The day mom got knocked over
by a speeding motorist,
she was getting newly prescribed nephro pills
for dad from a pharmacy offering ten percent
discount on the printed rates.
As she was taken to the
hospital nearby in a fishtailing rickshaw,
all she had asked was to
take her home instead, to the man
she kept in a recliner, in an unlocked front room,
eyes fixed at the gate, eagerly
waiting for her arrival back.
That now he is no longer there and
she often walks unsteadily doesn’t matter,
so long as she could make it back that day
to a helpless old man, soaked in his own piss with
not even a dog beside him to lick him of his woes.
Someone always leaves home,
to work, learn, pick the kids from school,
to get rations, to stand in serpentine queues
for the doled out welfares, perhaps to get medicines
from the Janoushadi where they offer ten rupees less.
Someone leaves home, to protest,
some protest against protests, riot, and hurl
petrol bombs where hordes of cops, turn around,
look elsewhere like guards scanning a soccer gallery
while the last of the spot-kicks are taken, and a
lone keeper leaps to block the cannon at his post.
Somebody leaving home arent just citizens
with random UID numbers, or corpses in morgues
with tags tied around toes, fragmented limbs
waiting for matching DNAs to take them home.
There is always someone waiting behind
for all the departed; writhing in pain
seething in anger to tell you that
Nobody Remains, just a Citizen anymore.
© Arun M Sivakrishna
