In someone’s shed
in someone else’s arms
the boy has slept;
he gets up at dawn, kicks the laggard beside him,
slings a sack-bag over his shoulder,
and out he goes into lanes and filthy alleys.
He comes to a corporation dump,
stands with clasped hands as if discovering a treasure,
turns and wades in;
his hands sift through it
as if removing a tiny piece of severed intestine
with a doctor’s eye.
Among the broken glass there,
the plastic bottles,
the torn rubber condoms,
the old papers he lifts, there
where some housewife has wrapped a sickening red tampon—
below all that, something brings a smile:
a torn and patched two-rupee note.
Here and there, once pretty broken dolls
may kindle a light in his mind,
finding marbles can push him
into playfulness.
Broken eggshells may cut his feet,
he may thrust his hand into the pockets of old shorts
and touch a blunt blade
and the gush of spurting blood
will further squeeze his sapless frame.
He has no parents, but he has company,
he is an orphan, but he is satisfied!
What remains in cans emptied by rich men’s kids,
or bottles thrown away by their fathers, becomes holy water.
Leftovers sticking to leaf plates become holy food.
Opening his mouth for a beedi stub,
he leaves for the next lane.
Standing where he should not stand,
sitting where he should not sit,
scratching at his sores
when flies and insects swarm round them,
shuffling and combing through his precious collection
piece by piece again and again,
surrendering it for a few coins to the trader,
at last he throws himself down
in someone else’s shed,
someone else’s child.
(Taken from Steel Nibs are Sprouting: New Dalit Writings from South India (Dossier II: Kannada and Telugu), Eds by K. Satyanarayana and S. Tharu, Harper Collins, Noida, 2013)
rishvanth.com 
Leave a comment