The Girls of Titagarh

The train has just trundled out of the station

And moved a few meters off the platforms

When I heard catcalls and whistles

In the compartment I was crammed

The young men standing at wide door

Were looking out with pleasure

Some girls were standing
beside the railway tracks

Girls in their teens or just twenty

In miniskirts that show their thighs

Tight Short blouses exposing in covering

Their luring pair of mounds

Three or four men are standing around

And speaking to the girls…

Must be their clients or pimps!?

The wall beside the tracks

To keep away animals and people

Is breached like their virginity

And the smelly dirty shacks behind

That’s what remains of their life and body

The girls don’t look up to the catcalls

As if they have lost their hearing!

Can any sensitivity be left after

Being violated repeatedly

By hungry men again and again

And being used like garbage bin--

Can a girl save a shred of her self- respect?

Yet, something within me says

I respect you, girls, I respect you,
For accepting life as it comes.

Xavier Bage

Thurs, May 13, 2017