Eid In Dubai

The weatherman says "It is 42 Celsius Feels like 54" The city swelters Covered all over By a humid blanket Its abounding skyscrapers Looming heavenwards Like skeletal apparitions Transfixed in a haze It is Eid in Dubai The wondrous city That for many is paradise Labourers and the moneyed alike Who have just finished Month-long day-time fasting To usher in festivities Summer smells everywhere Of dust on the road and in the air Like camphorous drunkenness In buses, cars and metro trains Oblivious of the discomfort Multitudes move about Like ants, chasing far-away dreams Their gaze lost to distant thoughts Of wives, kids and families Across nooks and corners of the globe As the sun sinks and the day gasps They emerge in hordes from labour camps Scurry across roads for daily needs To overcrowded supermarkets And on to parks that dot the city To lie on the grass Sweat and dream all the way to the stars They are the worker-bees Who impart humming life To the gigantic beehive The city called Dubai Cacophonous Bengalis Sinewy Pakistanis Chirping Filipinos Ubiquitous Indians And several nationalities They make a miracle work With the precision of a machine And where is the queen bee Who has them leashed? No one sees Other than on TVs The masters on whose command The machine is made to work They are nowhere conspicuous What one sees everywhere Are the worker-bees In humming sprees All happily provided Long live Dubai May peace always prevail May it always be Eid in this wondrous paradise The like of which Nowhere on this globe exists