This is a poem written by an 11 year old online student of mine. His name is Sohum and he lives in Australia.I was trying to get him to discipline his writing and decided poetry would help. I suggested he read some of the War Poets like Owen, Brooke and Sassoon, which he did, and this is what he came up with within a few minutes! I don't think he copied anyone, he was simply inspired by the rage and sadness in the poems. I have polished it a little- a very little- not because he could not have done the editing himself, but because being 11 he gets fidgetty  and types carelessly.I have his and his dad's permission to publish his poem in my blog. This poem could easily be put to music. Its like a song-lyric and the melancholy refrain reminds me of Danny Boy.

Untitled poem by Sohum Jain

Falling snow

drifts so slow

like raindrops

Soldier boy come home

Bells are chiming

Mother waits

Father waits

on bended knees

Come home

Come home

Comforting

Praying

for you for you

Soldier boy come home

Come to your mother's arms

Soldier boy mother waits

for you for you

Father comforts

through sleepless nights

repeating Son, don't die,

God,  I believe in you

Drowning himself in beer

father cries

sobbing until he sleeps

In the morning 

the tears

still as fresh as dew

Mother  locked away

in a stony wall of silence

speaking to no one

as if bound by 

invisible ropes

Father talks of glory

fearing the worst

hoping for the best

Soldier boy come home

Soldier boy come home

blood covers the battlefield

bullets strike home

Pray to God

ask him for strength

ask Him to return you home

Comrades falling one by one

blood like a field

of crimson roses

bullets whizzing past

bombs whistling down

Your mother misses you

wants to welcome you

in her arms

Soldier boy come home

How to manage on a shoestring budget

Money behaves oddly, like a frisky goat. One thing is for sure prices go up and never come down, but the older one gets the income starts to shrink. Children may or may not contribute.

 How to manage on a shoestring budget? 

Here are a few tips:

•  make a random list of necessary expenses.
• make a second list  prioritizing the items.
• estimate the expenditure against each, the total is what you just have to spend every month.
• In the priority list are electricity, cooking gas, vehicle fuel if you have a car, transport , education, municipal taxes, income and wealth tax( not really applicable here because I presume you don't earn enough to be taxed). After these cant-do-without items ,list food and clothes. These are essential too but one can save on expense here by doing without some stuff.  
• Avoid loans as these actually increase the burden and the headache. 
• Remember it is better to go without than to borrow.
• Don't drink
• Don't smoke
• Keep a little sum of money aside whenever you can.
• Go window-shopping, but don't step inside the shop.
• Walk when you can and avoid transport.
• Avoid using the car frequently - you will contribute to a greener fresher world.
• If you have a patch of land grow your own herbs, veggies, fruits. One can have coriander,mint, chillies etc in pots.
• If you live in a large house and security is a problem keep  a couple of strays as pets, this is considerably cheaper than keeping a security guard or durwan. Dogs are loyal and loving.
• Use cooking oil sparingly, make preserves of veg and fruits  when they are in season and consequently cheaper.

Try these tips now.More next time. Let me know if you have any ideas on how to beat inflation.

How to get rid of Guilt!

Easy Lies

Small lies... Harmless little feathery lies, silly silky fluttering flattering moth-soft lies that brush against the listeners'  faces and make them smile. Lies innocent as butterflies - as short-lived  and light-as-air. Touchstone's definition does not include these.
I started small with Johnny, Johnny, Yes, Papa lies. Three older sisters ready to catch me out. I'd sneak out their comics and story-books from under their pillows while they slept. Instincts of self-preservation made me lie with a straight face. 'I haven't touched your stupid book', 'How am I to know where you've kept it!'
At school  a sunny smile helped- 'I wasn't talking', 'I've left my homework at home'.
Lies were there, lying all about me, to shield me from punishment.
Lies - yes... but what a lot of truth those lies revealed about me, my childhood. My naive defences  were no defences at all - mum seemed to know everything but she never scolded or smacked me. I felt low with feelings of guilt if I lied to mum, but had no compunction whatever about fibbing to my sisters! They would rave and rant a bit, but that was all.
Not that I didn't wish to be good and honest like Uncle Arthur's Gladys Great-heart, but I realised quite early that  there is a wide chasm between the ideal and the real, and unknowingly I put the teachings of a Zen master into practice -  in a moment of crisis for me I was the most important person and the most important task was to save my bacon and the most important time was 'now'.
In my teens and twenties I  dabbled with the truth, and emerged battle-worn and weary.
Discretion is now my watchword. People ask for an opinion, but don't want to hear the truth...they just want a back-up!
Lies are the sponge-soft mattresses, the cosy quilts on  wintry mornings.  I think, and this is my honest opinion, lies are just as important and essential to living as the truth.Guileless lies are guiltless lies. If I can make someone happier or more confident with a small harmless little lie, well why not? No Hiroshima will be destroyed by it.
So get rid of your guilt and go ahead and spread some buttery sunshine around.

random thoughts

these words  exist for the moment on my screen and then forever in space. I feel very bold,venturing where no man has gone before. I have my own designated space in the internet cosmos,where I can be myself, liberated from the time and space continuum.I exist forever without body without bondage,unfettered by country,society,family.I am freer than Ariel,I can be as gross as Caliban if I choose, the mantra here is more powerful than any of Prospero.

