During summer vacation in August 2011, I was travelling in a suburban train in Chennai when I witnessed this scene. I have seen such scenes earlier. But this time it touched me and I thought I should put it down in a poem. It took me almost a year to do the task due to paucity of time.
Also the passengers travelling in a suburban train have changed a lot over the years. I felt a stranger in the train. Not many from lower middle class were travelling in a suburban train anymore. It was more of the working class. The middle class traveled in cars or bikes or private vans. Whenever I traveled alone, I continued travelling on trains and buses. This was the form of transport I used when I was young.
On a Chennai Suburban Train
The sudden violent clatter of a drum chokes
The cluttering rhythm of the suburban train coach
Cutting into passengers loud and lousy chatter
Slicing the muted monologues of monotonous matter
And drowning the whining whirl of fans overhead.
A drum beating frail sareed woman
And a pony-tailed girl of six or seven
With ruddy lips, cherry plump, well-fed,
Polished nails and toes, silken dressed
And made up face,
take centre stage.
She sings and dances to a popular Tamil number
Muffled by the beating drum and the train’s clatter
Then some flips and somersaults again and again
Balancing her petite body on the jostling train
Mechanical, vacant like the speeding train.
Her act done, the drum becomes silent, calm
With a bowl in hand, she asks for alms
Most part freely with two rupee coins
Manipulated to charity by naive innocence.
Alms collected, into the exit aisle she retreats.
Both fall silent waiting for another station
For another coach and begin all over again
As she waits, she drifts into a dream to linger
Prying the cracks in the wall with her little finger
A short interlude to dwell in
childhood.
Her fate to be a breadwinner child
And miss the sparkle of childhood wild.
Or lucky to miss the fuss, groomed
In the sterile uniformed classroom,
Coerced into adulterated adulthood too soon.
By senile wars, clawing poverty and exploiting vamps.
Her body, doomed, like other lasses, in the womb
To be bartered across
counters gloom
Buds nipped, never ever to bloom.
Hello Abe Pat. Our paths have crossed on Google blogs as well as the Poetry Forum.
ReplyDeleteI love the rich descriptions of this poem, with all the evocation it brings. The compassion you as writer and observer feels for the girl are tangible.
Again, thanks for your honest comments. Hope to read more of your poems and give my comments too.
DeleteHi
ReplyDeleteApart from drawing the portrait of a hapless (and often homeless too)juvenile beggar pervading the streets of India, you have done a good job of experimenting with sound words. I particularly liked the alliteration 'muted monologues of monotonous matter'. Your poem also reminded me of the poem 'An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum' by Stephen Spender.
Hareesh
hi pat sir,
ReplyDeletelong tym....hope u r fine.......i c dis scene evry tym i travel from coimbatore to home.....then till smething else comes up that picture will stay in ma mind...whther it be a boy or a gal or a blind man .....hoping that smeday i cud help them all......the poem is nice......although sme lines i cudnt decipher.........
btw just one more year to go for all of us guyz, except arjun, to become ENGINEERS......ma regards to ma'm and kids...tc sir...