The Fortune-Teller

The fortune-teller, a typical Indian rustic, a mendicant, A medievalist and a fraud, A poor as well as a humble man, I see him often sitting near the banyan tree or the peepul tree By the town square, The crossroad leading to various ways, At the heart of the town, In the court campus or adjacent to it In the saffronite robes, In a clumsy and odd saffron dhoti and kurta And a red towel on the shoulders, With a clamp of hair Hanging from the crown of the head, Three ash-lines on the forehead And a red vermillion spot over it And he marking the passers-by And doing business. Just on the footpath and that too under the tree, Sits he with the green parrots Whose necks pink-lined And the birds with the feathers curtailed So that it may not fly way, The dishonest birds, Never loyal to return back, Picking the cards And moving into the small cages. The fortune-teller with the pink and ring-necked parrots Sitting at the town square, Calling the customers, Distressed and depressed, Returning from courts and hospitals, Delving in the unknown and unseen, Yielding to And the parrots picking up the zodiac cards Lying outside the cage and returning back To be read and foretold And the customer looking up to fate and Divinity, The writ of fate and destiny and the Divine Inspiration behind all that, Maybe it, as the possibility is there And the world rests on hope, as it is said.