YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT

                                    Dr Jernail S. Anand

The forces of nemesis, and the furies, are moving around, looking for moral blemishes, and they spare neither the individual nor the society. -Anand

Bible says: Your sins will find your out. I think it applies to men as individuals, and the society as a whole.

As civilized human beings, we have set up courts to ensure justice to the aggrieved, and punishment to the aggressors who violate the laws of the country. Jails are overflowing with criminals undergoing sentences. Justice, it is said,  is often delayed, and sometimes,  entirely miscarried. Of late, justice eludes people due to interventions from the above, and what we come across is a jumbled face of a society which cannot recognize itself.

However, when it comes to the divine court, there are no chances of justice going astray. It may appear to be delayed, but it is definitely delivered.  While human courts take cognizance of the crimes which are reported, the supreme court of gods has a sprawling campus, and it works suo moto, and does not like excess of any kind. They carry all the data of these people with them and sometimes they punish them there and then, but most of the times, they wait for the appropriate moment.  But one thing can be said with conviction. No advocate, however pricey, can waylay the this court. No crooked wisdom can delay justice. The system is entirely blameless. Angels carry data which is up to date, and they act unbiased like machines which are innocent by all means, if there is any one to blame, it is man who operates them.

As in human courts,  parameters regarding crime and their punishment exist in divine courts also. They fix the crime of the person, and then, award him the punishment he deserves. Only this roster is not made public. As generally believed, our judgement proceedings do not start after our death. Operation scan is going on all the time. We are under the gaze of the angels. While human laws get into action when some crime has been committed, the divine court takes cognizance

of what you think, what you feel, and then, finally, what you act.

Societies are Judged as a whole

It is all about your ‘Karma’. Lord Krishna was right when he laid stress on human action which is finally considered by gods and on the basis of which, you are granted heaven or hell. Gurbani also talks of life as a ‘karma Sandra khet’ i.e. a field where your actions matter. Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that men have the power over their action only. Not on the reverberations of that act. In fact, here the Newton’s third law of an action having an equal and opposite reaction also comes into the dock, because, that may be true in a physical world, but in the metaphysical world, you don’t know what will happen to your action and how gods will react to it.

Moreover, there are thousand wrong passions doing the rounds of our blood, a thousand things which we cannot do, because of fear of the law, we are always mentally busy with things which civil society does not allow, how does that impact our score in life? There are so many people who are doing wrong things, yet they are not detected, because they are not visible to the law. How are they to be accounted for?

No doubt, we matter to the cosmos as individuals. We have a dedicated account with gods. The reason is our birth is individualized. Even in our death, we die individuals, though it may be a collective grave, as the drowning of a Titanic. But, in addition to being an individual, we are part of a society.

Unified View of Society

Who is there that takes a unified view of the people as a whole?  Gods who are on mision spy, take stock of the way people behave, and then take decisions about their collective destiny.  I can elaborate it by quoting the example of Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s great writing ‘Babarwani’ in which he says that the tyrannical acts which Babur inflicted on the people of Hindustan could have been averted if the people had been wiser. Guru sahib  says ‘Aape dos n deyee karta, Jam kar Mughal chadaya’ ie. the Mughal aggressed upon the people like a Yama,  all because of their wrong deeds.

Thus, when a society fails in its morals, when people as a whole become corrupt, when people stop taking interest in good, when good deeds go unrewarded, and the murders, rapes, and evil mongers  take the main space, when the society is ruled by the corrupt, and when the poor are pushed to the edge, the society as a whole is ripe for divine retribution.

The forces of the nemesis, and the furies, are moving around, looking for moral blemishes, and they spare neither individual nor the society.  A layman once stopped an angel in a dream and asked, what is the punishment for people who do not stand for their rights? Pat came the reply. “Hitler. Nero. Mussolini…and….” when the angel was going to name a few more people, the man woke up from his sleep, sweating.

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, with an opus of 190  books, is Laureate of the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards.  His name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. Anand is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision who heads the International Academy of Ethics. 

PARENTAL LOVE 

Do you hear how the wind blows gems among the stars, when it blows away their brilliance? They are the diamonds from Bach’s Christmas oratorio and the kind of incense 

Which fills your soul’s house with infinity and their celestial light 

Tradition celebrates parental love through the birth of a divine nature 

There have always been altars in the Heavens, incomprehensible only to the family with a mother through the Holy Spirit 

But at Christmas, every year, in our human way, we celebrate the Father who came through the son to our earth 

The Son, Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh, is the creative symphony itself, one with All that He created 

Light from Light, in the soul of every man, fractal-miraculous like love, instilled 

The miracle is not only in the one who forever “Is what Is” But also in the sacrifice of love, with which he gave a new message 

So let us understand the Son, as the part of the father who gave himself, to his other sons 

So much, Creation, He loved 

Summer still Lingers

wisps of this summer linger;

where sunlight once kissed my golden crown
the fading etches of triangular bikini tops
feet firm from walking barefoot on rough ground

where freckles crawled across my nose and cheeks
bug bite scars reside on my legs
sun bleached hair and #kill the geese

wisps of this summer linger;

in the pine trees camphoraceous aroma
clinging to my bouquet of ringlets
the citrusy tingles and floral ambrosia

in the dirt caked into the soles of my sneakers
the tye dyed socks and sweat stained shirts
and although my summer tan grows weaker

the wisps of this summer still linger.

A Girl Named Ars Poetica

My bathroom tiles have seen, heard, felt, and suffered

through more tears than your busted up, popped out shoulder

I so desperately reach to stabilize and claw into

With my poorly uncut finger nails.

