#32. The Mosquitos of Mahakali Caves.
A review (in verse) of Opening Night at G5A's Mumbai Climate Now!, a culture-focused and community-led Climate Summit.
Dearest Readers,
Sometimes, when poesie hits, we have to just let it.
❤️ ~TS.
As I sat in the Black Box
listening to the poet Javed Akhtar
talk about his former homeless life
with mosquitos at Mahakali Caves
as a younger man in the
Bombay of Before Times,
I looked across the room at
my mother and father.
Mother, glowing at seventy-four
with Father, at her side,
holding her small shoes,
as he has for over fifty years
while trying to Save the World.
Life and Times are a package,
‘good’ things come with ‘bad’,
said the poet, and I know this is true,
because I am a contradiction,
a play of Dark and Light -
just like everyone else.
Stuck in the moment
between parents, poet and sons,
(were they home yet?), when a question
from a bespectacled girl absolved me:
What is the role of The Artist
In effecting social change?
To expose your heart, of course,
said the poet, in a heartbeat.
Something ripped you open,
but the words didn’t fall out?
So Neruda gave you a Battle Cry,
a military formation and a hand grenade,
and equipped now, you went to the Others
on the front line, the picket line, online…
to make peace, to make love.
[Applause!]
…Silence…
Ribbons of screens,
Cascading iridescence,
Illuminate my 37.2 trillion cells,
the space between them, contracting.
I can't save myself all alone!
Naseer’s voice descends from the sky
as we sat there in the dark,
clutching our shoes, holding our breath,
caressing the bricks and mortar
of the mill that was not turned mall
by a woman who could have but did not,
and an actor who needn’t have but did -
together.
❤️
#bittusahgal #anuradhaparikh #diamirza #javedakhtar #pkdas #ishanbenegal #naseeruddinshah
G5A's Mumbai Climate Now!, a culture-focused and community-led Climate Summit is on until April 21, 2024. Register here!
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I've been at this (trying to wake humanity to the reality that Homo sapiens is part of the biosphere, but has over the centuries become the most dangerous animal in the world) for half a century.
I'm convinced that it's not the environmentalists, human rights activists, scientists, businessmen, bureaucrats, or (good grief!) the testosterone-loaded politicians that will lead humanity out of the climate Hades into which we find ourselves periliously ensconsed today.
It's the poets, story tellers, artists, performers, philosophers, dancers, mothers - and to-be-mothers - that will wake humanity and shine the way to the safe tomorrows we seek for our children.
Thank you #Tara Sahgal for this piece..And thank you #AnuradhaParekh, #JavedAkhtar and #G5A for the magic
as always, loved it. fab fab fab ❤️