SubscriberWrites: ‘If only I had seen/Grey as Grey…..I might have been saved/This Black day!’

Those are lines from a poem written by Sangeeta Kampani, who is fighting a bout of the rogue virus and trying to make sense of it.

By
Sangeeta Kampani
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Workers refill cylinders with medical oxygen, in Patna, on 27 April 2021 | PTI
Workers refill cylinders with medical oxygen in Patna, on 27 April 2021 | Representational image | PTI

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If one were to summarise in a one-liner what went wrong in our handling of the pandemic, it would be our inability to see grey as grey. As the world watches, India is gasping for oxygen but the fault, as they say, is not in our stars but in ourselves. Here is a piece of verse that I have written from the confines of isolation, fighting the rogue virus, experiencing the tragedy first-hand, trying to figure out how we got into this sorry situation. 

Grey as Grey

Society’s nuts and bolts 

Gone all askew

A line of shrouds

Graveyards full….

Unending is the queue. 

All this brush with chaos…

My spine is broken

How do I shed this Albatross!

I am told not to lose hope

Tell me

How to remain positive

So strong is the billowing smoke. 

Look around…..

People gasping for breath 

Braving death 

Chronicles of despair 

Stories that scare

Nonetheless telling truth 

The way it is

Threadbare……

If only I had discerned 

The looming ash-cloud

Blaring danger clear and loud 

If only I had seen

Grey as Grey…..

I might have been saved

This Black day!

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