Jeewan Ramlugun
Conventions offer security
and certainty;
they also constrict
and confine, placing a limit
on what can be different-
possibly with equal merit
or even better.
Rules guide with sureness
and predictability;
they also corral us rigidly
and give us the excuse
that our hands are too tied
to exercise the latitude
and leeway, so direly needed
in exceptional cases.
Knowledge is a potent resource,
all learnings being repositories
not only of intellectual capital,
but of cultures and aesthetics.
But knowledge is not wisdom
when not used sagely;
it becomes a mere medium,
a stratagem to overstate a point,
in short, it turns into sophistry
and vacuous casuistry.
When deployed as an instrument,
not of open discourse but a rant,
knowledge becomes sheer bombast!
1 April 2016.