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Everyday heartbreak

Driving in any large city these days is fraught--with frustration due to delays in driving, with potholed and beaten up roads, with the sight of exclusions of all kinds and the spectacle of development gone crazy. In Hyderabad, driving west is particularly fraught. That's where the city is bursting forward...with promise for some and pressure for others. Of course there is promise that often creates pressure even for those who ostensibly benefit from it--the building of new roads, the breaking of small mountains to make way for traffic helps us get to work somewhat faster and sets up expectations of increased efficiency and the submission of even more time to the growth machine.

Maybe all this sounds like so much we hear all the time. What do we do once we (or some larger force we have unwittingly set in motion) are on a certain path? How do we stop to take stock when stopping implies we might have to see, understand, and take into account the real meaning of this high-speed journey to somewhere?

Whatever. That's how many conversations end. With a sense of "whatever". And then we go back to fighting traffic, adding our push to the cacophony of blaring horns, making sure we get where we're going.

So it is with me. I drive westward through my city and see disappearing neighbourhoods, the ghosts of small parks where I once swung my schoolbag and myself, the razed-down bungalows where I lazed whole afternoons with friends (the most recent one having given in to the bulldozers on Banjara Hills Road Number Two just last week), the trees that served as resting places and landmarks (I'd tell people visiting me--"turn at the culvert next to the large banyan), the lake that was once a hidden jewel...many Hyderabadis know the feeling of helplessness and useless, painful memory that is more than nostalgia.

So I write. Again and again. To put some of that pain into words.

Heart-broken

If my heart were stone
It would be worth nothin
Whole.
Split to make way for road
Pulverized for wall
And blown to unrecognizable bits
For all manner of wordly use—
Then, yes, it would be valued
In weight and volume,
For something.

If my heart were wood
It would be worth nothing
When left in place.
Chopped and ground
Shaved and smoothened
Polished to a fine finish
That finishes me—
Yes, then, I would hold a price
Worth its name.

And if my heart were water
Still deep pool and gushing stream,
It would be spent
Rippled, directed, in a million ways
To serve need and service greed
Made to crawl as carriage
For the refuse of unending growth
Until the channels that have borne me
Run dry, spent, driven through countless cracks—
Yes, then, there would be a frantic bidding
For my every drop.

Must I then take comfort
In that my heart—such as it is—
A beating, bloody, muscular thing,
Cannot yet be mined, harvested, extracted, controlled?
Must I take comfort
In the cold truth
That I will be left alone
No rock to lean on
No tree to seek shade from
No water to slake my thirst
Whole
Alive
Deserted?

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