My barber casually remarks,
"Only that person, for me,
is a customer who
is sitting in the chair,
the one I'm working on.
Rest of them -
waiting, chatting, smoking,
cannot be called anything.
They can sit or
may leave any time
depending on their whims."
I lament,
how truthfully,
how closely
he recognises Life.
Depending on one's idea of struggle,
Life, it seems, is a journey to acquire
cleaner, spacious washrooms -
wherein there are no multiple cheap soap bars
clinging to each other
but soap dispensers.
Wherein the big window that had
half a glass missing
covered with polythene,
displays blinds now.
Wherein the water
brimming inside the bucket
one played with the distorted image of one's arm,
comes out these days in the shape of artificial rain.
Cleaner,
spacious washrooms, however,
have one defect.
No matter how long you bathe in them
they don't cleanse the sores of conscience.
Ideas and thoughts dawn on us now,
not how the great poet once envisioned,
from the mysterious other world.
They, instead, startle us like night raids,
like drones in the sky,
like riots encouraged as negotiations,
like suicide videos in high resolutions,
like diapered adults in sweatshops,
like biometrics in the grave,
like knowledge disseminated as shame,
like television sets in refugee camps,
like stale food disguised as mann-o-salwa
...
all the angels,
the poet should know,
were incinerated by targeted missiles.
