He will die soon
Hands are shaking,
Cannot talk,
Cannot recall his customers
Skin creased
Drooping on his stool
In a dull evening
He has two daughters,
One married,
One serving the customers
And when she finds a known face
She makes him wait for a minute
And messages her father’s dry limbs
Nobody is at home,
Who takes care of him?
So she takes him by her side
Like a child, wherever she goes
The shop was bought
When he was a boy of twenty
A tin shed, a sack of rice,
A dozen of soaps,
A few packets of bidis
Carefully built big
Year after year passed,
People find now a to z
Under its roof
Beside the gutter
Rested on the shoulders
Of his shop-boys
He is urinating, unsteady,
One unzips his pants
Other takes him by breast
Let the people of all faiths,
All creeds, all languages, all ideologies,
All nationalities, all geographies,
All isms watch the dying man,
Urinating by the gutter
One boy is unzipping his pants,
Another is holding onto his breast
