Soon, the last whiff of winter will be warm –
Mumbai’s Manichean reality of summer and not
will begin. The marble-workers of Koparkhairane
will exit the four walls where the echo of saws
drone like a swarm of mosquitoes
suspended on strings to sever ears.
They will purse calcified lips around
beedis damp from surplus storage –
look about through red-eyes
at metroscape: bridge over stagnant gutter,
bar by the industry-lane and unpruned plumes of smoke rising
from parted lips. They will nod at the sun above
in acknowledgement of the fire that will be upon them:
then, ash,
a product stripped to the toes.
In Nariman Point,
oiled heads on white shirts will sigh in after-hour drowsiness –
these seated spectacled dreamers
string love taps on keyboards
for heavy machinery that only they know.
One sighs, stops mid-sway and makes a bowed attempt
at rendezvous with sleep, leaks drool
that is string and then puddle upon a trouser,
still a drying spot when they exit to twilight’s a.m.
in rickety Marutis that turn into homes
at an hour’s notice.
Like deodorant canisters crushed under
truck-wheels, our 80-odd revolutions
leak gas that is a fleeting scent of citrus
and sweat, then one with the haze.
Our wooden spoons were chewed at birth
for want of food,
manifested a pin-cushion tongue with ready slurs
and servient sorries, knock-knees kiss-ready for floors,
then a guttural syllable that slies into the wind –
Defeat is no supernova – it squats,
still in the perpetual construction in Koparkhairane,
development in Nariman Point,
all a butterfly’s wing
relenting only to a flu
cough-started by phlegmatic memory
of a past season.