POVERTY..

In the shifting shadow of the lantern light;
The area of vision becomes humbler;
Her contours become yet more pronounced;
Against the pitch blackness of the impatient man…

Sitting on the verandah of the hut;
She looks impatiently at the cattle;
Struggling with the suffocating stench that comes of the empty sacks stained with kerosene;

Smell of hootch,of sweat,of flesh;
The man’s Scottish, drunken smile and look of vague desire;
Her dry hung elongated breasts;
Made the gaping cleavages of the paddy fields throw a sarcastic smile;

The haggard looking birds swooping down in the haphazard fields;
Gazing at the small hut and the dim lantern;
Where her naked children fight over a loaf;
Snatched from a dog..


Some erotic twists and turns;
Arms clasping and unclasping;
Like a woman expressing her emotions during the love making with her husband;
She clambers up like a crab;
As the hairy-chested man locomotes for a decisive thrust;

Breathing like an exhausted;
She looks at her children with a gleam of compromised content;
But the sorrow of poverty clearly visible;
As she looks at the two rupees;
Added to the thirty rupees she earned;
By selling her daughter…..