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| Image source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/photos/india/the-stinking-heaps-of-ghazipur-landfill-site/photo-EPOZjmghYwaqgrbKznFmSI.html |
Men,
often a few young boys,
Women,
rare yet likely,
Huddled
for a conversation
Like we
do on a mound
Green
grass covered
In the
park.
But these
men, boys, women
Are on a
huge heap
Of stench
emanating garbage.
Each
morning, on trucks, lorries
Door to
door
Apartment
to apartment
Restaurant
to restaurant
Picking
up filth
Vomit-inducing
rubbish
With bare
hands
Without
masks or gumboots
Displaying
a normalcy
That
isn’t.
Those big
blue bins
With
leftover food
Or used
sanitary pads
With
soiled diapers, or wet hair
Or when
color codes we brazenly disregard
And throw
that syringe, a razor
They
touch these, it pierces them
But we
play the ignoring game well
Pretending
well
The
non-existence of these humans.
Questions
of caste
Of their
subsistence
Unanswered
yet known
Are
relegated to the hind
Where
cemented by conditioning
They pass
along generations
And breed
kids oblivious to
The
strife of these men, boys and women.
The forms
that resemble us
In cloak
of flesh and bones
But on
their skin is smeared
That
invisible stench
Which no
soap can wipe
And a
part of the soul
Amidst it
all is lost
And part
of the mind
Numbed by
cheap alcohol
Or that
thinner
Caring no
more to think
Rag-pickers,
garbage collectors, koodawala
And all
the hues in between
Part-dead,
part-living
Cleaning
our filth
Thought
of, treated & thrashed as filth
These
men, boys, women
Are on a
huge heap
Of stench
emanating garbage
Huddled
for a conversation
Like we
do on a mound
Green
grass covered
In the
park.
