Touch Me Tender

 Gautam's forte was Love and Pain,
           but this time Buddha smiled again;
When a Tibetan monk in Daharamsala said
           that to use Lord's name for this was bad.
As if Allah could laugh this off !
           or a nailed down Christ just shrug and scoff;
And sometime, someday by luck or chance
            instead of a smile their was a Tandav dance!

"The Hindu deities are made of stone
            they cant possibly dance" so declared the monk
" their left arms carrying flowers don't work --
            isn't it logic enough that those armed should be spared.
For if one exercises the hands in an unequal way
            you have malformed bodies; please no aberrations stray.
If the paralysis is over and you can be moved---
            Let the flowers move ahead of weapons crude;

At least don't malign Buddha,  
            the apostle of peace
Have a bomb for Hindu...
            but not for Humanity please! "
Behold the Poet of Humanity cursed
            in the defense of the unmoved his two penny words
" Trampled, buried under heaps of earth
            he has still survived without moving first!"

That button is no savior
             and neither is he a pretender
The laughing Buddha hysterically pleads
             that if ever you should---touch me tender.

 

PS: written in the immediate aftermath of Indias nuclear testing at pokhran under the leadership of AB Vajpayee.