Heir Conditioning, by M SHANmughalingam
Grand dad did you breathe
Before air cons were invented
Was it hard staying
alive without modern inventions?
Grandma weren’t you flustered
As you fluttered with paper fans?
Could you communicate before
faxes and long distance calls
became basic necessities?
Grandchild we lived
before your age. Because
of our ignorance,
we did not know
pollution, stress traffic jams
destruction of forests, streams and
hills
we feared God and nature
now nature fears you and
money is your new God
Basically, the poem above was composed by our very own writer from Malaysia who named as M Shanmughalingam. The poem is a question which also came with an answer yet it is hard to discern by the readers. The first stanza of the poem was reviewed as a child who is puzzled and inquisitive about how was it for their grandparents to live in the time when there was no modern facilities. The stanza two is the part when the grandparents finally answer the earlier question. The grandparents then tell that although there was no modern facilities to help them do all things easier, they did not have to fear the pollutions, deforestation and traffic jams. Since the world has becoming more and more advanced by day, money has become the major tool that controls the world the writer symbolized it as God.
