No Slotted Life Poem by Ananta Madhavan
No Slotted Life
Television plays the surrogate to life in the raw.
Days and nights are tedious without a lifestyle.
Drab humdrum routines become reality,
Without the decorative dressing up known
To suit the moods and modes of TV buffs,
With ever-changing fashions and passions.
Raw reality mimics the slotted life of screens
At ‘prime time', late night, the long weekend:
Cute cartoons, weepy heartbreaks, creepy monsters,
Smart newscasters; viewer ratings in a worldwide net.
Surprising attitudes from diverse latitudes, tropical or polar,
Lunar or solar; as for meridians, forget Greenwich sward
That started ‘Meantime', a pun with a point: the temporal
Site of what we deem moral, since empires will stage an exit.
We all play roles, heroes, heroines and moles, dramatis personae,
With birthdays and jargon reduced to slogans and catch phrases.
We can have our private slots for ecstasy and wonder.
bound by others' routines; but this is not available
to most of us. We can at least take pleasure in being
sensitive to changes in nature, even a sunset or a song
that is not a 'brainworm', but a melodic renewal of zest.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/19/2024 2:04:44 PM # 1.0.0.1119
A nice commentary on modern life style which is mostly influenced by intrusion of television to our homes.People spend a larger chunk of their time before t.V.watching different programs.. News channels, soap operas, debate -discussions, , cartoon shows - -T.V has so many things to offer in exchange of our valuable time.Not only that the things we watch, be it soap opera or a crime scene on news channel too affect our psyche.A horror movie may send us nightmares.As our major portion of our spare time is consumed by T.V., we don't get time to read a good book or to enjoy a lovely sunset..
Thank you for your assenting commentary on how our middle-class lifestyle becomes addicted to what we see and hear on TV, and also films. Now we have the added loads of commentaries on private social networks like 'tweets'. Wishing you all you need for your own verses. AM