Prayag
On board a superfast train to Prayag
You cross your left thigh over right
-a civil posture to appease your uncivil hard-on-
And look out nonchalantly
For a distraction
That comes in the form of a platform tart
In a faded green choli
-its first and last hooks are snapped-
And a saffron sari with white and green flower print
Daughter of black fertile soil
Endowed with the symmetry of an old potter’s hands
A thousand suns dripping from stray hair-ends
She looks a bit too seasoned for her age
But one you can’t keep your eyes off
For too long.
With don’t-give-a-damn regality
She swaggers holding a beheaded peanut-oil tin
Towards the destination she’s on her mind
An open-for-everybody oasis of water
On the burning platform desert
Tarred with the same brush
A holy confluence of
Ganga, Euphrates and Nile
A global site for purification rites
Where she’s to perform
Like a veritable Persephone
Eleusinian Mysteries
Or a Friday-Noon-Prayer
With face in the direction of Mecca
Like a true Mussalmani
Or a dohyo-ri
Scattering a handful of human salt
-the remains of her week-old dried sweat-
At the wolfish world around
Like a massive yokozuna
Ready for shikiri-naoshi, a battle of eyes.
Contrary to your expectation
She decides to bathe
Without a stitch on
Filling her tin-bucket with hot water
Taking off her sari she hunkers down frog-style
Relaxing her well-constricted base-holes
Slips the side-knot of her ghaghra
Pulls it on right upto her pigeon neck
And tightens the noose
To look like
a big-winged yellow butterfly
on a greenish yellow mossy wall.
A puppeteer adept at working her fingers
behind the wavy curtain
she unhooks her choli
leaving the rest to your lurid fantasy.
A tumbler with broken handle
Becomes the busybodying stage-manager
Sneaking in and out of the curtain
Describing the itinerary of three major rivulets
Sloshing over planes and plateaus
Slopes and pits, hills and vales
Converging at last into a fertile delta
Where afflicted souls would take a hearty dip
For not less than a week
Wash out their innermost filth
And work out their salvation.
A flicker in your eyes, wriggling shadow in bones
But the train has moved on
And your hard-on too has gone.
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