The Empire Peddles Back By Badri Raina

The Empire Peddles Back

By Badri Raina 

When you came Bible-peddling,
I was not numero  uno;
Now that I am, take back with
Interest wages for that meddling,
As a hundred and seventy nations
Back my  awesome, acrobatic show.

Watch the thrusting of my leg,
Chest inflated, arms akimbo,
Fire in my eye, beard aflame,
Heart  raging with  dream
Of conquest, mind intent  on
Weeding out all such element
That questions my abhiyan,
Kicking up an anti-national row.
Espy these legions of health,
Backed by bushel-fulls of wealth,
Retreat,  and never again dare
Come anywhere near Delhi,
Lucknow, Jhansi, Agra,
For  Nagpur jnow insures Bharat
With a prowess that will
Not spare your imperial belly.
Be warned: as I gyrate, twist, unwind,
There is nothing spiritual on my mind.
Our  grand army of NRI Ninjas
Is Enough to subdue your  cool
To contortions you never knew.
And  political dividends  better follow,
Such as  your rotten dollar and Euro
Without let, hindrance, delays
To fuel my smart city-make-in-india craze.
Should you do that without demur.
We will not break another church door.

Anti-Hindu  carpers at home
Will no doubt carry on their moan.
But worry not, take a hint
From what the discarded patriarch
Has said: if need be, we will enforce
Our right to Emergency. Inf act
Are we not already there,
Without  declaration or fanfare?
Note that when our patriarch
Be unduly  grim, we do listen to him.
We may jail even those who  fail
Us internationally, given that our
Vikas rate now self-evidently shames
Many a so-called  advanced  state.  As
To poverty and the poor, we
Will leave that bother to those who
Better undertake  such  chore;
After all, what are the Congress
And the Left parties for? As we
Yog  to  golden  blasts of growth,
Poverty  gives them something to do.
Thus  wily old Disraeli’s  two nations
Remain  distinct, disparate, true.

So, let Yog be the thin end of
The wedge  that makes the white
Macaulay brown, and yields
Many a manufacturing town,
That  teaches the  swaggering Brit
To  quit his  tainted  English for
The profound  beauties of Sanskrit—
Minus , of course, the naughty things
Therein, which  apocryphal  incursions
Owe  to the conquering Saracen.
Such  embarrassments as Kama Sutra,
Kumar Sambhava, Mrichikatakam, or
Mudra Rakhshasa, and other things
Of that ilk, mere evidences of hacking
Long before the computer  was a-making.
We mean the Sanskrit of the gods
Alone, not of  men who actually
Used their human penchant, quill, or pen.
All that of course, our learned ones
Shall  impart with a fee, as Bharat
Will rise and the west go under
The sea. Such is the meaning
Of Yog, such is our ineluctable fantasy.

Now gyrate, gyrate, do not miss
The bus; even Wall Street  knows
The twenty first century belongs to us.
So  do thine Yog without snooty fuss.