when roads are made from homes and dreams

Muthusamy came home
Early one morning,
Drunk from the previous day’s earnings,
On local arrack,
That still reeked a good twelve hours later.
His bleary eyes were suddenly
atear,
With fear –
Where was his home that was here
Yesterday?

Where was the deep blue tarpaulin sheet
That held the rain and sun above him, Kathayi and
The children?
Where were the hastily erected walls
Made of discarded bits of asbestos,
Synthetic sheets and bricks?
Where was that make shift door
That shut out their poverty to the rest of the world?
There was nothing.
Surely he had come to the wrong street,
Muthusamy.

He rushed to wash his inebriation away
From a tap that was left standing,
Surprisingly left standing amongst the debris.
When he was sober once more,
He looked again – there!
There was his door – was it the door?
Yes, broken now, and close to it,
The shredded blue tarpaulin sheet,
The
Fragmented asbestos.
And then he saw it, the might of power
The large bull dozer
Standing mighty,
Among the debris.

What happened, he cried,
Shaking himself of the many
Delusional dreams he had had,
When inconsolably drunk.
Where was Kathayi? Where were the children?
Had they been bulldozed too?

A fellow drunkard came by
And said their homes were gone.
Their homes would now be replaced
By broader roads for the city folk.

The bulldozer man was one of them
And yet, he had brought their hopes down,
Saying they were ugly reminders that
Put the city in bad light.
‘What about us?’ muthusamy screamed,
‘there’s nothing about us...’

There they go, muthusamy, kathayi,
Their many children and fellow humans
On trucks that will deposit them
On the fringes of urban civilisation.
There they go,
The invisible city dwellers,
To a new place they will call home,
Until the city needs a new road, building
Or high rise once more.



muthusamy, kathayi and other names speak for the numerous unseen, unheard faces of society. they are everywhere. but this is what happens to them, everyday.

the fates and the future

She looks beautiful,
Far too beautiful to be anyone else
But a lover’s flame.
And yet, she is unaware of the effect
She has on the hapless victim seated before her,
A victim of the fates who will decide how his
Tomorrow will be, without even having lived today.
She callously picks a card, throws it near him.
And he gingerly awaits the pronouncement of his
Morrow.
‘ah! There’s lust. you'll have plenty of it'
why, I can even see it
In your eyes now.you must find a way to appease
that greed.’
‘and there’s difficulty with money, unless of course
You pay obeisance to the sun,
naked in the early hours of the morn.
But be warned: you must be invisible to all,
Else cruel fate will befall.
And after that, here’s what you must do:
feed a priest, clothe a woman, pour milk over the snake pit
and come back to me, faithfully.
Every Tuesday morning. ‘

Terrified, he leaves,
But not before slipping a hundred rupees –
More than half his day’s earnings – on her.
He prepares to walk naked before dawn,
Bathe in the pond, and feed the priest.
But for the money, he must pledge
His wife’s wedding chain – all of the
twenty-four grams of gold.

He comes back every Tuesday, to listen
To the forecast.
And before the year is done,
So is he.
Now all his meagre wealth is dispersed
Among priests, wedded women, children and snakes.
And of course a parrot. A parrot so beautiful.
So beautiful and yet, caged within a wooden box,
Trained to determine others’ fates,
While succumbing to her own.



kili josyam - at dakshina chitra sometime in 2009. the thought came back again, fiercely just a few months ago.

between black and white

Inside me,
Is a woman. Screaming
To be let free.
But i am chained. Chained
By the demands of a society,
That slots the human species into
Black and white,
un-defining the grey
That defines me.

I struggle every day
Because I know that I no longer belong
To the sect that lifts its lungis in ease
To relieve itself on pavement walls.
Or slips a beedi in the mouth,
Teases women on the streets
Or declares itself the heir of tomorrow.

And the tears – the tears
Come so easily, flowing
At the rage and hate that surrounds
My family.

I feel woman. In every pore.
But no one agrees,
Let alone see.
It’s all in my mind, I am told,
‘Look at your skin – the hair on your chest
And your muscular shin.’
So, the exorcist arrives,
Says i have the spirit of my old
Widowed grandmother inside.
He says i must be chained and whipped.

I am.
But i still feel woman inside.

And then one night, i can bear it no longer,
I run away.
Run until i meet my own kind.
They take me and in one quick sweep,
My manhood is gone.
I am left to die.
Before i am reborn again.
Woman inside. almost woman, outside.
i am free. free. free.
only for the moment.

for when i rise from unconsciousness,
I am given padded clothes,
My nose is pierced, my chest cleaned.
And then, i am paraded along with the rest.
Begging people on the roads,
Screaming curses on those who turn their faces away.
But now, people are scared.
For the curse of our kind is potent enough.
we laugh. we believe we have the last laugh...

until..
They laugh in taunting whispers.
Behind our backs.
They call us ‘it.’ Not ‘she’. Not’ he’.
Not even ‘they’.
That is how we stand. No name,
No sect. Just ‘it’.
or at other times, vulgar names -
eunuch, hijra, transgenders....
nothing befits the trauma of my mind,
or the sufferings of my privateness.


so, here i am, the grey shade of humanity.
Still searching for a place between
The black and white,
Yin and yang,
right and wrong.
Man and woman.

there's fame. and there's fulfillment.

The giant waves leave nothing
Nothing to chance.
Lives, boats, even memories are gone.
And as the people gather around
The many graves of loss,
They just stare. For even their tears
Lie lost, buried amongst remnants in the sand.

The rescuers arrive,
Their earnest pride, masked under thin gauze strips
To prevent the stench of death
From entering their memories.
At first, they are shocked,
Looking at the half naked limbs, severed
By the might of the waves,
Orphaned like garbage heaps.
By the end of the day,
Tragedies turn to statistics
In the notebooks of the rescuers.

And then they come, men in suits,
In luxury cars and lapel pins that announce
The might of their being.
They sanction lakhs, draw blueprints,
Smile in benevolent grace,
At photographers flashing the headlines
Of the morrow.
They disappear, as quickly as they arrive,
Just like those giant waves.

The donations will now be watched over
By self appointed altruists
Whose altruism is directed at few
But themselves.

The real ones who stay to help
Will have to fight hurdles every where,
For trust in the times of strife
Is as abandoned as hope.

But these martyrs will stay,
Rebuild lives until one day,
They become nameless graves
Themselves.

But what will stand is the generous gifts
Of those men in cars and badges on their lapels.
Articles in papers, interviews on TV.
Always preserved in files and families.

The real martyrs and the rescuers
Will become mere memory,
Lost in the sweat and toil
Of the rebuilt land.