A Poem

Look at This Way

Baldev Raj Dawar

A single flake of snow,
Fallen fresh on a mountain top,
Just one from out of a trillion-trillion lot,
Appears very similar to his fellow flakes,
Almost identical to one and all -
Same six, and only six, tiny petals
Spreading out from a single tiny bud
Right in the middle of this crystalline flower.
But it is so only if you see the fellow casually.
Look a little more closely and you find
That he is unique in very many ways.
No one else has his mass, size and shape.
For ever since the Time began
No two snowflakes have assembled
Exactly the same in every respect.
He is unique and let us regard him so.

A piece of stone,
Be it a pebble, a rock or an asteroid,
Made up of countless and nameless particles,
Held together by a network of holes and hooks
And charged with a certain amount of massiveness
Projects a distinct personality of its own.
Look, how does it throw its weight around!
And as if willfully and with vengeance,
It asserts and makes a dent
On the nearby fabric of space and time.

A piece of wood,
Yes, a dead wood now,
Was living and kicking not so long ago.
Like a sponge, then, it trapped,
Soaked, absorbed and stored Sun's energy.
Its breathing has stopped.
But it is still hibernating.
Its stored and fossilized energy
Can issue forth here and anon.
Just tickle it a bit and see what happens.
A glow of light will spring out,
A flame of fire will leap up.
And a gush of heat will hit you in the face.


A Star, one of the billions upon billion.
Be it, a Sun-like mainstream one,
Or an expanding red giant,
Or a shrinking blackhole,
Is a highly agitated storm of dust,
A turbulent whirlpool of violent gas,
A hurricane of vast dimensions
A huge beast that feasts on its own flesh
And spits fires that engulf the skies.
A furnace that can burn air itself
And turn it to carbon, to iron,
To lead and to solid gold,
In addition to energy that fills the sky,

A living thing,
Be it a tree, a frog or a man,
Old, young or freshly born
Is the wonder of all wonders.
Life had a humble beginning though –
Accidental, unintended and unplanned.
Eons ago, in ancient times,
In the muddy waters of lowly earth,
A miniscule fiber just twisted on itself.
And it all started from there.
The twist refused to untwist,
It rather multiplied many folds.
And stretched itself over annals of Time.
It became almost immortal
When it learnt to make copies of itself,
On and on and without an end,
The living matter is now
Irreversibly wound and refuses to unwind
The more you block it, stop it or nip it,
The more ways it finds to proliferate,
It has learnt to feed, breed and greed
And ask for more, and ever more –
We are talking of a living thing.

Now, we, the snowflakes, stones and stars,
We, the gods, men and beasts
And very many other things and persons,
Each unique in our body and mind,
Are different from all and one another -
We are short, we are long,
We are big, we are small.
Some very steadfast, some very short lived.
But all of us are.
Yes, there we are.
We hold on, we stay put
And we stand out,
To be reckoned with
By one and all.

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Baldev Raj Dawar, E 610, Mayur Vihar II, Delhi 110091 http://brdawar.blogspot.com