Sits by the phone,
Like an old tired machine.
Every day from 9 to 5 since 1979,
Was the dear old neighborhood
Mr. Bhasin.
Unwanted and far from being loud,
You can’t make him out in the crowd,
With thick skin and hatred difficult to conceal,
For Dalits, Muslims, and women in cut sleeves.
He stood on the bus,
Stood on his wife,
Stood in the crowd timid and shy.
Haggled with drunk women,
Each one he abhorred.
But deep within,
He was in love with a whore.
At 12 he saw a pair of breasts,
Of his cousin, while she slept.
They gave him nightmares,
Till the day he declared
Those things cause travesty without repair.
From there on till now,
Mr. Bhasin hides his fears,
With bright new hatred till it creates
Borders higher than his ego.
Sticking posters in the cracks of his rooms,
of Ram and Vishnus,
From where he preyed on bodies he despised.
with goddesses in his squarely Mandir to keep his feelings in disguise,
So how can he fall in love,
With the one that spreads her legs in every arch and every corner?
In her bed the only time he feels,
A sense of powerlessness and the strange joy it brings.
His shoulders wept,
The first time the whore cuddled him and slept.
They were heaving with hatred
As they both wept,
In the dark dingy pink-lit room.
There was no role to play or no sign of gloom,
Nothing like ever before,
Were this feeling and the hope it bore.
To free himself at once
Away from the world and his blood-induced loved ones,
So that each time he stood,
On the bus,
On his wife,
On his office floor,
Within the body of a man, can live a heart with an open door.
So that each time he saw a child feed a bird
Old Rafi songs he heard,
hugged a childhood friend,
Or saw the sun descend,
His heart would let open the sea,
That is terrified of the waves,
Made to control it to the T.
Mr. Bhasin carries a deep secret,
A shame to his gender’s merit,
the shock that he feels,
Of the love that torments him to heal.
