Murshidabadi Masons

Yesterday, I gave birth to a girl,
Faces around me were blackened,
For they pinned hope on a son

During my swelling days,
Parents, in-laws, close friends,
Even my maids were sure of a son’s coming

Neighbours looked at my bulging belly.
And they were happy for I was going to be
A proud mother within a week

Nothing that sort followed,
A girl was born,
And all fell silent

The room was the same
But it has lost its warmth,
The painted walls, the delicate curtains
Looked dull to our loved elders

Azad and I love our girl.
But Azad has just crossed a stormy sea
That I know.

Just as I take a window seat
at 9:46 train, and begin to read
‘The rolling plains arched her back,
to an obliging sky who lay down
between the lifted thighs of brown
hills all the way to the horizon.
And the wind sighed.’ from R Vol Lindsey,
a child in bare feet begins to twist her bones
to the rhythms of her mother’s beating drum,
she regales our eyes with fifteen feats,
and when her mother stops, she stops
and stretches a stainless pot to the pleasure-seekers.

Classy commuters, dressed to match the desire of the day,
find many a fault in the mother and the child and the system
and they refuse to drop a coin and argue in support
of not encouraging the way of visual pollutants.

Nonchalant, the girl moves to the next rows of labourers,
repairmen and tool-makers, seasonal performers, patient parties,
newly-wed couples and jobless lovers,
and almost all of them stretch their hands and praise the day.

Meantime, her mother moves to the next coach,
and the girl follows her steps and begins to repeat her
fifteen feats.