Bullocks to Bitcoin

Bullocks to Bitcoin 

My father rose before the dawn,

Hair still curled, the night not gone,

A babul twig between his teeth,

He walked with bullocks, slow and brief.

The cattle bore no heavy chains,

They shared our homes, they shared our pains,

Named like brothers, fed by hand,

The living heartbeat of the land.

Cold water baths beneath the sky,

Curd was churned as hours went by.

My mother milked the buffalo,

They reached the fields where sun was low.

The garden breathed in colors wide—

Grains and greens grew side by side,

Fruits and flowers, fodder and seed,

They grew what fed them, only need.

Children laughed in village lanes,

Sang to plants with simple strains.

All were welcome without any pains,

Fruits and flowers were open even no gains,

No engines roared, no hunger cried,

No fear of want, no need to hide.

But hidden hands began to text,

The market whispered: "What is next?"

For human need is easily fed,

But Greed demands the world instead.

Time turned its wheel; the elders aged,

An uncle came, stern and caged.

With him came the grand decrees,

Signed in rooms of high degrees—

Subsidies and policy lines

That priced the soil and cursed the vines.

They promised wealth, they promised ease,

And brought the country to its knees.

Diesel replaced the patient yoke,

The sacred beast became a joke.

Sold to slaughter, cast away,

For steel machines that do not pray.

The tractor ruled the broken plough,

But over-mechanization now

Left hands idle, minds asleep,

With promises the state would keep.

Then rose a strange and proud disdain:

“The soil is filthy, labor is pain.”

The youth fled from the muddy field,

Ashamed to sweat, ashamed to yield.

No hands were left to sow or reap,

The cost of hiring rose too steep.

They called the ancient calling "low,"

And left the weeds and dust to grow.

Cash crops climbed, the soil grew bare,

Nature priced, reduced to share.

Chemicals choked the thirsty loam,

As corporate seeds usurped the home.

The elders watched with blind neglect,

Ignorant of the cause-effect—

They sprayed the poison, signed the lease,

And traded future health for peace.

Then nature struck her delayed toll,

The seasons warped, the burning coal

Brought shifting rains and blazing skies,

Climate change in grim disguise.

The groundwater fled deep below,

The withered stalks refused to grow.

At dusk they came to fields once known,

Bought from markets what they’d grown.

A brother sat upon the throne,

The past a tale, the present loan.

Accounts were asked by ringing phone,

Not by seed or soil once sown.

The great-grandchild stares at a screen,

In a sterile room of neon green.

Nothing planted, nothing sown,

The concept of the dirt unknown.

Farming lives in books and bytes,

Credits flash, and Bitcoin lights.

Fields hold ATMs in line,

Wealth withdrawable, instant, fine.

The algorithm codes the grant,

Groceries arrive with a digital chant—

Everything gained, yet nothing plant.