Fat Rat Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Afternoon
Sun bright and hot
A demolished metropolitan bus stop
Still serving commuters for boarding and alighting
Shambles all around
Broken concrete blocks
Pipelines, wire mesh and what not
I saw that rat
Fat and apparently healthy
Moving through edges of strewn materials
Probably hungry
Sniffing each piece to assess its consumability
He or she did not get one yet
No worry, the search continues
Even it amounted to getting dangerously close
To passing vehicles
Wading through and in between legs of
Waiting passengers
Making them hurriedly move away
And take some odd postures
Some tried to chase away the rat
But the rat saw no threat from them
It moved randomly in quick swift here and there
Giving no chance for chasers to guess as to
Where it would move next
A little boy minding not all these
Was enjoying a small pack of chips
He was engrossed in its spicy taste
With no concern for the presence of the rat
And the menace around
Inadvertently the pack of chips
Slipped of the boy's grip
And dropped on the ground
Even before his mother could bend and reach it
Our rat was smart to get on to the pack
And dragged it into its hole
With no opportunity for the mother to retrieve it
Leaving the kid in tears
What a brat
And how smart
Our fat rat