THE BULLDOZER
With a menacing gait and deafening roar,
It trundles down the city lanes and roads,
Sending shockwaves and chilly shivers
Through the crowd, enveloped in gloom and despair,
The old, the young and the very young
All in a daze, with incomprehension
Writ large on their ashen faces
Seething with impotent rage.
Power cuts, dry taps, polluted air
Chaos on roads, insecurity, lawlessness
All this they bore with patience for too long,
Hoping against hope for better days to dawn.
Alas! As reward for their patient suffering what do they get?
A man-made disaster after natural calamities!
Bribery, bribery, bribery all the way
Bribery to ‘build’ and bribery to ‘save’.
Soon the multitude explodes in an equally deafering roar
“Send this monster back to where it belongs-
Let it raze first the fountainhead of all Corruption
All Evil, all Misgovernance and countless indiscretions
The so-called august Parliament House”.
* P.S. Nindra formerly Reader in English, School of Correspondence, University of Delhi.
* Article first published in FORTELL newsletter, January 2007