Counting Down to 90 - Week 1546 - First World Smoke

The Concept Explained

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1579

Why 1579

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

Audio

Link to click if you don't see the audio below.

YouTube Podcast Link

Text

Just like the Coen brothers’ movie, “No Country for Old Men”, we can call India, “No Country for Any Men”. Everything that happens in the country on one side, and the senseless loss of life due to human failure…stampedes, fires, craters on the roads, open manholes…on the other…it is this loss of life that is galling and unacceptable.

I wrote this poem/song titled “First World Smoke” after the Kamala Mills fire and the loss of my colleague Dr. Deepak Amarapurkar when he fell down a manhole during heavy rains in Mumbai. I have added 3 more verses at the end after the RCB, Hathras and Kumbh stampedes. It never ends and it never will…not in this country…not in my lifetime for sure…because we don’t learn, both the people who insist on going willingly into crowded areas and death traps and the organizers, who have either no sense or don’t care. 

Gurpreet Gulati, a radiologist who now goes by the moniker @joerocks put this to music 7 years ago. We were supposed to record it but life got in the way and the song never saw light. I have added a few seconds from his version at the end of my audio and at the end of this piece.

I got on my bike
To ride to my friend
My girl-friend on pillion
Helmet in hand

In a minute I was down
One wheel in a hole
My girl-friend gone
And me all alone

I rebuilt anew
Made new friends
Using the trains
Braving the rains

In a minute I was fallin’
The bridge half down
Saved by the bodies
Strewn all around

Walked home with a friend
Wading through the rain
The sewer was open
And he sunk like a stone

We are...
Third world people
We want to be...
First world people
Smoking weed are we?
Yay, yay, yay, yay
Yay, yay, yay, yay

I rebuilt anew
And made new friends
So back to a party
One above the rest

In a minute I was down
The roof in flames
Fire and brimstone
And friends all gone

We are...
Third world people
We want to be...
First world people
Smoking weed are we?
Yay, yay, yay, yay
Yay, yay, yay, yay

I can’t rebuild anew
My mojo’s flown
The city is dead
The “spirit” long gone

Need to move on
To fill the holes
To find another land
And a life that’s whole

We are...
Third world people
We want to be...
First world people
Smoking weed are we?
Yay, yay, yay, yay
Yay, yay, yay, yay

I changed my job
Moved my city
And made new friends
Who were cricket crazy

RCB won
The city roared
A crush of feet
Two friends were gone

Some more died
In Hathras and Kumbh
Faith and devotion
Extracting their toll

We are...
Third world people
We want to be...
First world people
Smoking weed are we?
Yay, yay, yay, yay
Yay, yay, yay, yay

First world smoke gurpeet mini

0:00

/48.898707482993196

1×