Hiralal’s chawl
If you ask me where is the destruction.
You will close your nose and utter where are we trapped?
If you wish to see lives full of destruction
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
The room is small like a bathroom of a palace
In which three daughter-in-laws shout at one another
The tin roof in the heat sounds as if
one claps others hand in assent
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
Rather quitting babyish language the boys abuse
A beaten baby girl speaks’ mother has beaten me, mother has beaten me’,
The children half clad wander here and there
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
They are bonded laborers whole day yet bring meager wages
In the evening the body aches, hence needs a peg
In The night remain intoxicated and the pockets become empty
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
Here the building are embracing each other
As you step in, dogs will welcome you
Beware of dogs more , there are no hoodlooms.
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
The arbitrators are costly, they stubbornly ask for money
The temple is far and mosque is closer
During the day mullah shouts the prayer call and sings quawwali in the night.
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
If someone dies there are huge crowds
There are men and men as if locusts descend
It becomes young on occasions pf marriage as if it applies make up.
Come, I shall show you Hiralal’s chawl.
The gutter overflowed
The stink spread in all directions
She addressed me ‘ brother’, when the gutter overflowed.
Clamping her nose , cooking, the Brahmin wife was trapped
Took me even upto kitchen, when the gutter overflowed.
‘ Give me the dinner, o mother, o father’ I was begging
she would throw the food like a defa, with darkening face.
As a squirrel is stuck in the cacti clearing
Took me even upto kitchen, when the gutter overflowed.
When I took out with my hand and showed, bone and egg,
Her smiling face why became zero.
The black was covered with puff-powder.
She took me upto kitchen, when the gutter overflowed.
Leave the talk of religion and fate,
Leave aside the caste of human beings,
Leave the dirt of untouchability.
Let the water flow clean,
I told her face to face, but she could not understand it.
She took me upto kitchen, when the gutter overflowed.
