By: Pramod Rastogi

A fiddle and a bow

If I were a fiddle held with a buckle
You could hang me on your shoulder
And bestride with pride your realm
Where none would dare contest you.

If I were a fiddle and you the bow
Play you may upon the strings
Of my heart all your riddles obtuse
And still reach the shore in repose.

Playfully you manoeuver these strings.
Perish they never will by your rustle,
And the key that you choose unlocks
All that is stored in me, hidden.

If you were a fiddle and I the bow
Ceaselessly would I call on your soul
To unwind the melancholy that you behold.
May silence abandon your lingering tones.

A perfect fiddle you, and me a proud bow,
And flowing from the two is a music slow,
To match with the tunes of many
A unison made by a couple a-glow.

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New beginnings

Galloping away was a jockey on the mare,
Doing her bit to avoid being whipped.
A drop of a tear she had in her eyes
As she thought of her foal at its birth
And its tender struggle for life, falling
And getting up oft. In its wait will be the whip.

Galloping away was the thunderous noise,
Running away in fury was the blazing streak
Of lightening, to exotic destinations far away.
Floodlit was the universe in a crashing boom.
A newborn shivers in its mother’s embrace
As flames of melancholy flicker in the night.

Galloping away is a butterfly whose wings
Flutter fast for a travelled distance small.
It sits on a flower to feed on its nectar
And flits around to pollinate its hosts,
A true connection with the roots of life –
An eternal plan to revitalize new dawns.

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Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is the 2014 recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award. He was Editor-in-chief of the international journal Optics and Lasers in Engineering (Elsevier) between 1999 and 2019. He is also a guest Professor at the IIT Gandhinagar, India.