Dr Deepali, an economist, explores the poignant divide between Mumbai’s wealth and systemic poverty in a poem on DifferentTruths.com.
In the swiftly greying purple afternoon,
through rain-blurred windows
of the lumbering red 84 bus,
I see
clotheslines
stretched taut across minuscule balconies.
A torn banyan,
a mended petticoat,
a threadbare towel,
a once-white sheet—
without secrecy or sanctity,
entire life stories
left flapping, limp and damp,
before the merciless gaze of the world.
As ordinary
as thin strips of Lifebuoy soap,
as vada pav wrapped in Saamna,
stained with newsprint.
At Peddar Road,
beneath the bright amber traffic signal,
a tinted window slides down.
Mint-fresh, air-conditioned breath
slips out to taste the outside.
A snow-white Pekingese,
freshly groomed at the dog salon,
rejects the offered packet of Parle-G.
A diamond-braceleted arm
flings it out.
Before the window slides shut,
before the packet reaches the flooded street,
dark, bare feet
splash and scrabble,
squabbling towards it.
One child—clothesline thin—
curls both arms protectively
around the blue plastic bundle,
securing the copies of Inside Outside
hawked at the signal.
The other
stretches out
to flail and punch.
Copies of Inside Outside,
their glossy photographs
of penthouses as distant as the moon—
worlds
they will never enter.
Real children fight
for broken biscuits,
while the plump pink child
on the shining yellow packet
smiles forever,
forever well-fed
The cyclops eye of the signal
flips to green.
The cars glide away.
The monsoon keeps dripping—the city's salt tears,
from the clotheslines
of tiny balconies,
from the rain-soaked hair
of its unlettered, orphaned, magazine-selling children.
An immense sadness
snakes into every corner of my heart.
The salt tears of the city
continue to fall—
insistent,
unheeded.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
Dr Deepali Pant Joshi, a retired Executive Director at the RBI, lives in Allahabad. An economist and former central banker, she has published poems in The Wise Owl, The Poetry Journal of the Poetry Society of India, and other magazines. Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta, published her first poetry collection. She has lived in several cities, including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Pune, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Boston, New Delhi, and New York, and has travelled widely across India and abroad.
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