Keeping Count: Two Poems

Keeping Count

Day 1

I saw ma stressed

I’ll lose my job if I don’t go she said

After all, the ministers are responsible for the bread

That she earns, our only one

10, 9, 8

The counting has to be done

Day 4

Ma came home, looking a little pale

She coughed and burnt with fever

We advised a week’s rest to her

But they said duty was important

So next day she again reported

To the polling booth at once

7, 6, 5

The counting has to be done

Day 9

Ma was dying

Death meant no one would feed me roti or braid my hair

Or tell me a story before the close of a day

And hug me and say it’ll all be okay

My last memory of her

Lying alone in a hospital bed

With tubes growing out of her from all directions

3…2…1

The number of breaths

Left in her chest

The counting must be done

Of the piling bills and medicines

That couldn’t save the dead

Or the tokens we need to book a seat

To cremate our loved one

The counting must be done

Of the number of kids robbed off their parents

Or the long queues outside hospitals and burial grounds alike

Or the rivers piling up corpses like silt on its banks

Tell the officials their records need correction

Tell them, the counting must be done

❈ ❈

Lost Home

One day it appeared as though the corals had never been

It had all turned to concrete

Lifeless, stripped off their colours

Thirty six reefs altogether, barren and bleached

The sea died leaving behind carcasses of a happier time

Hues of blue under a pallor of ashen grey

The papers showed heat as the underlying cause

I reckon it was grief, for it missed the corals so

The soil sobbed and mourned, as the cruel concrete vehemently erased every trace of it

And grazed the coconut trees too, in a fit of rage

So many coconuts, lying abandoned

For who’d keep them now

So they walked around

But no matter where they’d go, their home the archipelago was nowhere to be found

(Sayani Rakshit is studying for a Master’s degree in Mass Communication at Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi. Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum.)

Janata Weekly does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished by it. Our goal is to share a variety of democratic socialist perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

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