All these years, I have been playing
The game of snakes and ladders,
Easily reaching up to the top of the ladders
Without rolling the dice even as much,
But then there were slippery slides too
On the backs of huge scary snakes
Even when the dice was untouched by me

I wondered and wondered
And then looked at the rules of the game
The first one, I tried to memorise
“This too shall pass!”
But there never was much exhilaration
While being on the top
Then how come that non-existent ego
Got wounded so brutally during the slides?

Trying to grasp the further rules,
I found that though outwardly I was chosen to roll the dice
I was being rolled by someone else
I was just a puppet in His hands
And He was making me dance to the tunes He liked

But although I comply with His wishes and whims
The feet climbing up or sliding down
Do belong to me and they are now trying to convey
That they are tired, very very tired of this continual dance
Neither do they wish to climb to the top
Nor do they wish to slide any further
In fact, they don’t even wish to stand
All that they wish is that
He should cut off the string of His puppet
And let this game end… finally!!