Category: Poems

He’s eating in his sleep tonight.
His fragile fingers gripping ’round
Some phantom spoon he doesn’t like.
He tests it as he often does:
A twist to left, a twist to right,
To check the weight against his wrist.
The writer’s cramp from forty years
Of blackboard writing with a chalk
Has left his wrists too shaky now.
Without the proper weight, he spills
The spoonful he can barely lift.

He’s trying different cutlery,
And nothing seems to do the trick.
He makes his hand a trowel now –
The one he taught me how to make
So many many years ago,
So I could eat without his help.
I hold his trowel hand tonight,
And every night of troubled sleep,
Until again he’s fit to grip
The stainless heavy spoons he likes.

He couldn’t pass his high-school tests,
But now the doctors lean on him
To figure out the spots on scans
That do not fit the pigeonholes
Their textbooks, journals, meets define.

Officially, he runs machines
That diagnose the heart and brain.
But thirty years of reading scans
And following the patients’ health
Has given him a finger-feel
For what the doctors don’t detect.

The doctors hate him to their bones,
Except the ones who’re still secure.
They hate his reputation, yes,
His grip on union reps as well,
But what they hate the most in him
Is that he gives them no excuse
To tell on him, to throw him out,
To discipline his acts somehow.
He’s far too clever for them all.

Or so the man would like me think
At 4am, when no one else
Would stop to share a word with him.

(He did, however, find a spot
The doctors missed in our reports.
They brushed it off as just a fluke.)

She cleans up after everyone.
Her shift is, therefore, longer than
The longest shift plus overtime.
The overtime is for the docs.
She only gets her husband’s wrath
And children’s tantrums, hating her.
They want her sitting down at home,
But also want the clothes she buys,
The pocket money she provides,
The smartphone that her job supplies.

She’s hardly holding grudges, though.
She loves her job: it’s meaningful.
She knows she helps in saving lives
By “killing germs before they harm,”
By “cleaning clutter from the mind,”
By “smiling when one needs a smile.”
She finds her title funny, though.
“They want to keep me in my house.
And here I am with housekeeping.”

She does have such a genuine smile.

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.