ABOUT THE POEM: This poem is the raw, unfiltered manifesto of a man who has lost every visible fight yet refuses to surrender his inner sovereignty. “Ronie Dinosaur” is the speaker’s self-portrait: an ancient creature who arrived late to every war, battered, naked, extinct in the eyes of the world—yet still upright. From childhood brilliance (school topper, quiet mama’s boy) to the lightning-bolt of unrequited first love—eyes like sunlight on trees, a public threat in the recess yard, two years of daily teasing he could never answer—the poem traces how rejection forged a lifelong discipline of silence and self-interrogation. Drawing on the Bhagavad Gita’s core teaching (act without attachment to outcome), the speaker rejects Arjuna’s battlefield heroism. He is no warrior; he is the witness, the philosopher, the lone wolf on the hill—observer rather than participant in time’s river. Every stanza circles the same revelation: the deepest battles are invisible (caged hearts, jailed beasts, addicts clawing for air), and victory is not winning the world but remaining true to the man in the mirror. What begins as a lament ends as quiet triumph: scarred, stripped bare, still standing—original, self-lit, answering only to himself.Losing every battle, one by one,
Ronie Dinosaur arrived-
scarred, stripped bare, still standing.
I no longer know where the winners went,
or whether they ever existed.
Even cattle need a shepherd.
Every society needs someone to think for it.
That someone is called a philosopher.
And I don’t fucking care
who killed the cat
or why.
A story’s ending always curls inside its beginning.
The answer lives inside the question.
The one who dares to ask
must become the one who answers.
Be your own light.
No borrowed flame survives the night.
Krishna to Arjuna:
Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana,
ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma te sango ’stv akarmani.
In plain words:
Right to the act, never to its fruit.
Let the outcome never steer you;
never cling to inaction.
I am not Arjuna.
I act-
not for duty, not for blame,
not for chains, not for desire,
not for ambition-
but because this alone can be done with character,
because this alone lets the man in my heart
match the one in the mirror outside.
We live knowing breath has an end.
Not all wars are fought on battlefields-
caged birds, jailed beasts, addicts in rehab,
confined hearts still fight to survive.
I am the only witness.
I am original.
I am my own truth.sister, friends,
I was the school topper in a new school-
quiet, iridescent, still a mama’s boy.
One morning she appeared in the corridor to my right,
eyes like sunlight climbing the trees,
and vanished before I could breathe again.
She refused even friendship
before I ever spoke.
No book had a chapter on how to speak
when the heart forgets its language.
During recess she came with her sister and several friends
and threatened me not to talk to her ever again.
But love had already struck.
I could not un-love her.
Every day I saw her,
close enough to touch,
yet when she teased-
smirks, glances, physical brushes, little games-
my tongue turned to stone.
For two years I carried that lightning in silence.
So I asked the questions to myself-
and have spent a lifetime
answering them alone.
I am not swept along in the river of time-
I am the observer on the bank,
a lone wolf watching from the hill.
