Hunger
by Sunil Sharma / October 25th, 2026
Young life walks on thin legs.
The swarthy face, lean; gaunt
eyes, coal-black, smouldering
embers in the hot ashes.
The kid, in a red T-shirt, naked
below,
without any shoes, cries before
the barred gates of a two-roomed
school for
the slum children. Desperate. Pleading.
The hot tears do not melt the iron
bolts. Nor do the cries of a young
heart.
The barriers in place for the excluded.
Wiping tears, red-eyed, the child looks
across
the room through the gaps of the bars,
shaking
a tiny finger.
That long lingering look enough to burn
down the entire
edifice, ignite fires lying dormant beneath
the cold stony path trodden by the unshod,
near
the wall with the graffitied lines in fiery red:
“…where you have placed
your bleeding little soles
a redolent tuberose grows…”
Sunil Sharma PhD (English): An academic, critic, literary editor and author with 30 published books, solo and joint: Eight collections of poetry; five of short fiction; two novels; a critical study of the novel, and, 11 co-edited anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism; two joint poetry books and one joint fiction collection.
A recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ Inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012. Winner, among others, of the Panorama Golden Globe Award-2023, and, Nissim Award for Excellence-2022 for the political novel
Minotaur.
His poems were published in the UN project
Happiness, The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015.
Read other articles by Sunil, or
visit Sunil's website.
This article was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.
