A DIAMOND JUBILEE POEM: HEMANG DESAI Hemang Ashwinkumar Desai works as the Head of English Department at Shri N.V.Patel College of Pure and Applied Sciences, Gujarat, India. He holds a doctorate for doing research on "Translation of Select Writings of 'Sundaram' ( T.P.Luhar) from Gujarati into English. Hemang is a primarily a bi-lingual poet writing in Gujarati, his mother tongue, and in English. He is a translator, a short story writer and a professional singer. Next Poem:....................................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

Once again
It's time to relax
Time to reflect

Sitting under a slack ceiling fan
We've found out after scurrying
The whole length of the platform
We gaze at the slithering goods train
Loaded with black coal
With equally black Vishnu
Waiting by with a metal rod shesh
Holding it by its neck
Sweat rolling down his chin
As the shesh is busy scouring
Metal between metals
Hardened with dried shit

Hen kettles are at rest
After heating their bums
Five times since morning
To keep her cheap milk fresh for
Thirsty lips and burnt tongues

Golden vada pearls
Straight from the sizzling oil sea
Lay listlessly
By their wide-agape pav shells
Unworried about
Whose throat they'd go down well

We theorize on
Benchod cricket, benchod politics
Benchod policy of benchod bosses
As we practically peek beneath
The low-neck kameez of babes
Who keep whispering on cell phones
Possibly with their bosses, politicians or cricketers
If it's a good morning

Or keep tugging at
Our twisted knickers
Gazing at a maynah
Dipping its ember red beak
Into the mouth of a leaking hydrant
Over a runnel between tow tracks
With parched eyes
If it's a bad morning

Begging blind singers, crones, shoeshine boys
know our dilemmas well
allow us to dream unbugged
as we fall asleep caressed by hot wind
of metro rails and e-mails
lesser tax and soaring SENSEX
piquant pizza and migrant's visa

And we dream
to rise just in time
to catch our passenger train
bound towards its purple platform.

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