The Quarrel On The King's Highway

 

The quarrel on the King’s Highway

The Rajpath of the largest democracy is no different

From what we see and hear in our mohallas

The opposition leader called the top executive

A thief for the arms deal he secretly made

With the President of a European nation

And for the country nephew he made a middleman!

For bypassing the accomplished national builder

And depositing unconditional trust on a greenhorn

Who hasn’t assembled a toy airplane to date

The responsibility of building fighter jets

To secure the motherland from inimical neighbors

What can the businessman do,

though for two generations reputed he may be?

The powerful call the boy many names

They employ their departments to malign him

They drag his family members

And smear any relative of him they find

All the media cannons they could turn at him

All the ministers with any voice

Male, female, blogging and slogging!

How could the young son of a gun

Have the temerity of pointing a finger

At the graybeard, with no children to rear

And no wives and women to please

With no safeboxes to store stolen money

How could the baby born yesterday

Dare to challenge the saintly man on the throne?

We’ve heard some great historian said

So truly, “Power corrupts

and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Arrogance and belligerence are its illegitimate brood.

the boy is saying things which are rattling

The powers that be! Why so?

People can sense the truth of his words!

Xavier Bage

Sat, 29 September 2018

Jehad on Love

My son keeps a computer institute

And he is a good teacher

So his students swear

Boys and girls from reputed city high schools

Come in batches morning and evening

Young women aspiring to land jobs in firms

Young men with ambitions in corporate

receive classes in Irfan’s Computer Education Institute.

He is a handsome twenty-nine year old

I ask him many times to marry

And bring me a daughter- in-law

He says, “When I find the right girl,

I’ll surely do your wish.”

One day, he brings a young woman

To me and says, “She’s the one.”

I gather after some minutes of conversation

That she is the only daughter

Of a businessman in the city

And that she belongs to the majority fold

Something within pricked me

Will her parents and her people agree to

This inter-faith meeting of hearts?

Irfan and Ishita say, “We are adults. We love each other

And can’t think of marrying anybody else.”

They exchange garlands in the court of law.

What I fear happens

Men in khaki knock at our door

Question Irfan and Ishita

Find nothing to incriminate them and go away

Next land a gang of musclemen in shiny cars

They lift Ishita away

Another lot vandalizes Irfan computers

And abduct him with force

His lifeless body is found

Beside the railway tracks not far

The Police say it’s suicide

But I’m sure in my heart

It’s a murder, cold-blooded!

Xavier Bage

Tues, 25 September 2018

Peacocks

 

Those three young men riding

On the gaudiest superbike peacocking around

Vroom past the section of the road

Beside the daily market

Where family men and women buy

Their daily supply of vegetable, fruit or fish

The buyers crisscross the road

The riders just honk the horn long

And ride past the stretch in dangerous speed!

Save your life family men and women!

Your people are waiting for you

Those three brats riding the storm

Have no helmets on

Helmets would hide their hair style

The policemen at the intersection

Can’t stop them!

The three boys are members

Of a local club having a fancy name

Supporting the ruling party

Policemen are servants of the powerful men

In the party and government offices!

They think thrice before taking action

On such aberration of

SAFE DRIVE SAVE LIFE

Which is a slogan after all!

Xavier Bage

Fri, 14 September, 2018

She, the Woman Tea Estate Worker

She rose from her simple bedding

With the first crowing of the cocks in the workers’ line

She lit the fire with pieces of wood

In her brick and clay oven

She placed the kettle of water on the oven

Brought two bowlful of flour from a tin container

And kneaded in a high edged plate

She baked chapattis on the iron tawa and

 Boiled the sugarless tea without milk

‘Red tea’ she and all others call it

By that time, her husband and children were up

And ready for breakfast

She served the chapattis and tea

She barely had time to eat her breakfast

The siren in the tea factory ordered her

To get out and join her duty at the tea bushes.

She placed her improvised cloth bag on her head

A tripal, the tough apron, a rope, an umbrella,

Lit a bidi and stepped out smoking.

She plucked tea leaves and pushed

Into the collecting bag on her back

Her black fingers worked while she talked

With her co-workers

Talking makes the work less monotonous

And the burden of the day less heavy

In fact, that is her best time!

After the first weighing, she can smoke a bidi again

With her colleagues.

In the evening, she returned home

She scrubbed the cooking utensils

With ash, using a lump of grass as scrubber

And washed the pots in the public tap

She fetched water for drinking and cooking

She lit fire again in the oven to cook the evening meal

Of rice, lintel and some simple curry

Her family ate while she served

She was the last one to eat her meal.

She a mother, a wife and a tea estate worker

She is tougher than the tripal she wears

Around her body

Yet, she is tender and sweet like the tea flower

She, the woman tea estate worker!

Xavier Bage

Friday, September 14, 2018