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.