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

September

September

The first month ending with “ber”

Has arrived and it shows in the weather

Patches of dark clouds are still loitering about

in the open fields of the sky.

Spill over of August

They just fall whenever they feel like, anywhere.

At dawn when a soft light heralds a day

A misty ghost hovers over the ponds and streams

Waiting for the sun to raise its head

The cow shed at the end of the farm looks black

September is a girl child

With thoughts and emotions slowly maturing

Along with her body

Days are getting shorter

And the air is getting cooler little by little

Taking us to autumn and then to winter

September, when we can hear

Sounds of puja drums approaching

The smell of new dresses in the market

The anticipated joys and pleasures

September is the first sip of wine

Pleasant to tongue and gradually

Gripping the body and mind of the drinker!

September is not for slumber

Trim the roses for the plants are eager

To sprout new leaves

And plant the cuttings to raise new saplings

Life is eager to express in new music

Cover the tiny roots of chandramallika

Into expectant earth

They will bloom to welcome the Savior!

Fri,  Sept 7, 2018

Those Two Women in the Courtyard

 

The old woman

Who is only a skeleton

Held together with a thin layer of skin

Wrinkled with innumerable lines

Without any muscles or flesh

Sweeps the courtyard 

with her bare hands

sitting and dragging herself

picks up the mango leaves

and throws them in the ditch

by the road side.

And now a fattish woman stands near her

Much younger and stronger

With one hand on her waist

With the other gesturing with her index finger

“Don’t dump leaves in our side.”

She says rudely to the old woman

She is the old woman’s daughter- in-law!

Her voice contains no kindness, no respect!

Instead of asking her mother-in-law to rest

She speaks to her like her Mistress!

The old woman lives in an old room

She sweeps her own floor

She washes her own old white sari

Whose whiteness has long departed

Her younger son sends her some food

Which is insipid, without loving taste

She asks me,” Why is God not taking me?”

She offers puja to a stone

Under the bel tree in the courtyard.

Though this is truth often talked about

The daughter-in-law doesn’t know it perhaps

That she will grow old and weak one day

Her son will bring a wife one day soon

She will be her daughter- in-law

Will she be kind and respectful

To her mother- in-law?

Well may be, or may not be.

However, history tells us and the stories

Of life prove it the daughters-in-law

Are earned as Karmic rewards or retribution

by women !

Xavier Bage

Sun, September 02,2018