Kusum Choppra

Be Not Proud A long life was lived, adventures, events Births, marriages, failures, triumphs Family and professional. The Life Test slipped by, you never took it. The Test of Loss, Death in the face, Holding it in your arms watching Life turn lifeless Succour a survivor at the moment breath left. Nay? Missed the Rites of passage To test Humanhood? Be not proud. ------------------- A Unique Couple   They made a unique couple, a policewoman and a journalist She so glamorous,   he so stodgy Lugging her bag and paraphernalia. She of the large round face, the ready smile Obvious makeup, that glitzy sari! He sober in corporate shirt and a bulgy belly. Actually, it should have been the opposite Her hail-fellow-well-met persona ideal to niggle out Juicy bits from unwary tongues. While the stodgy gent so lent itself To the seniority of a Babu! ---------- A Hair Story Once upon a time, she loved her hair Oiled ...

A portion of a Rig Veda Hymn of Creation, a describing the beginnings, as then believed: (From "The Return of the Aryans", by Dr. Bhagwan S Gidwani) “Then nothingness was not, nor existence then, Nor air nor depths, nor heavens beyond their ken, What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping? In unfathomed folds, was it cosmic water seeping? Then there was no life, no birth, no death Neither night nor day, not wind not breath, At last, One sighed – a   self-sustained Mother, There was that One then – and none, none other. Then there was darkness wrapped in darkness’ Was this unlit water, unseen, dry, wetless? That One which came to be, enclosed in naught, Arose, who knows how, from the power of what! But after all, who knows and who can say Who, how, why, whence began creation’s day? Gods came after creation; did they not? So who knows truly, whence it was wrought! Does the First Mother herself know, now? Did She create, or wa...

Faith, I believe,  is what each individual develops for self, aside from religious and cultural, conditioning, passive or aggressive.   Our Earth is a blip in an ocean of Creations that are all moving without crashing into each other, occasional comets or falling stars apart. On our planet, developing panorama of natural systems operate with unique precision.  Most awe-inspiring is the development of human bodies from birth to death and the way a body makes space for an embryo and then a pulsating new life, all the way to childbirth and lactation. Did all these systems emerge automatically?  From nowhere?  It is impossible to escape the sense of some Power, some Essence that guides all these. Perhaps that is how Faith was born. Later usurped for power. The unearthing of deeper layers of knowledge brings forth more and more news of the evolution of the planet we live on, split in countries, natural and political systems and religions. Each one of ...