Hindol Sengupta - Uttar Pradesh

Just when you thought
They were almost extinct
The elephants
Pop up
Killing the plants

The childhood kebab shop
Keeps up the slaughter
And in a cinema hall
A sudden matinee
Of Harry Potter
You dropp expensive popcorn
Scared by an unknown face
Startled, you fall

A startled young man
Is jailed
For acid words
He emerges
Inflamed

Teens arrested
Years ago
For catcalls
Return
Threatening to offer
Prize respect
By tech-toy swords

A house
Is burnt
And brings
Loyalty riches
The owner
Scoring points
And publicity
Sing


The cyber cafes
Once the promised land
Now free-SMS
Reasons for strikes
And why books
Are banned


The guns
Have long entered
The schools
In Dalrymplian despair
Every McDonalds
Backdrops murder
The holy month
Arrives waterless
Every fast
Enfolds a new intrigue
Web-locked till Diwali
Squeezing out
Fresh bloodletting
New year, nebulous fatigue


Landlines died
SIM cards
Showered facts
Equidistance fiction
Mock love
In neo-American cafes
Tradition barred


Stories started
At ghost houses
Jumped up
Turned history
From meandering ferment


The comatose Taj
White sheet
Skeletal, pale
On dismembered corpse
Numb
Like a dysfunctional
Mobile phone tower
In the hail

Hindol Sengupta

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