Kanoli Kaaka

He rolls up and
down on life’s
surface as a
droplet on the
*colocasia leaf.
He never walks
with his life
hand in hand.
While heaping
up yellow metal
and rupee on the
side-walk, green
life gets wasted
in his mind’s nook.
Time passes with
pastimes, but he
doesn’t see.

Now his body
and arm-chair
are antique alike.
He stays afloat
like a banana
stem. He chews
bits of areca-nut
wrapped in betel,
smeared with a
nip of lime. He
spits red shapeless
fury into a brass
spittoon. His lazy
children grow up
on the mount of
money. Often
Kaaka smokes a
beedi. Curls of
futility rise up.

*Colocasia is a tropical plant with its leaves
having a natural ultra-hydrophobic surface.

First published in issue #16 of The Literary Hatchet