Mathai’s Morning
Mathai smiled at the vast expanse
Calm, quiet and tranquil
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Like a cooling, caressing
Hugging effect
He felt
Like a caring, patient, affectionate mother
Like a lovely, matured village girl
Her anklets jingle rhythmically while walking along
Or like an obedient, silent child.
Delightful images
Of the vast expanse flashed through his eyes
Mathai smiled, he exclaimed,
Where this expanse ends
Whether it has any limit?
Or infinity? Mathai wondered
A motor cycle, stopped
With a thud
The middle-aged,
Bulky fellow in expensive dress
A Middle-aged beauty
in violet saree and sleeveless blouse and cropped hair
In glittering ornaments she shined
Daily visitors.
Mathai glanced leftward
Both as usual sat
On the concrete chair
Not man and wife
Mathai was sure.
The man was all love and passion
Hugging her with one hand
Kissing her necks,
Cheeks and the vast “area” behind her neck,
Oblivious of the “world outside”
Mathai smiled.
The beauty quite submissive,
Like a hen. Some women find pleasure in being submissive to her lover.
And he like a cock,
A cock and hen story
Mathai’s imagination crossed all barriers
What both were talking all along?
A group of men
All bulky, elite group
With cars parked sideways
All on a morning stroll,
A daily sight,
Carrying the burden of their weight with them,
Diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension
Common for these folks,
Mathai was sure.
Cracking jokes all the way
Their subjects vary,
Business, politics, the explosive population like a dam in spate
Violence, congestion,
Subjects galore.
An aged, tall man,
Medium-built
In his white kurta and dhoti
Enjoying music holding
A transistor close to his ears
moving along
That too a daily sight.
Mathai looked rightward,
Tender coconuts-
Piled up,
A man in tucked-up lungi, and banian
‘A coconut merchant’
Thus he is
Known in his distant village-
Of Kerala,
That too opposite
Oberoi-Trident.
Doing ‘brisk business’,
A white man and his girl-friend
Both in jeans and T-shirts
With the jeans folded upto the knees
Standing before him,
Coconut merchant out of love and respect embodied
He knifed
Top of the coconuts
Picked up two straws
Each put inside each,
Both in praises-sweet,tasty,healthy and pure
No cadmium, no lead, no pollutant.
No bargain followed
The white man with
A pat on the man’s back,
Stuffed a hundred
Rupee note inside his banian
Not waiting for the balance,
Both walked along delightfully.
Mathai’s conditioned-reflex,
Sharp 10.00 AM.
Mathai stood up hesitatingly
Walked down the roads
Office waiting for him
To gift him-
One more monotonous working day.
Mathai’s Evening
Vast expanse angry and violent
Like a mother gone mad
Or like a ditched girl,
spitting venom on her lover
Or a quarreling, crying baby,
The vast expanse above,
Sometimes turning
cloudy, sometimes glittering with
Golden smiles,
Resembling the changing
Moods of Mother Nature,
Mathai, among the crowd,
With the sorrow
Of an outsider
With vehicles
Hooting down the
Streets.
An alien world-
“Who am I?Where am I? ” – Mathai to
Mathai. Whether Mathai is Mathai?
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