What is, what isn’t

Shubha is careless, everyone knows
You can see it in the way she even handles her phone,
Dropping things callously, misplacing keys and books,
never remembering if she added enough salt to her food.
Yesterday she cut her thumb, said she’d sliced some bread,
The other day it was a bruise that ran across her head.

But in the office, she’s full of life; there’s a sparkle in her eyes,
And many friends bring to her their stories of doubt and lies.
She listens to them patiently, and comforts their angst and cries
Tells them that they must keep their hope and never let it die.
Shubha is everyone’s best friend but no one knows about her,
They’ve only seen a glimpse or two of her husband of ten years
He wears a dimple on his chin and a scar under his ear.
There’s nothing much to think about them, nothing much to hear.

When Shubha doesn’t turn up one day, no one wonders why
It’s evening when they get the news and then they start to cry
They visit her in hospital, to see her bruised black,
Burnt stubbs of cigarettes are patterned in her hand,
And whiplash marks and nail bites scrawled on her back.
Her eye has been beaten blue, and she is comatose,
No one knows what happened until they see the reports.

This is the story of Shubha’s life, almost everyday,
It’s not her carelessness after all, it’s a sadist at play.
The dimpled man that Shubha wed is not nice after all,
You can tell by the broken bottles strewn in their dining hall.
Now in hindsight they all see who Shubha was,
Dropping things of nervousness, not because she didn’t care at all
The twinkle in her eye, they saw was masked in wretched tears
They all wish they could have seen behind that grace, her sad wall of fears.