UNBUTTONED LIFE
‘Can you define your world, my child,’
Asks a world bank consultant
Who has just arrived
To make urban India shine.
Squatting under a receding thin shade,
She wards off the question like troubling flies.
But like all other pestering foes,
The flies and question persist hovering around.
Seeing him dug deep with a dollar in hand,
She yields.
I don’t know, sir, says her placid face.
You define, I can only describe:
Half sleep in eyes, I get pushed out
To be up each midnight
Searching a bush or a wall
To squat for a hurried while.
Roads and lanes allotted in advance
As my world I scout and search.
Unbuttoned blouse, body and world.
No thread in sight to stitch any one.
A bidi and gutka keep me mobile.
Forced hooch at night makes me immobile.
Speeding trucks, taxis and cars.
Hunting dogs and cats.
Some slaps. Some threats.
Uniformed thugs fry me alive
every night as matter of right.
See this bag and see this gash.
She looks in his eyes and
Ups her half moon breasts
Holding aloft half-eaten cherry
Left behind by beasts on nightly beat.
She softly cries,
the rag picker girl.
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