And when you come ‘down’,
To my city of amorous joys.
Amidst a social chaos in a plethora of faiths,
Fantasizing and prostituting religion,
Loud vociferation of hypocrite secularism
And to sum it all: “a diverse culture!”
Amidst constituted vindictive politics
Unaccounted powers, vested by unaccounted population;
Where every ballot is a dramatized guillotine –
In the world’s most comprehensive constitution.
Countless crippled NGOs amidst imposter donation camps.
Beggars with contemptuous eyes behind the dark glasses,
Exposing children borrowed for fifteen rupees an hour.
In a city one among the top ten developing!
Amidst the dwellers of vote-earning intrepid slums,
Meeting ends with their rehabilitation flats given on rent
And amidst hundred acre self-contained high-rise,
Of high society walls filled with fractures of poor workmanship.
Amidst unkempt crowded lanes
Meandering between rows of pomp hawkers,
And six-lane highways,
Built keeping the state in debt.
Amidst unemployed abstract poets
Dying out of sheer mediocrity of the audience.
And son of a son of an engineer,
One more among the thousand complacent self!
Amidst six hundred Chevrolet Optra
And thirty thousand Auto-rickshaws,
Amidst you and amidst me.
I wonder where am I ‘up’ to, my city of idealized dreams!
