A new poem

The Seventh Decade
A poem by Nirupama Dutt
The Seventh Decade
had a mood all its own
poetry was always around
The shoulder bore a
khadi Jhola and not a laptop
In this jhola were placed
the rudiments of life
Wounded dreams of revolution
Some thoughts borrowed
Some one’s own
A torch of a cigarette or two
and a Red ‘kerchief too…

Walking along mile
after mile, after mile
Turning the wheels
of the cycle was the
Hallmark of this age
No one was in a hurry
to make money,
Build a house
Buy new cars
and fill them with gas
Life was not too bad
So what if we were rather broke?

My friends of the Seventh Decade
Hummed the poems of Faiz
Arguing on the plays of
Becket and Brecht
and wished to turn
into a play or a poem
Poetry was very close to life
The pen was our pride
When it came to wooing girls
boys had the mantle of Marxism
If that did not work
they fell back on verse
The Seventh Decade was
full of wanderlust…

Well you are right in saying
it was not all hunky dory
but then that was our story
We knew how to live and die
We did not go seeking Gurus
to teach us the art to live
and the art to die
‘We’ was the key word
I , me, mine were less heard
That time we were not so alone
A full caravan moved along
The Seventh decade had
a mood all its own…