Summer Clouds of Remembrance

hullo there,everyone and anyone.
Sometimes one feels like just sitting back and mulling over the past.Its not easy to remember because one's mistakes,-especially the ones of decision,made in the heat of the moment or in a hurry or under pressure or simply because one ran out of options,-tend to dominate the memory.Why do we recall bad times rather than the good? Why do we recall hurt clearly and not happiness?
My childhood memories are luckily more good than bad.In fact my experiences as a child have helped to sustain me in adulthood and age. As far as I recollect nothing particularly tragic or ecstatic happened, just feather-soft moments of joy and comfort, of becoming aware of  Nature, of the world within me. 
I would like to share these with everybody.I just hope I find the right words to convey my past.Nothing lurid 
nothing shocking,nothing titillating,yet appealing to the senses,the sensibilities. 
I was a quiet child,living in the world through my sketches.Mum would buy me, daily, a Bahadur drawing book, with the picture of a lancer on horseback adorning the yellow cover.I would,every evening ,fill up the pages with pencil thin people,particularly cowboys and Indians,give them names and murmur their stories to myself.My three elder sisters would be away at school from 10am to 4pm plus some time spent after school hours chatting with friends. I missed them not a whit, home at 1 Lee Road was that much more peaceful without them. Not that I minded having them around, so long as they didn't disturb me.
They,Eta,Lila and Loka were respectively eight,six and five years older than me.On holidays they would take out their toy cooking utensils,empty cartons etc and set up shop on shoeboxes in the corners of dad and mum's bedroom.They would "Hello,dear" each other and so the game was called "Hello,dear".I would trot up to Eta and say,"Lemme play no" and Eta would refer me to Lila.I'd then trundle over to Lila and plead "Lemme play no" and Lila would say "There's no space here, go and join Loka". I'd then go over to Loka's corner and beg"Lemme play no" and she'd say" Go to Eta, there's no room here" to which I would pathetically reply "Been there an' asked her" to which she'd suggest I go over to Lila and I'd reply sadly "Been there too".
Perhaps it was just as well they excluded the little nuisance that I must have been otherwise I may never have read as much as I have nor perfected my sketching skills.I seized whatever reading material I could lay my hands on, - pamphlets, newspapers, magazines,comics,books, I even read the tiny writing on bottles of medicine and cosmetics.By the time I was ten my sisters called me the "walking encyclopaedia". I'd even skimmed through dad's medical books and journals with their horrific pictures.My mind was starving and I fed it every tidbit available including a pornographic yellow-covered anonymous slim volume called 'Kate Perceval' that was ,unknown to parents and teachers, doing the rounds in the senior classes of GMGS. A patient of my dad gave him D.H.Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', a book banned at the time and not easily available. I was about 6 or 7 then I think. Dad had issued strict instructions that none of us was to even touch the novel.However I dared to leaf through the book one sunny afternoon.I found the affair of John Thomas and Lady Jane pretty stupid, but could not resist reading the parts that struck me even then as singularly vulgar.
more later.

Shiva

Satan ,I think, is modelled on  Shiva, the Hindu deity.It was Satan's horns that put me on this track. The horns of Satan are the points of the crescent moon that adorns the head of Shiva. It was commonplace enough for a nascent religion to debase the older religion which it tried to supplant, for instance the Zoroastrians worship Ahura Mazda and the demons are the devas, in Hinduism the devas are the gods and the demons are the asuras. Yet another factor that convinced me was that Shiva is accompanied by a wild bunch, the devils and imps of Satan perhaps.And then there is Shiva's trident, a weapon patronised by Satan and others.
If anyone elaborates on my theory, which I dont think anyone else has suggested before, please acknowledge your debt to me as prime mover!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

I don't recollect any one mentioning this before but I think, in fact I'm sure, that the ancient mariner is Ulysses. Coleridge must have got his idea of Ulysses sinning and being punished from Dante's Inferno. If anyone would like to explore this theory please be so kind as to acknowledge your debt to me for the idea.I may not wander in the groves of academe but there is this ego within me that craves recognition,however trifling it may be.