Warnie, Maradona, Tyson Gay, Lance Armstrong, Yohan Blake ruled their thrones,

So did Hulk Hogan, Asafa Powell, Shoaib Akhtar, Andre Agassi, and Marion Jones.

Being the best or the second best yet they fell prey to this silly error,

In ruins, their fairytale professional careers ended prematurely in a horror.

World class athletes who were masters of their bodies couldn’t train the brain,

A prohibited drug surging in veins dragged them off shamefully from their reign.

Why, we cried to them, did they need an external agent to power their skills?

Was talent so easily conquered by their confidence in the tiny demonic pills?

Hang on, why blame just them when we have so many around us too,

More than themselves, they pray hard for a miracle out of the blue…

A crash course in gemmology is all that it’ll take for the eluding success,

Believing so, colourful stones soon adorn their fingers to banish distress.

A certain corner of the house, says vaastu, isn’t conducive to positive vibrations,

The space is cordoned off whereas people live shelterless across world’s locations.

An astrologer may have predicted the stars aren’t aligned neither the planets,

Once fished, the ‘victims’ start existing as his personal deep-pocketed puppets.

Some advise that her birth was ill-timed; some say her ‘phase isn’t right’,

But a black-thread-talisman, they foretell, is her only shining armoured knight.

I accept I am not that ‘wise’ to understand these centuries-old rituals,

Who am I also to challenge or mock such ‘learned’ individuals?

But, I object; object to let a foreign ‘power’ to run my journey,

However enticing or promising, I object to look artificially shiny.

When I can walk on my legs however weak, why use a crutch?

I accept limping rather than giving in to any deceptive magic touch.

I’ll build my own wings; pardon me for sounding arrogant,

Because even if I crash then, it’ll still be elegant!

For once when the competitors’ bodies were adulterated by the drugs’ boost,

They turned into handicaps masquerading as supreme humans ever produced.

I don’t mind staying an average but won’t fall prey to these superstitions,

I can’t ask myself to live like a zombie breathing only after permissions.