Premchand's People Metropolitanized; A poem

 

For a change from Premchand's stories this poem of mine might interest you.

Premchand’s People Metropolitanized

In this great metropolis

aspiring to be a world class city

I have found a safe walking stretch

undisturbed by the city’s unceasing traffic:

A hundred and fifty metre long dead end of a road

flanked by a thin green belt

and a high boundary wall of a housing society.

It’s peopled but peaceful.

Half the road is unauthorized parking

for about two dozen taxis and trucks;

the drivers lazing or gossiping around their quiet vehicles.

One side of the pavement is a junk and garbage dump

for the Metro project, the MCD, the neighbourhood:

piles of unserviceable boards, poles, pipes, plastic sheets,

discarded plastic bottles, buckets, chairs, toys, bags...

The other inhabited by a dozen labouring families

working for the state of the art Metro project.

Their jhuggis raised from junk cobbled together:
bricks, board, corrugated iron and plastic sheets. 

In front, on the road, their neatly built mud-washed chuhlas,

small stacks of firewood, perhaps picked from the green belt.

Rickety charpais, and  jhoolas slung over tree branches,

worn-out plywood pieces nailed and hammered together to make patras.

Discarded plastic buckets and bottles to store water

brought from somewhere I’m unable to guess.

Dark-bodied men in their soiled dhotis, pants, or undergarments

sitting listlessly in front of the jhuggis, after the day’s labour;

one splintering firewood for a chuhla.

The women ⎼ thin, emaciated, undernourished,

clad in saris unwashed for ages, it seems ⎼  

baking chapatis, or grinding chillies on the grindstone,  

fanning themselves or their babies with pankhas,

or sitting immobile, or gossiping,

keeping  their eyes on their grimy-faced  children,

playing on the road, their courtyard, with messy discarded toys,

or cricket with make-shift bat and stumps of junked board.

Walking in the middle of the road,

I feel like an intruder into their private space.

But who are they?

Suddenly a thought occurs to me:

Have Prem Chand’s  Halku, Ghisu, Jhuria, Budhia, Hori,

Dhania, Mangal, Dhukhi ... migrated to the metropolis

in search of pastures new, and become urbanized ?

Proud citizens of this great city,

bringing with them their labour, their hands and feet

and exhausted bodies, their only assets,

and mortgaged them to their new masters ⎼

the new Thakurs and zamindars ⎼

to build  the ultra modern facility, the Metro,

to the honour and glory of this great city

and this noble country!

In the meanwhile,

this stretch has become a regular haunt

for my evening walks,

their silent questioning  eyes notwithstanding.

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