Me, The Rat Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Me, the rat

One of the biggest railway stations
Of the subcontinent
I live there
With my family of five including my spouse

We roam around happily day or night
Each one finding his or her meals
In the food items left over or thrown out

We do not a built home
Presently we manage to run our lives
In the heap of unattended heap of soil or sand
Along the rail track

We are quite sensitive to sounds
And can make out whether a train is on the track or not
And accordingly we move without fear

We are getting readily hungry
We are, thus, forced to eat frequently
Rail passengers are kind enough
To feed us without fail

I keep wondering how long will this home will stay
A big rain is good enough to wash out our home
I keep silently praying against rain
Why rain, at times they take up cleaning
With a flush of water which is strong enough
To destroy our reasonably cool and dark home

We are always on search of a permanent structure
Beneath the platform, a kind of hole long enough
To accommodate we five

We are environment friendly
Practically leaving no waste of ours
While taking care of waste generated by others
We do not use electricity or any fuel
We do not use paper and any means of communications
We are proud we do not contaminate mother earth

Sometimes it happens that some of our youngsters
Go missing for long
But this anxiety vanishes once
He or she returns with a pack of food items
Located some far

It took quite some time to teach our offspring
On the dangers of living near train paths
We are free of that fear
As all have turned smarter than us

We wish all rail passengers
A happy journey if they are on the move
A happy purposeful stay if they get off the train on a mission

We pray rain gods to be kind
And we request rail authorities
To keep us undisturbed by not taking up
Too frequent cleansing

Good luck and great happy stay on earth to all from
Me, the rat