Nuclear Nirvana

POETRY FORMAT, KUDANKULAM ANTI-NUCLEAR SATYAGRAHA, INDIA, 4 Jun 2012

S. P. Udayakumar – TRANSCEND Media Service

Idinthakarai, May 30, 2012

[Newspaper Reports: Having exhausted all options to end opposition to the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant, the Indian government now plans to get a peek into the protesters’ minds and remove any fears with the help of psychiatrists from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore.]

If you do feel like pulling your hair off
when they deprive you of your daily bread,
If you do feel like screaming your head off
when they chip away at your wellbeing,
If you do feel like kicking up a storm
when they deny your identity and freedom,
If you do feel like raising a ruckus
when they wring you dry of life’s very meaning,
If you feel like grabbing one’s throat
when they lay on the line your survival,
You must be sick, my friend! I dare say,
you could even be mentally ill.

You could be suffering from reality distortion
focusing on problems rather than solutions;
You could be a victim of interpretative intention
drawing negative conclusions and opposing authority;
You are simply sick with establishmentophobia
doubting leaders, heroes, scientists and such Noble Men.
If the State signs nuclear deals with every country
and mines adivasi land and all over for Yellow Cake,
Builds temples of technology, dumps the waste into the blue sea,
and manufactures “Smiling Buddha” products that protect us all—
They see Nuclear Nirvana but you cry foul for denuding with nukes,
and for this feeling of demoniac you need to see a psychiatrist!

The prognosis for this establishmentophobia is rather mixed.
You will continue to suspect your mother, the country, and Father, the State;
You will distrust your Brothers and sisters, the Nobility and their sentry;
You will disbelieve the fact that “road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.”
You like a lunatic lover will be hard to talk to and even harder to listen to;
You’ll become imponderable, impregnable, and simply impossible.
If the diagnosis is rather bad and the prognosis even worse,
The therapy is the worst, calling for continuous psychiatric care.
Explore the anatomical structure of your brain and examine its neurophysiology;
Check your preference of Democritean knowing: through senses or intellect?
And put you on corrective behavior in a correctional facility or corporate hospital
For distrusting the dual drive theory of nuking and nirvana to explain human fulfillment.

___________________

S.P. Udayakumar, Ph.D. – Tamil Nadu, India:

* SACCER-South Asian Community Center for Education and Research (promoting life-long, life-wide and life-deep education)
* TRANSCEND Network, South Asia Convener (TSA) (For Rethinking South Asia)
* People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE)
* National Alliance of Anti-nuclear Movements (NAAM) (For a Nuclear-Free India that has No Deals, No Mines, No Reactors, No Dumps, and No Bombs)

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 4 Jun 2012.

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