The Scissors Still Clinking! Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

"Dear fellow! No school has an English man
to teach English. The English selling schools
demand exorbitant fees which you can't pay.
The parents need to teach and coach
besides the efforts of private tutors, you seek.
The chain-snatchers, the pocket-pickers
and those indulge in petty thefts are the youths
who relished English and dropped out of the schools.
Let your children learn in the medium of mother tongue".
The barber nodded his head to what I said,
but his brilliant wife led her kids to a ‘Nursery'
and put them to learn about the world
in the global tongue which guides the students
to the glamorous US. Years passed by. The elder son
had become the IT engineer and flew to The States.
The younger had sit on the seat of the local District Head.
The girls of the higher castes had pecked them to wed
in the abodes of the mighty gods without the barber or his wife.
Their wives were against the barber to stay with them
and use the silver utensils which they brought as dowry.

When I visited the city again, I went to the saloon
and heard the clinking sound of he scissors.
"O, man! Why should you go and live with your sons? ",
when I asked him, " How can I rid of my traditional job, Sir? ",
he said, with his eyes being wet. The man in the rolling chair said,
" He has refused to receive the free hair-dressing tools
from the Collector who is none other than his own son! ".
O, my god! I patted on his back and told him to pass through
the times of misery in silence as the breeze blows again