by Debleena Majumdar
Debleena’s poem is a social satire that reflects on our need for being constantly busy and part of the latest buzz, sometimes with consequences that could potentially be fatal. It’s told in the voices of two bees.
Sipping her fourth cup of coffee,
The buzzing bee, shook her head.
“No. Rejected. This is so non-buzz
You just have to do better dear.
Go get me the latest new buzzword
To feed the buzzhound this hour.”
Swallowing her fear, the busy bee
Ran back to climb ladder no 433
Searching for buzzwords new
On cloud number anything but nine.
Nothing. All buzzwords taken.
She stepped on a broken rung. She fell.
“Stupid busybee. You stepped on the
Wrong ladder. This one’s rusty
Diwali discount price, you see.”
But the busybee was beyond the buzz.
Hurtling down, she had one last thought.
Would not even her death count as buzz?
A Bangalore-based storyteller, Debleena Majumdar is the co-founder of a storytelling company, Kahaniyah, where she uses stories to improve both learning and business outcomes. She loves the comfort of words and the music of words and spends her days swimming through the highs and lows of both; resorting often to her lifeboat – uncontrollable peals of laughter. Her stories waver between the dark and the funny because she feels it’s at that intersection where life is most real.
