The Blue Jacaranda | Saranyan Bv

I am sixty-four and retired.

The nurses with white clipper crowns
Are chattering medication
For the stroke patient
Who arrived Sunday last
And about his chicken-shit Neuro
With a penchant for eating Ilish Beja fry.

Holter wires and Intravenous tubes removed,
I look out the window behind
From the fourth floor, the hospi called Narayana Hridhalaya.
Seven or eight mongrels are engaged in a conference
On the vacant piece of land below
Encumbered with barbed wire enclosure,
The canines bask in the morning sun
With leisure only God can ordain.

Rest of the vast land is unoccupied
Except for a dozen or so jumbo Giant truck chassis parked
And waiting turn for the frame to be built
And to get going.
There was a stage I too was like those monsters -
How nice were those days with no overloads on my back!

The parking attendant comes out of the hovel
Under the lone blue jacaranda;
He brushes his teeth, I assume with a twig broken from a margosa tree,
Indifference typical of youth 
Written over his fair countenance -
Though I am far removed from him or his tantrums.

The lad splashes water over his face and on his bare chest,
I wish I could walk down and feel his cool cleanliness.
He spits over the tree trunk
As if the act would impart life to the limb
Of the blue jacaranda,
With a whole army of ants in front
Carrying supplies up and down the cavern 
Under the tree roots -

I listen to the clanking tiffin boxes
The hushed sound of the nursing counter -
A breakfast cheerfully shared.

I am sixty-four and alone.