Village boy Impressions

What a fine thing it is to travel by bus, to see through the window, a country in passing. Even if all you see is a vast, unbroken land, burnt black by bushfires . It is strangely delightful or perhaps delightfully depressing, to see trees, stunted by the fires, rushing past. But the bus slows. A police barrier. An officer walks to the driver’s window. Money changes hands. He smiles and waves us on. A private driver refuses to pay. He is directed to park at the roadside. Here is a sprawling town. Business is booming—or so it seems. Everyone is busy, sweating in the noon sun. And the filth threatens to swallow them. Whoever invented polythene bags and “pure water” must be smiling. What a beautiful eyesore we have made of our villages. I only cry for the villages, as for the towns and cities, From where I am coming to where I am going Plastic waste has taken over our neighbourhoods, threatens our homes, our lives and our sanity! Everything comes wrapped in a black plastic bag Even a s...

At home, the fires are in the fields Licking up twigs, herbs and every blade of grass Leaving a bleak blackness everywhere The fires eat the land at home   They came one day in the heat of noon while men rested Racing through the cornfields And licking through the rice farms, The sorghum , soya , and late millet The fires eat the land at home How sad a thing to hear the wailing of women And the mournful sighs of grown men, Calling on the gods to save them From this monster of their own making The fires eat the land at home!   Analim stands in the middle of his field With his two sons, sweating from the heat His hands on his head, in despair Frantic efforts with neem branches and buckets of water Could not save their burnt crop The fires eat the land at home The women are weeping mournfully, If only tears could quench the blazing fires But alas, the ancestors and the gods are silent  And the flames of hell have broken out E...