Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Kutti Thambi Chinna Doctor

He died five hours ago.
A small boy of three.
Looked so still and limp.
His family wailed.

His house is a few fields away.
His aunt works in our hospital.
He was born here.
He died at home.

He had a fever.
He vomited for three days.
His mother took him to a
Local traditional practitioner.

Our ambulance was called.
He stopped breathing before it came.
Tha held the mother.
And both were disconsolate.

His name is not tomorrow.

Poem in a car

Imagine if this poem was fashionable.
And was found in a book of fashionable poems.
Read by fashionable people in fashionable cars.

Then the name of this fashion will be
Fair fashion. And it will be fashionable to be fair.

To be fair one would need to look at the paper
On which this fashionable poem was written.
And wonder whether the paper is fair as it is
fashionable.

Who cut the tree to create a fashionable poem's paper?
Whose tree was it anyway? Does she read
fashionable poems?

Who sat in the car in which the fashionable poem was read?
Should we wonder whether the car is fashionable as it is fair?

Who mined the earth to create a fashionable car's body?
Whose earth was it anyway? Was he ever in a fashionable car?