Month: December 2022

She’s here for just experience.
She needs a couple years to join
The hospital that’s closer home –
The one her crush keeps calling from.

She’s tattooed “Litu” on her arm,
But Litu doesn’t know it yet.
She says she will surprise him soon –
His birthday’s coming up in June.

Because it’s just experience,
She bitches openly to us
About the things that do not work –
She calls our doctor “Sexist Jerk”.

Because it’s just experience,
She sometimes breaks the rules for us
And lets us have some things for free –
She slips us in an extra tea.

Because it’s just experience,
She sometimes tells us tales from home.
Some little things, some seismic-sized –
Like how her Litu’s paralysed.

It was a careless nurse’s work.
So every time she draws some blood,
Her eyes erupt in little spurts –
Her tattoo needle phantom-hurts.

He used to be the concierge,
But when Pandemic took his job,
He couldn’t find a star hotel
To use his twenty work-ex years.

They told him, “Be a Uber guy”,
But he didn’t have the wherewithal
To buy a car, or travel far,
And so he bought a rickshaw from
A friend who knew a friend of friend.

His twenty years as concierge
Had taught him people value care,
And so he spent a little more
Upgrading its upholstery,
Upgrading lighting, music, horns,
And stitched himself some uniforms
Of finest silk and cotton threads.

If ever you are fortunate,
You’ll match with him on Uber too.
And hear him tell, so bloody well,
The stories of Bhubaneswar new.
He’ll steer you down some boulevards
Of kings and kingdoms, old and gone.
He’ll offer you some lemonade,
And premium cookies, free of charge.
Delighting with his little jokes,
He’ll drain the worries draining you,
And by the time you reach your place,
You’ll want him on your smartphone too.

If you have never paid a tip
To any Uber driver yet,
And even if you’ve never planned,
I bet, he’ll be the first to get.

“The way to hell is paved with fun,”
A ninety-something told his son.
“But I’m not going there so soon.
I’m yet to make these nurses swoon.”

The nurses “Haww!”ed at rising pants.
The son apologized with hands.
The guard returned to show his powers.
“ICU over, bhisting hours.”

The doctor says I chose it wrong.
I should have studied medicine,
And not “whatever you’ve done.”
My spidey-sense is tingling now.
Such flattery means just one thing:
He wants me to be off my guard.
He wants me looking somewhere else,
To miss whatever he has done.

The greater is the miracle,
The greater is the sacrifice.
And yet, it is the easiest
To pay without a second thought.

I trust my future me with this.
He’ll handle it. I know he will.
Today, it is for present me
To do whatever can be done.

Is there a way to sway a man
Who no more wants to be alive?
Who uses last of what he has
To push us all away from him?
Who tries to paint himself as one
We’ll all be glad to be without?
If there’s a way, I need it now.

The Now is two-point-five secs long.
That’s twenty-four nows per minute, rough.
Like twenty-four hours in a standard day,
Except I sleep so differently.
It’s one-third here, but two-thirds there.
The third that’s here is one not there.
I’m thinking of the now just now,
‘Cause thinking of the day, I’m lost.
The days of day-by-day are gone.
It’s now-by-now from now on, now.

He’s thinned so much in past two weeks,
Professors of anatomy
Arrive with clueless student groups
To watch him as he chews his food,
Or as he gets down from his bed,
Or as he simply takes a breath.
With chewed-in pencil magic wands
The students trace his moving bones,
His moving muscles, veins and nerves,
Ignoring his bewildered eyes,
Ignoring all the rest of us.

We’ve stopped protesting anymore.
We simply wave our ice-cream sticks,
The ones they bring for mixing tea,
And when some hapless student frowns,
We simply smile “Ignore us” smiles –
The ones the profs have taught us well.

They’ve pricked his veins so many times
No longer any blood comes out.
New nurses come and scold the old,
And take things into their own gloves,
To fail at what they scolded for.
The old ones roll their eyes at them.
The new ones frown apologies.
We simply stare, and stare, and stare.
And afterwards, we glare and glare
At their retreating netted buns,
As we replace the cooling pack
That helps to keep the swelling down.

Sometimes I manifest the worst
By simply planning for the worst.
Kayakers drown in eddies they
So frantically swerve away.
The hours of sirened ambulance
And hours of silent turbulence
I charted out have come to pass.
Will all the other index cards
Start falling down as house of cards.