Shunned by Sparrows

 

Photo by Milin John on Unsplash

There used to be more crows and sparrows

in the morning, pecking the backyard.

Now the roads are wider, lanes are narrow

pillows are cloud soft but life is hard.

 

Used to be doves cooing at midday

marking the sleepy afternoon,

now the skies are an ominous grey

the tides rise but ebb out too soon.

 

It used to be that Kishan produced

endless garments to cover our backs,

but now that’s changed – ignored, reduced,

our bodies are stripped, minds under attack.

 

Beware of cities the sparrows shun,

peace starts with the birds, the smallest ones.

You're only creating trouble for yourself if you blithely write things like 'see you soon' and 'hope to get back into usual routine,' how naïve is that anyway? - after a gazillion relocations? Yeah, well...

The house still looks like a disaster zone, okay, maybe a disaster zone after the Red Cross has made a round, but that's about it. The bookshelves still have Emily and Isaac rubbing shoulders. Not that I have anything against anyone rubbing shoulders with someone from a different era and genre...don't believe in that sort of discrimination. But it does make locating them difficult. The good news in all this is, there's been no time for any reading, neither poetry nor sci-fi. 

It's also partly the reason for the disaster zone remaining a disaster. When I am away from India, I follow the news, fret and fume, but have enough control to hold my tongue. Once the distance vanishes and I am in the thick of things, it's quite impossible to remain silent. Keeping things straight, even in my own mind, consumes every atom of energy. And there are always the various dens of bureaucracy to run around to, the endless applications for this, that and the other to fill up, the nonstop officialeese to deal with...'officer I can't access my xyz/yes ma'am, that's because you are non resident, you can access it only from abroad/but officer, I am resident now, we've come home for good/ma'am, in our records you are still non-resident, you have to be here for 6 months before that changes/what can I do to change it now?/you could write an application, ma'am..."  Who said coming home to ye olde motherland was going to be easy breezy?  (Sigh)

So there it is. It's not that I've stopped writing (that's like breathing, can't hold it in for too long) but editing, polishing, and putting it together to put up here has not been within the realms of possibility. I'm not writing 'see you soon' and jinxing whatever chances I have of achieving that. 

Have a wonderful September! I hope mine allows me to be online here more frequently as things regularise.