Did you see the sobbing reporters describe how the Taj of Mumbai burns?
How many will Asuras cause to die before O Vishnu as avataar returns?
The fanatic bullet hunts gazelles everywhere that nostalgia mourns.
Where are the machines crafted that choke our unfinished yearns?
Differences are astonished at the atrocities flowing in their name.
Can anyone explain it to these cubs, where this feud begins?
Words loaded into Kashalnikovs explode in believer’s brains.
What savage desires issue death sentences to their sons?
You fight your kith and kin, seeking separate land-holdings.
See our heritage now desecrated by our own selfish actions.
Tearful ocean is filled with the ash of my extinguished loves.
My hurt is the chorus of subdued sighs of colossal nations.
There is absolutely no God who honors assassins.
He is all powerful. He needs no help from tainted persons.
Courage is in protecting, in fighting limitations, in peace.
Who is using this chicanery to teach the faithful satanic lessons?
Light up a diya, whisper me the ancient hymns of Shanti!
Forge within Vivek again that grit for overcoming tribulations.
Vivek Sharma is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at University of Illinois, Chicago.
His research interests lie in optics, dynamics, elasticity and self-assembly (odes) of complex fluids and soft materials. His research on colors of beetles and butterflies, breath figures, protein rheology, gold nanoparticles and polysaccharide rheology is published or forthcoming in science journals (Lab on a Chip, PNAS, Science, Materials Sci & Eng Reports, Soft Matter, EPL and Rheologica Acta). Current focus areas include fizzics (study of bubbles, drops, emulsions & foam), protein rheology & spectroscopy, nonlinear viscoelasticity, soap films & bubbles, 3D printing, buifluids and colors, rheology & processability of complex fluids.
Vivek is a published poet. He reads & writes in Hindi and English. His poetry and essays in English are published in Poetry, Atlanta Review, The Cortland Review, Kartika Review, Bateau, Muse India, Reading Hour, etc. He contributes columns and verses to Divya Himachal (Hindi newspaper in India). Vivek’s first collection, “Saga of a Crumpled Piece of Paper” (63 poems, English, Writers Workshop, Calcutta) was published in 2009.
Vivek spend his childhood in Himachal Pradesh and undergraduate years in IIT Delhi. He pursued a doctoral degree at Georgia Tech, Atlanta (2003-2008) and he was a postdoctoral research associate in Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (MA) (2008-2012). He currently resides in Chicago.
