The Chicken Song (And The Gadda Da Vida)

This is a little, ok, not so little, 96-line poem i wrote after ICSE. It has three distinct parts, the second part may seem a bit ambiguous, but i'm pretty sure that anyone who's been in class 10 can relate to the first part. What's amazing, is even though i didn't intend to, i managed to write the 3 parts in a pattern completely at random ... the first part is 52 lines, second is 32, and the last, 12 ... each successive part is 20 lines less than the previous! And please forgive me for the charged ending!

I
Long have i waited for this time,
To take control of what is mine,
To shun past miseries of all kind,
And look ahead with a renewed mind.

Past miseries of what kind?
I must tell you for you are blind--
--To these hard times i have been through,
So let me through this poem tell you ...

'Twas perhaps, a whole year ago,
When this 'now-gone', dark shadow,
Did cast its gloom over me,
And consigned me to said misery.

At first tho' i did not take note,
Of how much I had to 'conn'd by rote' ;
Of yet even more I had to set,
In a file, shoelaced, and at its best.

Thus blind was i too, of what--
--Was to come and knew it not;
When hurling it did come perhaps,
A half year ago and kept me in wraps.

For we live in a world with oh so blight,
The powers that be only at numbers delight.
So quality is always always shunned away,
And false motives begin their mighty sway.

So was i ensnared, with this device;
And knew nought but to follow in a trice--
--This way for what else could i do,
Failure would, in future, cause much worse, i knew.

Cruelly the times did seem to pass,
Month after month, and class after class.
Jaded, exhausted, et cetra was I.
Mean and sad times were on the nigh.

And it did take away all the bliss,
And everything I did start to miss;
It took away the spirit of yuletide,
Christmas, New Year's, they all did hide.

Then came the sorrow, swollen by grief,
What i wanted was not very brief,
But what i got in the end,
Didn't help to do the times a mend.

Thus was i left with the final stretch,
I was hating it all, it all was a wretch.
But finally, at long, weary last;
'It' finished, becoming a thing of the past.

Now I stand on 'it's' other side,
Having done my bad times dear abide.
What lies ahead I do not know,
But i will face it, for i'm raring to go

The shackles that had me a bound --
Are now gone, and i hope to have found--
--At the end of this time something new ...
Something in me, in only a short few ...
...

II
It seems like troubled times are gone,
But those who think so, will end forlorn,
For the battle has only just begun,
Pick yourself up, and become a big man, son!
The message to me is loud and clear,
Stand up, get up, shed all fear.
Meet it with all your strength and might,
Win, and boundless be your delight.
Whether in languages hard to brew;
Or in matters which men diversely construe;
Or even in matters of which people don't care;
Or just to look good when laid down bare;
Maybe even to soar above the sky;
Or dash through spaces too thin for a fly;
Perhaps to stand up on a stage,
And portray anger, laughter, mirth & rage.
Or mingle with men, women, teachers et al,
And to shine in many a festival;
Or perhaps to sit down and compose,
Such poetry, satire, or writings verbose.
Even to solve problems which most,
Think meaningless and drink a toast;
And also to bleed one's fingers dry,
To make objects inanimate shout, moan & cry;
To even go through things quite old,
Which others deem a bore and scold;
And to learn other things uselessly,
Just to delight the powers that-be.
But above all to go to a distant land,
Which many think of, but only a few can,
-That land of cents, nickels, quarters & dimes-
To leave one's footprints on the sands of time ...

III
For the times they are a changing,
The winds of summer bring fresh news,
And the birds in the trees are a singing,
Search in yourself, for that, in a few.

So onward Christian soldier!
Onward and you shall find--
--Within yourself, which the birds sing of,
Dearer than gold, or silver, or kind.

Farewell to good, sad memories of old,
We enter a time, most alien and strange;
But I'm as free as a bird now,
And this world i'm going to change.

What Class 10 Can Do To You ...

I know i haven't been blogging lately, but i've had more important things to deal with (mentioned in this post). The title is not just for the post but it also depicts my state ... after all, nothing but class 10 could have made me write something deplorably depressing like this. I wrote this just after giving a horrible final rehearsal examination, with my ICSE left, and i've posted it unedited, so parts may tend to be exaggerative. Here it goes ...

When I was experiencing my first couple of months in Class 10 as an unassuming promoted student from Class 9, I, and a few of my peers, took Grade-10 and this whole ICSE jig to be as one of them put it, 'an overhyped piece of bullcrap', and that time I had to accede. The pace was the same. The syllabus was just as big. You were just as unimportant to the class 11s & 12s. It seemed the only thing different from Class 9 was an additional digit. But now that I'm on the other side of class 10, having given both my rehearsals and now in the final month before ICSE, i'll have to think otherwise.

Sure, the initial months are more or less the same ... but once all the hullabaloo about Founders' Day and in our case, 'Jaco Synthesis', gets over at around July and your first exams finish in August, you slowly start to think that maybe it is all its hyped up to be. With the onset of September/October, come an endless laundry-list of projects to be completed in this or that subject, and practicals to study for in this or that science. Also, with the post-first term syllabus being almost 2 times that of class 9, the teachers feel their afforded time of 35 minutes a day inadequate and thus call 2 hour long after-school or even cruelly, Saturday, special classes. By the time December hits, you find yourself wanting in more than your fair share of project submissions, wanting in more than half of the syllabus and having to attend a final barrage of extra classes. And if you're a computer student, then doing an additional project isn't any fun either. Its enough to suck the fun out of any holiday season and pretty much crush any christmas/new year spirit. It even comes to the point when you don't want to do anything other than study. I know, that sounds pretty creepy, but that's atleast how i felt. Once the final rehearsals in January are through, you breathe a sigh of relief, only to realise the main exam is only 20 odd days away.

So the conclusion ... class 10 is no hype, not eventually atleast, and anyone inclined to think otherwise is probably spending another year in it.