A room I saw
where the babu of poverty had been a frequent visitor
few walls were stark naked as if they never wore anything
and a few were shedding away the color they were draped in
The room had nothing in it
no furniture, nothing much to address as wearable,
a small blanket was there with dust marks and small holes
which seemed at least two decades old
and must've at some point been the food of rats roaming around
As I looked around I found
a few broken, rusted kitchenware kept in a corner,
a clay pot to store water which was dripping from the roof
so that for drinking it can be used
The room was like a cell allotted to criminals
hardly you can find an entrance for the air
the smoke coming out of the beedi that the man
in lungi was inhaling was all it had to offer....
He was coughing, spitting in the broken bucket he had
there was no sign of sunshine even when it was 12 at noon on my watch,
food looked like a distant visitor to his house
it seemed, it liked the dustbin of a rich more than the stomach of a poor
His eyes told me a story
a story that I can never forget, when my eyes met his
of broken bodies and shattered dreams
of a frustrated soul and fractured beliefs
I could easily sense his disbelief in Gods
not a single image of idol was there in the entire room
Bhagavad Gita and Quraan too were invisible to my eyes
maybe because God didn't come to save his family when corruption ate it alive?
It was then when Kareem ran in saying
'Chacha jaan, MLA sahab has come to our slum...'
But no, he didn't move an inch
instead, he just blabbered something in muffled voice
and then lit another beedi up,
it seemed as if he knew all the tactics of these white dacoits...
He was all alone now
with wrinkled face and hands that trembled,
no longer could he pull a rickshaw or clean a garden,
what he could only do is to count the beads of the rosary of death...
Written by Sutputra Radheye