Jyoti Basu

As I write, you seem set
To bid adieu—
Your life’s work more than done.
We would be truly greedy
To ask more of you.

What man walked so straight
And for so long
With a single thought in mind—
To do what you could
For fellow men and women
At the end of the line.

You solved what you could solve;
Neither birth nor accomplishment
Vitiated that simple resolve.
Your stern, Spartan selflessness
Made no song and dance;
No sophisticated twist of theory
Stymied your advance.

Communist beyond compare,
You knew your country
As cannily
As the bird knows his tree.
And, doing so, you did not
Ask for the moon,
But gave to the morning and the afternoon
Appropriate remedy.
Never did your worst adversary
For a moment doubt
That your life was never your own,
But given wholly
To those that were down.

Every one’s Jyoti Babu,
It will be no fault of yours
If those that grew into sentience
During your precious longevity
Sometimes fail to see
The straight and narrow, running,
Instead, round and round
The mulberry tree.

Your counsel would still be:
“however starstruck the neo-liberal world,
Be not among the busybodies,
But the destitute majority.”

As we say most grateful bye,
Beloved comrade leader,
Smile upon us just one last time
So we may know
That you hope in our strivings
As you depart in flesh,
But never ever from the people’s heart.

*
Badri Raina