News

By Paramjit Singh Bakhshi

A fourteen-year-old rape victim commits suicide, shocked   

That her parents proposed a compromise with the accused.

And next to it the news

A groom who never learnt to drive runs over a few

On his wedding night with the car that is part of his dowry.

An old politician shoots himself unable to handle shame

Or prove his innocence. The accuser his own daughter in law

Seeking divorce, testifies he molested her daughter.

Elsewhere in Kashmir, a terrorist kills a TV artiste

Because acting and singing is against the Quran.

Closer home an acquaintance’s dying declaration

Upon his suicide has a missionary behind bars.

This is The Times of India on this day of May

Yet this is not all it has to say.

The days are still so bloody in Texas an eighteen-year-old

Shoots nineteen children, two adults,

Casualties continue to mount.in the Russia-Ukraine war.

The price of crude reaches level obscene.

China is upset with Quad, neighboring nations seek IMF bailout,

Markets are up one day and down the very next one

Are we naturally immoral, or just confused,

Everybody’s road map at odds with another’s

Our anxiety to survive overpowering all sense.

We are supposedly intelligent but still dense.

I blocked out the TV channels, I need my peace of mind,

And now from today will survive on zero news feed.

Somebody said truth is stranger than fiction

But somehow the latter because untrue

Somewhat more palatable

By Paramjit Singh Bakhshi