Dr Ambedkar and other shorts

1.
Lalji
Travelled many miles
From Champaner
To Mumbai

In silence
He paid obeisance
At the memorial in Dadar
On 6 December

Although
He could not read or write
Lalji
With his meagre savings
Purchased eleven books that had Doctor Saheb on the cover page

He
Returned home
Didn't eat on the train
Determinedly
Clutched the eleven books
Which his three daughters
Would read, again and again
For a year

Till the next anniversary of Doctor Saheb
On 6 December



2.
THE RIVER WAS ABLE TO CHANGE IT COURSE

After
The village
Which was vacated
In the middle of nowhere

Is
Now engulfed
By barbed wires
And the smell of dead jacarandas



3.
After
A day of stuffing letters into envelopes
Which no one would open
Serving machine tea to people in puny cubicles
In which no one knew his name

He waited for evening
When they would broadcast
A Rafi song
On the radio

That would make the rest of the day
Less miserable than it was



4.
This is a true story about repressive intolerance, I'm told

The Maharaja
Known for defenestrating people who worked for him
Built a massive-castle
Whose spire
Could be seen from the moon

The Maharaja
In a hand-embroidered robe
With his face on the back of it
Created with rubies, jade and diamonds

Visited the massive-castle
In a Benz Patent Motorcar

The handle of the door to the massive-castle
Refused to budge

The Maharaja
Pushed and pulled
Roared in frustration
Till a pair of white rhinoceros
Imported from Czechoslovakia
Were pushed out of the window


And that's how monarchy was crushed
In these parts



5.
The
Precocious young boy
Told his father
Tapping the keyboard of the latest gadget in his palm
It is unicode, it is encrypted
Papa, you won't understand

The
Father smiled
He wanted to tell his son
How when he was young he ran into the storage room
That stored thousand sacks of coffee beans
To do his calculus homework
When he heard his father's footstep

How he skipped
An extra helping of avial with lemon rice
When his mother transmitted signals
With her eyes

He could have
But he did not want to
After all, his young son would never understand the secret code
Of bygone times



6.
Everyday
I smoked a cigarette
Under an old baobab tree
That stood there with a certain amount of equilibrium

It was all very reassuring

Last night
It came crashing down
For no rhyme or reason

Even
As I decided to quit smoking
I saw scavengers pick up one branch after another
Trampling
Green leaves
And a bit of history under their bare-feet



7.
He made a kite
For his son
On his 11th birthday


It was a beautiful kite
And the last one he made

He remembered all the details

Especially
How it flew away
With his only son