The crime of rhyme

“My name is like
my number plate,
attached to me,
just like my fate.”

Thus spake Kapil,
Sibal sa’ab to you
Writing lines in verse,
Some better, some worse.

Whoa, hold — the minister sahib?
That’s what I said,
Lawyer, politician, now poet too
Is there anything the man won’t do?

Penning words on freedom,
(Its price is mortality)
Larger than life on television,
Yet sad is he

Thoughtful words on the tsunami,
Fighting battles of benami
Now writing on lava flows
Flailing people with what he knows

Questioning nature’s ferocity
(phrases like “uncharted velocity”)
Asking why people need to die,
Without a chance to say goodbye?

But silly me, let me tell
Kapil’s story, and tell it well
Sibal sa’ab, as we know
Isn’t just on every TV show

A busy man, he writes,
When away from reporter’s bytes
First on paper he would scribble,
(old fashioned, but let’s not quibble)

Those papers he has since lost
(Imagine the mental cost!)
But he’s not minister for nothing,
Into poetry, technology he did bring

Old dogs can learn new tricks,
(the young aren’t the only freaks!)
So Kapil whipped out his mobile
— and here I’ll tarry a while

To explain what the SMS is
All you have to do is read this:
Pick a number, a word or two
Send it as a message to a few

What Kapil did was more clever
He wrote poems for forever
He wrote them on planes and cars,
Away from public har-hars!

Silly ones and clever ones
Schoolboy ones, but no puns
He tried to rhyme and to reason
Penning verse in every season

Sometimes he made sense
Writing in the present tense
Of POTA, laws, injustice
Speaking of anaemic hubris

Some reminiscences,
Some love in the past
Dreams he’s dreamt,
Held on to fast

Then he lost his purpose
Choosing a grandfatherly fuss
Over wrinkled legs in knickers
(You’re right to have the sniggers)
Sibal sa’ab likes supple legs
(“scantily clad”! oh what a mess)
A man of science, a lawyer he
His reputation could in tatters be

But Kapil is of the old school
(And you thought him a fool!)
He knows the law is
very clear
In personal matters it can’t
interfere

But he writes with equal passion
(in a canny politician’s fashion)
Of sycophants and inflation
(things that politicians must shun)

Of judges and journalists,
(preparing notes, writing lists)
Both salacious as a breed
Voyeurism their native creed
The modern world — his lament
Religious leaders on carnage bent
Even entertainment has a streak
Of commerce as a money trick

Sibal sa’ab the advocate
Opens up the dreaded gate
Of politics
(Excuse me, I need my fix…)

Atalji (he asks) how could you
Take the point of a marginal few?
In a crime against the state
Could you not see the blind hate?

And now, behold, the BJP
No longer courts the nuclear fee
The Left has done a volte-face
No more are they in this race

And then (oh, the shame!)
What some men will do for fame
Doodling on his mobile
Writing of love for a while
So alas: the irony!
(Can the SMS poet no longer see?)
Pleading a love in long hand
(the SMS, you see, is not so grand)

But then to carry on,
Quick verse to linger upon
Sibal focuses on the bureaucrat
(No longer of the fashionable frat)

He writes, then writes some more
Heavy lines in two and four
Of life as it used to be,
Before he wrote a line — or three

These words don’t match,
There is no rhyme
To write like this
Yes, is a crime

This review is bad
But don’t blame me,
If I can’t write,
Neither can he!

I WITNESS
PARTIAL OBSERVATIONS
India Ink/Roli Books
144 pages
Rs 295

Kapil Sibal