A bitter truth

I find it most painful to digest the goings-on in the community, especially with the housing racket sizzling hot. To get out of my depression I downed two gimlets and ate aleti-paleti.

The writing is on the wall. There is a Gujarati saying, "Jénu naam téno naash chhè (the one named is the one destroyed)” and of course the poem Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which reveals a bitter truth.

It is time to call a big sabha of mandals/bundals, anjumans, punchayets, and prepare a will to bequeath all the properties, the cash flows and the 45 heritage agiaries. At the same time, we should keep on fighting — from the Charity Commissioner to the High Court, to the Supreme Court.

I quote Ozymandias here:

"I met a traveller from an antique land/Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,/Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,/And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,/Tell that its sculptor well those passions read/ Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,/The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed’;/And on the pedestal these words appear:/My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,/Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!/

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

BEHRAM AGA

behram_r_aga@yahoo.co.in