Now Poem by Jayant Kaikini

Now it is eight p.m. -
time for the cooker’s first whistle
from the single-room kitchen of the chawl -
time for the bathed luxury buses to leap
into the vast dark night -
time for the unsold jasmines withering in the wickers
to die in tired fragrances -
time for the women returning home after work
to be appalled in front of the mirrors -
time for the aged tiger in the zoo
to wail for its grub -
upstairs in the third gulley of Kamatipura
teenaged Baby
starts her labour pain
they kick her in her stomach
with none of us there.