There he sat with matted hair
Spittoons on his head
the snot on his nose was an excuse
to spend time somewhere in the
corner of the road. He needed to
play with time. After all everyone
was playing. He was impervious
to begging. But he knew solitude
there and in bougainvillea gardens
a kind of Eden but he was not sure
which house to enter and steal a few things
things. He slept by the roadside and
walked into a shop. There was no tea.
Only water which he measured with
the stretch of his arms. He wanted to
steal and make his matted hair a disrobed
entity.
He didn’t cry. Laugh he was never taught to
Let’s walk into the house where the dog
is barking but men are barking too.
He wiped the snot. He wiped the tears.
Wait, they pulled him away for a theft he
committed in his dreams. He pleaded, that
was a dream. Don’t you know dreams are real
they thundered. He wiped the snot off his nose.
Someone wiped the tears.
Someone derailed his dreams.
His grinding poverty had come to a halt
though some question marks regarding love
and dreams remained.
Now twenty years later there are locks of hair
The knotted hair has given place to a wilderness in
The head, the body and the mind
His begging bowl where alms are thrown into
Is a disfigured aluminium bowl like his dreams.
His tears and the stealthy stealing of things
appear in lucid dreams.
They found him one day near the cottage
He planned to commit his robbery (or suicide)
Dying. dreaming. Gasping for water.
When the dreams returned he smiled.
He knew they were going to take him away again.
They dragged him, pushed him into a cell
and he was planning murder in his dreams.
So he thought But actually he was cat walking
Into a death. Termites and locusts had entered
him. He thought life is so fragile.
The living are the dead
The dead are living
Locusts and termites are my wealth
When was I born?
When am I going to die?
Or am I going to die before the inquisition
Of committing theft in dreams takes place?
Listen friends
This is a narrative not of exploitation
But of the alchemy of love. Just think
About it. The poor man hasn’t died yet.
He still lives in my/ his dreams. He may be
Aressted once again so that they can enter
His dreams and arrest him of infraction of
Living life unlawfully and dreaming renegade
Dreams
Listen friends
This is a parable I read out to you
About the inviolate nature of love.
Dreaming and, stealing.
Listen my friends
This is an allegory of the rabbit and hare and the hound
Or was it the tortoise?
It is a 21st century allegory of how not to suffer
For your dreams, the dreams that masquerade as angelic epiphanies
Just lift a prayer.
The dreams with the locusts and termites
Will disappear.
And my 21st century hero, the beggar
Is now dead
Till we have the 22nd
When dogs will be beggars
Calculating earnings in laptops. No this is not burlesque, nor was meant to be
Nor Eliotesque
It is simply an Indian story.