If salvation is the feeling of my saliva dripping off my tongue

Settling into the grooves of your own,

Then maybe, suddenly,

I do want to be saved.

I’ll read to you until the vocal fry in my voice sounds like tv static

As if you fell asleep on your mama’s couch watching Full House,

The connection between the antennas and power altering drastically

Like the longing when our hands aren’t locked.

We will listen to the soft pitter patter of the rain

Gulping up water that’ll clog up the storm drain

Until I have found you asleep on my bathroom floor

Tear stained shoulders, bubbling foam, crystalized eyes and all.

I reach your tear stained, clawed up shoulder

And brush the cuts with my spicy stained finger tips

Until you jolt up just so I can say it’s the medicine to cure

The pain— and you’ll remember my finger tips.

Can you touch my skin with your own until there’s a film

Of deep red coating the fairness, so that no one can see the beauty

Other than your crystalized eyes that I inhabited in

The second you said “I love you.”

Portrait of Rosa Schapire

The woman sits unwilling and blue

Boxed into a corner by a chair and a red wall

Implicating you in her afflictions

Worn sharp and clean resting

In a pensive position: poised as if ready to leave

At a moments notice she is encircled with wrought waves

Gold curves just short of crossing

The sun past set on the water

She is the only bright moment left

Before you are engulfed

The only thing holding back darkness

She is dressed in bridal white

Suits adorned in a rose and strung beads

Everything that is hers emanates dark

She is your mother dressed up and dolled up

To be young again for a night that dwindles

Four red clouds watch you from behind

The sun is dripping away

And you are stuck painting a woman

That is not your mother

About Rosa Schapire:

Rosa Schapire used her ground-breaking career in art history to advocate for socialist, feminist, and anti-fascist ideals across Europe in the twentieth century. Her family and education in her hometown of Galicia, Poland, introduced her to such ideals, and her studies took her around Europe. Schapire’s contributions to the art world were many, ranging from reviews and critiques to translations to amassing an impressive collection of German Expressionist work. She edited several journals and, along with fellow art patron and suffragette Ida Dehmel, helped to form the Women’s Society for the Advancement of German Art. After the rise of the Nazis and the death of many family members, Schapire fled to England, where many pieces of her collection are still housed in museums. 

A New-year Creed:

Ain’t it laughter for laughter sake?

Ain’t it a wish dreamy star could make?

Hearken, that reindeer with melodious psalm,

With processional parade of HOHO Pope of calm,

That crowning touch of bygone dismay,

Sending signs of hope of ravishing Hurray.

Call it a finale to all going got tough,

That tough got going at the end with a breath-taking trough,

All balladeers forgot those backsies, and uphold bonfire,

Of incandescent infatuating lights in a widening gyre,

And, those threaded buds of children respectively back in shape,

With dolly wagging ducks and snow-man scape.

The strongholds of rallied throngs and spectators cheered with applause,

It was so, that merriment on the cusp of inspiring divine laws,

No more nightmare, no more plea, no more— a travesty, 

 At last but not least, I find my sun replete with bliss and felicity, 

Let alone a new year with a slogan of cherishing hegemonial fraternity. 

**********×************×*********

Written by the Egyptian Poet 

Ahmed Farooq Baidoon

Kingdom, as Our Shelter or Grave

Their kingdom, towering and tainted with avarice,

Was the first place I learned to run from.

I crawled on all fours through the dirt, through the bramble, across freshwater rivers that smelled of a time long before ours,

My lips cracked and dry and the fur between my paws caked with mud.

I ran because they taught me to run.

I sought out hope because all that was left for me in their land was despair.

The sharp glare of their cold metal blades and the stinging alloy of their hollow-point glares seemed to say, “You are not welcome here, beast.”

And after I fled I swore to myself that those words, unspoken yet ringing all too clearly,

Would be the only ones from their mouths to which I would ever listen.

The shaking in my legs and the shiver in my spine remind me of when they first arrived.

Loading their lethal weapons, yelling gruff commands we could not understand, tainting the ocean’s shore with the unwelcome filth of their footprints.

The land upon which they walked had been our domain since time immemorial,

Yet when they set foot upon it they clipped our wings, hoisted us up by our beautiful tails,

Told us our names and what we were to be as if it was our duty to bow down.

As if their soulless, self-centered minds could ever know or understand us, they bound us in black and white and stripped us of our dignity,

Calling us boy, girl, he, she, it, beast, reducing what time knew as precious creatures to a mere curiosity, a conglomerate order of inferior beings which they saw as nothing more than playthings to satisfy their greed and thirst for cruelty.

“Nine coin for a necklace made of rabbit bones.”

“Twelve coin for a pound of venison.”

“Twenty coin for the fur pelt of a fox.”

What was once precious and sacred, by their selfish greed and piercing bullets had become nothing but a target, forced to stagger with matted fur, broken wings, and slit paws into hiding to retain the final scrap of dignity left in our mere breath.

Might I remind you, dearest creature to whom I speak, that we did not choose what we are. We did not choose to belong to the forest – it was the forest that chose us. We will not let them hold us down, harvest our fur for “good luck,” display our formaldehyde-filled corpses as trophies and say it is truth. It is cruelty. If we are to be hunted by those who stormed our kingdom and called us monsters, then let the forest that birthed us be our moonlight, our shelter, our treasure, our true story, so that we may never forget the meaning of peace or harmony. Silent creature, shivering in the cold, never forget your heritage, your homeland, your true colors, or the spirit of the forest that dwells within.

Never, ever forget what it means to be alive.