E-mail - Subj: Vacation in India

minstrels walk in single file
between water-logged paddy fields
and sing out of bored compulsion
about some benevolent breakfast god
it seems they are TV stars
from some advertising company
collaborating with an MNC
headquartered in the penthouse
of the newest City Mall & Multiplex

the ancestral village is a bloated oasis
of prurient nondescript net-equipped brown
amidst nauseating nascent oily green
uninitiated storks are out in alarming number
picking their spindly way through ‘night-soil’
to feed on the early malnutritioned worm
that has been prematurely weaned
from mother’s watery milk subsidized
by impotent national concern
for the embarrassing girl child

Unlike Silicon Valley
there are no H-1 visas mutating into Green Cards
no unsolicited mortgage marketing calls
(that in India
is restricted to IT cities that nurture terrorist
doctors)
no single minded MBA-equipped pursuit
for bigger houses diet beer Marlboro Lights
Blackberry or better cars

not even grass flowers
that grow from seed
thrown in spring
by migrant Mexicans
onto half rented office lawns

copyright 2007 Ashok Niyogi
bio
Barnwood magazine
Contents 07