T. K. SATHYANARAYANA MURTHY

T. K. SATHYANARAYANA MURTHY

SEARCH FOR PEACE

Is peace another sweet myth, stronger than truth

Like a sugar cube thrust into your mouth

As the bitter medicine runs down the labyrinth

To keep you smiling in counterfeit faith

That the potion's acridness that you clearly loath

May be tamed to make things look all too smooth?

Mankind's frailty to shun defeat is too well known

For who has the gumption when his castles are blown

To smile in glee and not to writhe in pain?

Or sit apart and reason that your dreams are in vain

Whereas one look at Heavens above will make it so plain

Why do you let your pristine spirits groan and moan?

Is peace that we hear about, a middle class prejudice

To keep the shattered limbo poised in delicate balance

What those in religious robes preach you to seek in silence

Or something you embrace in fright to hide your disgrace

When shunned and spurned you rove from place to place

And in utter despair turn to seek in Buddha's mystic face?

POETRY AS I FEEL IT

Poetry is my desperate longing to get free from the trap

That winds around my mind and binds me to the crap

Of fleeting thoughts from buried past, giving me hard slap

Triggering sensations of pain and loss hard to escape

Poetry is my way of staring at the proud and the insolent

With a quiet faith that in resources of mind I'm no insolvent

That my heart, vigilant and vibrant, stays firm and unbent

And unyielding to insinuations that force me to relent

Poetry the tranquilliser that is ever ready to douse the fire

Of the smouldering anguish as menacing as funeral pyre

And smother embers feeding on crumbs of innocent desire

Allowing them to gather strength to seek and to ever aspire

Poetry is my soft, persistent and overwhelming urge to love

Winning over the coarse, petulant, domineering urge to kill

The divine bliss pouring forth drawing  from bounties above

Goading humanity with unfailing faith for its longings to fulfil

THE VILLAGE LAD DREAMS IT BIG

When I was born, India was an independent nation

My village resonated with teeming young population

Tales of the past blended with a new found jubilation

A fresh new thinking was in its first stage of formation

Here I was placed in an unprecedented situation

Struggling in my mind to hit on my calling, my vocation

We know education in India is a shot in the dark

It's only by chance one knows which career to embark

The dawn of seventies the situation was no less bleak

Lucrative careers for the young even harder to seek

Even schooling entailed putting livelihood at stake

Leaving farming many couldn't even to high school make

Of the few who took board exams from my village

Only I managed to make it to the distant college

On the day of my departure as dad did my baggage

He poured advice into my ears in a barrage

Cautioning me against possible goof ups of teenage

And not pick habits that would in village cause outrage

Thus I, from a quiet hamlet to a noisy city did move

All atremble, offered fervent prayers to powers above

That in the uncertain environs of city life they allow

A boy untrained in city's complex ways may yet prove

Unpurturbed by voices that sounded

inscrutably suave

May gain a foot fold, merge and for his sucess strive and thrive.

T. K. SATHYANARAYANA MURTHY

Prof. T. K. SATHYANARAYANA MURTHY is an M. A. M. Phil in English language and literature from Bangalore University and has served as Prof. and H.O.D., Department of English, as well as the Principal, of Vijaya College, Basavavanagudi, Bangalore. During his long career spanning over 3 and a half decades, he has actively engaged himself in reading and teaching English literature and language along with translating classics from European literature into Kannada. His articles and reviews on Hindustani Classical music are published in magazines and periodicals. As the Chief Editor of " Nadashree", souvenir brought out on the occasion of anniversary celebrations of Hindustani Sangeet Kalakar Mandali, Bangalore, he has written, edited and published erudite articles on different themes pertaining to Hindustani music. He has also been Chief Editor of "Vijaya", the annual college magazine of Vijaya College on several occasions. Recently two of his poems were published in an international anthology, " Shakespeare Sings" published by Farook College, Kozhikode, Kerala. Prof. Murthy currently lives in Bangalore, India.