Right on schedule, it’s that woman again.
Years of neglect etched into her
once-beautiful face, she emerges
from the shadows, carrying a pile
of face tissues, eyes full of
that practiced beseeching look,
trying to be something she isn’t.

She walks up to the familiar blue Maruti
yet again – the driver sees her coming,
and without even a sideways glance, starts
rolling up the window, like a reverse guillotine.

Her pleading look no match for
the practiced executioner, who’s done this
a thousand times – and she hurries back
to the footpath, as the light turns green.

I see her clearly now, as she approaches,
the traffic leaving trails of dust behind her,
But what is this? She seems to smile
a greeting, though she does not know me;
her head upright, she sets the boxes down

A pause, as I fumble for the right words,
to spurn her advances, when suddenly,
with an uncanny eloquence, she speaks!

Its all right, she says, I know you,
I’ve seen a thousand men like you,
who study, and write what they see,
in books; my world is not a storybook.

Shunned by the mainstream, rejected
by prospective employers, doomed
by my caste, and my shady past, by
a society loath to admit its mixed morality.
 

My new husband, always drunk, right now
in jail, again – he gives me no pleasure.
I live only for my dear little daughter,
sweet and innocent – she goes to school,
but knows not where her mother works.
 

When she grows up, she’ll be rich, and
she’ll look up to me, as the one who worked hard
to put her there - for this is my profession,
demeaning though it may seem, to you.

And behind us, automobiles of all hues,
Rise from their stupor, yet again,
and start to inch away, in a cacophony
of horns blaring – she turns, and grins
ruefully, at another wasted opportunity,
yet another oyster without a pearl.