Never have I known how the Garden of Eden was, or do I care?
But I have seen nations where one gets his dinner without the toil;
And I have seen places where mouths hungry stare
At a piece of bread stale, eyes tired staring at the unyielding soil.
At one place great was the fusion of colours; Christmas it seemed always!
And nights, dark as the sky, would brighten with fireworks new;
At the other a barren earth would crack in solar frays,
And nights would shiver as the heavens more wrath threw.
One such day was I walking through the lanes of a country deprived
Then I stopped at a spectacle such: a small girl cuddling a baby in her lap-
The carefree childhood was stifled with cares of a world oversized,
As the girl became a mother who had formed no breasts and no sap.
O, if the little girl could know that land such exists beyond the seas
Where there was enough for her brother, her cares would cease.
-11\12\98,Calcutta-63