Double Face

In a never sleeping metropolis In the dungeon of a room My days and nights are locked! I, a traveler on a street, with no end in sight But just the bustle of the moving crowd And a handful of burnt dreams For company My ‘kingdom’ is in the third floor Of an old street building Now languishing in neglect Facing dilapidation Just like my own life In the chronic agony of existence! While the adjacent buildings Renovated and restored Mine, under a bankrupt landlord Is on the verge of instant collapse Looking through the chinks in the wall And craning my neck Over barricades of buildings Amid the swirl of traffic I get a glimpse of the slum below In all its squalor and dirt And a medley of lousy images Bleeding into one another like water colours Now and then, I see Beggars in bundled rags Along cracked pavements Some squatting Some sleeping away to glory With street dogs Coming to share The leftovers in their begging bowls And lick their wounds! Sometimes I take away my glance From the dismembered corpses of the dead! On another side In plush residential colonies With landscaped courtyards And cerulean swimming pools Sentries stand on guard To admit Sahibs Sliding in Mercedes and Rolls Royce A little far, in the open balconies Of star hotels, Men toast goblets of wine! Oh! What stark divide! ! !