Ode to an earthquake

What a day you chose, Grandma Mine!

To quake, to move, to shiver, to shake

Thereby to ravage, to savage, to shatter,

The celebrations of Mother India Republic Day.

A female snake eating her own children!

What bad karma those school children had done?

What configurations of the planets took place

In the natal charts of those thousand killed?

Million years ago you jolted and rocked,

Opening up the Atlantic & creating Indian Ocean,

Delinking India from Africa and Sri Lanka.

Those oceans are widening & the Pacific shrinking.

Will North America & Asia drift into each other?

The twelve plates mate and hate each other,

Caribbean to Cocos & Indian to Eurasian.

Your wanton ways to be taken as blessing in disguise?

Your natural acts as great levelers? Or

HE made the world to fit best to create & destroy.

~Ram Mehta~