Minakhi Misra

It’s just another thing to do.

No joy remains. No sloth revolts.
No memory of why returns.
It’s just another thing to do.

To do because it’s always done.
To do because to do is safe.
To do because to don’t will daunt.
It’s just another thing to do.

The chats I have in confidence
Are chats I trust the least of all.
If one can be whoever in
The different windows of the chat –
So flirty here, so angry there,
“Professional” in groups we share –
I wonder who I’m talking to.
I wonder who I’m talking as.
We split our psyches by the second,
Swiping through carousel trays
Of masked emotions practised well.
So many lives. So many lies.
So many us to put to sleep
Before we switch off for the night.

He saw me flatten paper cups
To write on them some poetry,
And pointed at the writing pad
They keep beside the pottery.

Along its perforated neck
I tore a paper, bit by bit,
And with forgotten instinct made
An Origami cup of it.

The park behind the hospital
Has greying hair and reddened faces.
The greyheads talk without a shame
Of fantasies unfulfilled yet,
While sons and daughters blush aloud –
How even in the sunset days
Their parents still embarrass them
Without a care for how they feel.

No poem, please. I can’t today.
My mind is pizza-cut between
My shuffled Jigsaw family,
My Snakes and Ladders sanity,
My Jenga ego tottering,
My shaky choices Carroming,
My Two-Eight hand of confidence,
My Origami common sense.
Today, my tryst with poetry
Is Mentos-cola rocketry.

It’s just a number. Vanity.
We’re number-chasing animals.
Our eyes are set binocular
To focus on specific goals.
We have the freedom, yeah we do,
To choose this number or that one.
We do not have the freedom, though,
To choose no number, whatsoever.

That’s the rub, eh, little one?

And, say, we choose the one to chase.
We’re haunted by the others too –
What if our chosen number’s wrong?
And, panicking, we make a switch.
And still the other numbers haunt.
And, panicking, we switch again.
And still the other numbers haunt.
And, panicking, we grab them all.
Binocularly twitching eyes.
And still the other numbers haunt.

Before we know, our time is up.

And then there are the ones who say
That there’s no number fully right,
That living means to pick and stick,
That switching isn’t worth the fight.
If every number bites our bum,
Exploring different ones is dumb.

But how has that worked out for them?

So, when you ask how many more,
I don’t know, kid. Shut up and pour.

The queue was full of flower-heads,
Who wore their choices on their sleeves.
Of course, the party’s not at fault.
These mango men need handkerchieves.

“You cannot wear this,” someone said.
“It’s not allowed,” said someone else.
The polling officers, instead,
Refused to say a word themselves.

The flower-heads went one by one
And beeped the symbols that they wore.
They praised the Prime Minister’s work
And prayed he gets to serve some more.

My mother eyed an officer,
Who used to be her student once.
He shook his head and tapped his belt.
I told her they are carrying guns.

My mother eyed the constable,
Who used to be her father’s aide.
He shook his head and tapped his chest.
She understood they had been paid.

He doesn’t understand the stakes.
He doesn’t have the strength it takes.
The boy inside is yet to grow.
He hopes I will forgive him, though.

He hides from any worthy grind.
The world will leave him soon behind.
The boy inside is still too slow.
He hopes I will forgive him, though.

He throws a tantrum everyday
I try to work the normal way.
The boy inside rebels, you know.
He hopes I will forgive him, though.

He doesn’t know it’s me who’s wrong.
It’s me who should be fast and strong.
The boy inside is why we glow.
He hopes I will forgive him, though.

They said he wiped their savings out.
At first, the complicated birth.
Then weeks in natal ICU.
Then months of costly jabs and drugs.
And years of weekly check-up fees.
And finally, at eight years old,
The surgeon’s words were hard to miss:
“I’m sorry. Too much blood was lost.”

It wasn’t his “defective genes”.
It wasn’t his “retardedness”.
It wasn’t anything they feared.
He simply fell into a well.

His grimace takes the pleasant curve
Of quarter-monthly crescent lunes,
Revealing umbric gums eclipsed
By quarter-hourly tablespoons.

He’s grumbling still and overcast:
Cumulonimbus mannequin.
He’s twitching to dendritic itch
Throughout his vertisolic skin.

He’s moving earth and heaven with
Ulyssesean fixity
To strive, to seek, to find his drip
Of intravenous liberty.