Imagining her and her Love

Dr. Kamalakar Bhat, Postgraduate Department of English of Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra tellkamalakar@gmail.com

The Rajiv Gandhi Colony is split by a rail track. Sloping down on either side are crowds of discolored skirts, sarees, shirts drying in the sun. Where the slope ends, the lane starts, Why, it is the house front. You will see Mangalabai squatting there Picking lice from and plaiting her daughter‘s hair.

(The picture imprinted in my mind is from a scene I have seen while passing through in a superfast train, though the names I am imagining)

No quake would upset her immensely patient and dedicated attention to picking lice, as though mining rich ores. Are her fingers sewing together tissues in a brain surgery?

(I have reached the station by now, been picked up by the company sedan, and cruising toward the office on Dole Patil road... the mother‘s fierce lice-picking concentration spurs my imagination... the child‘s name could be Meena)

They are framed by Their slum-dwellings Their furious strategies to survive the day the pitiless horizon of the city hearts ravaged by the anxieties of existence

(My vision is being fully absorbed by this picture)

City‘s bazaars, ponds, bewitching malls grand villas, grave highways... the hills, mountain peaks, deserts, and the oceans beyond them and the cloud, and the sun further beyond and the star-studded sky enveloping all these

Aren‘t as large as The rapt eyes intent upon lice-freeing her daughter‘s hair and... and...

her love

****

2. Breaking bloody news

The road this noon is a hot arena

Where small riches are scattered:

A purse with one handle, A sandals ansthethumbloop an abandoned cloth bag stuffed with brinjals and green chilli, a walking stick with a curved grip, and a corpse streaming blood.

Some of the wounded sink in solitude into coma with no sign of help on the way.

Police, rifles, sloganeering organisers

--all Have fled leaving this road to bear

The sin of bloodshed All alone.

Present here with the fresh corpses

Are the media Diligent and busy With the live Coverage of the gore.

And...

This poem.