Crowded streets mark despair

– on foot, on horse, in cart, in rickshaws

drawn by men; on backs, on coaches, indescribable loads

men with pointed caps, round turbans, in robes, in rags in shawls

The sheer effort for survival shatters hope

Their hope? I do not think so.

My hope.

My despair

The river is black and dead and the stench:

a monument to human effort.

You lit incense candles when you drove us through the slums at dawn – it choked me Had tea at the mended Taj, called it a breather –

sneezed from the air-conditioned breeze

I was breathless too by the City Hall, the Railway Station, the Temple on Malabar Hill.

The trees at Tata Institute were bent

From the overload of crows

– their chorus was harsh –

on queue performing a deafening chore

composing the score as

we watched the slo-mo massacre

on the Bollywood DVD

of “Bombay”

on a black and white TV

The Dalit brought tea –

sweet, almond and saffron-scented sweet

Dhobi-wallahs set out to wash and clean

There is so much to wash,

too much to clean.