Ah Calcutta!

I hear around me
Pseudo desi-pardesis
Fake, accented English
English accented Bengali
Born yesterday
Dreaming tomorrow
Living and breathing
A borrowed country's reams

Ah lecherous pigs of Kolly
Your every smirk, wink, is a folly
The men think they're jolly
And the women, all dollies.
Prancing, dueling around willfully
Accusing not self, but society.

Give me a 'madrasan' any day
In work he squanders his night and day
Dare he raise his leering stare
quickly shamed in but one glare
He knows how to respect his equals,
His demeanour evokes graceful volumes

Hazy Demise

Menacingly it waits
Looming, ominous pallor
A blotch on the horizon.

Slowly obscurity sets in
Cows, birds shake and tremble,
As the murky beast advances

Darker and darker it gets,
Masking the dusk palette,
Shrouding human regret.

It’s not in the wind’s power
To shake off this fallen tower
Heavy with ashes and dirt.

Watch it with baited breath
Plundering fortunes of the realm
Wonder what the outcome will be?

Though the monster lost,
Earth is now trauma fraught,
Not a blade grows, none alive.