For the Love of a Car

For the Love of a Car
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There's no denying of the fact that poetry doesn't come to a person on the run. It's too much to expect a poem from somebody who sprints to reach the finishing line, for that's the brief of his mentor. Yeah! The infallible mentor, the demanding mentor. I think I should describe my situation like this, very much like a sprinter sprinting and panting. If I get at least some time I can browse and make me comfortable to hit the keyboard or scribble on a paper. That's just not happening. Even I'm not sure if I can spare a couple of hours for my hair-cut on coming Sunday. There's nothing to complain, for I'm running for my bread...and poetry can wait. Oh yes, I can always scribble my old poems till they get exhausted. Here's one, at least for the time being.

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More cars, less roads

The pushier ones steer ahead

for a patch of ‘free’ asphalt.

No longer a car is a car

One owns for the thrill of owning;

It’s not a dream

nor a dream come true.

It’s just a burden of loan,

The future sold out on heavy discount;

A heap of fearsome reminders

of the taxman and insurance fellow

and of the banker,

whose deadline one tends to forget.

A threat of fine

from the abominable traffic man

looms large every traffic circle…

Whom to please, and how--

The cold-looking man at parking;

Or the cunning mechanic

whose infallible words

rule the machine

down to its last screw;

Or the contemptuous scooterist

whose smooth slim bike

was in for a filthy kiss

from the wayward cab…

The mind-boggling varieties of them.

“The dream at your door step”

So says

the hullabaloo of print and telly

maddening in content and sweep,

And indoctrinates a horde of them

every day from the car-less melee.

A home away from home

They try to indulge in everything

below its painted roof,

Unbecoming romance overpowers them

down the sequestered nooks.

The homeless cars

lie scattered as uncared-for urchins

competing each other for a score of square feet

in the disquiet proximity of pavement dwellers.

At the filling station

the quiet mother-like pumps

hesitate to suckling them

the life-giving drops

very much like an over-milked cow

or an anaemic mother

to her fourteenth offspring.

Their plights being at their height

why can’t they unite

and dislodge the owners

for their wanton indifference?

This is an ‘over-carred’ world!!

Maybe everything is fair in love and war

But it’s certainly not

for the love of the car.

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VISAKHAPATNAM

O4=06=1999

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By
A. N Nanda
Muzaffarpur
29-10-2019
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