Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 2, Number 1. May 2019. ISSN: 2581-7094
Billund, a Harmony Trove
The cool, pure,
unpolluted, fragrant breeze of Billund:
The Lego-city of
Denmark
Is life-giving
Beckons even after
several years
Has become one of my
most-favourite European
destinations
I ever visited
The spick-and-span
broad six-lane avenues lined with fragrant
blooms
Are inviting and
welcoming
To the hilt
For which the
brown-skinned Indians pine
But are not able to
relive
The unattainable
Paradise
Where life goes at an
easy pace
With temperatures
optimum
Faces-charming and blazed
Harmony and symmetry,
In the right
proportion, prevails
Indians, the
step-children, of God
Are cursed to live in
these horrible
Garbage strewn,
defecated roads
Pollution and
life-threatening diseases
Hover over them
perennially
I entreat to God
To make me a Caucasian
to be born in this city in my rebirth
.
Mumbai local train
Travelling in a
crowded ‘Women Special’
Is an experience of
sorts,
A great social-leveler
That promotes
Sisterhood
And enables physical
proximity with her own gender
In a manner
Impossible
Otherwise.
You feel like a burger
inside the bread
Pressed from all sides
By womenfolk
All laws of ‘Kinesics’
fail
Physical barriers
dissolve
Between
The crass and the
elite
Tolerating amalgamated
odours
Jostling with
The alighting and the
boarding crowds
Trying to contain your
body
By pulling yourself
Within
As flocks of women
Spill on platforms
As veggies burst out
of an
Overstuffed
carry-bag....