I’m just a year and a half old and am constructing this huge shopping mall. Here I am sitting in the shade of a bush by the side of the towering structure to which my mother carries the mixture of gravel and sand and cement in a grating crater on her head. When I’m hungry, I wail loud. That’s when mother comes and makes me stand on a wall, opens her blouse, and pops a nipple into my mouth, her one hand behind my back and the other holding the crater. It’s my hunger that builds the mall. PS. I wrote this poem some ten years ago when I watched a mother stopping to feed her child at a construction site in Delhi. The photo was taken a few years later while walking through Bhatti Mines, a part of Delhi that has palatial ashrams belonging to godmen and also slums where people struggle to make both ends meet. Anyone interested in a free pdf copy of my book, The Nomad Learns Morality , is welcome to contact me.
Cerebrate and Celebrate