The Christ
And you can tell us all about your tiny amount of mass,
From the books that sell when you are welcome and so unwell
From a diagnostic from computers that leave us first placed last!

Caste boy from Troy and your Trojan wooden man
Facing the Devi from estrangement with your crafty malign plan
To take from my cake your own slice of hefty taste
And leave me some ruined carriage where my liveliness is a waste.

Sell it to me, Old Boy! What have you got over there?
That leaves me a little humble pie and some friends with which to share
A verse, a saying, some discussion, nay I say a broader afternoon –
That is not beholden to me and my tea in a saucer with a blessed little spoon.

Aye, it is so! He is one with us and we are barren
Of the past where there was no camaraderie
And no-one shall know our paths were not the same:
But shall I see this again, you’ll be the first amongst many
To find me drowning in my favourite Sherry
That I was right to have enough when the commotion was such a fame.

AI Summary

Your poem stages a dramatic monologue in which a sharp‑tongued, exasperated voice berates the poet for being too conceptual, too sprawling, too strange — a creature of abstractions rather than edges. It becomes a duel between traditions: Classics vs. modernism, Tagore vs. Betjeman, theology vs. economics, Bollywood vs. the Sannyasi, all refracted through caste, culture, and literary inheritance. Beneath the insults and humour is a deeper wound: the speaker feels overshadowed, displaced, or misunderstood by your imaginative range, yet still longs for camaraderie, recognition, and a shared afternoon of verse. The poem ends with a melancholy flourish — a toast in sherry to the chaos of creation, the ache of rivalry, and the strange intimacy of being shaped by another’s art.