Desperation Poem by Ratnakar Rout

A lone lady with disastrously visible fresh bruises all over
Caressing her wounds and cuts searching here and there
In her half naked body was a rare scene.
She with a broken heart, was living beneath a huge banyan tree
And at times was resting in an abandoned verandah
On stretching a portion of her half-clad sari.
She was desperately looking at the onlookers in dying eyes
As if pangs of sorrows have shaken her completely.
All her worldly belongings packed in a torn dirty cotton bag
Were kept in a corner of the desolate garage
While walking down the lonely road
I was conquered by my inquisitive instincts to discover her owes.
A victim of the childhood infatuations and treachery
She was deserted by her love when pregnant
And ostracized by the family and society
She had no option left but to run away from the village
Ultimately landed up in the town and lived on manual labor
Compassionately an old lady of the nearby slum assisted her
Giving birth a girl child.
She was dreaming a bright future ahead in the smile of the child
All her hopes shattered in a fateful rainy night
Like house of cards when she was picked up from the slum
And gang raped by the goons
And thrown senseless in a pitiable condition.
Like a bundle of used cotton in an isolated place of the town
The child with pneumonia succumbed to it
And passed away when she was recuperating in the hospital
The old lady, the only eyewitness to the incident was threatened
And ousted from the slum for wash out the proof.
She returned as a destitute from the hospitals measurably
Hopeless and found her no where but to opt for settling down
Under the banyan tree leaving every thing to the destiny
When there was no security at all for her
Why would she think about the security?
When life was full of sorrows and sufferings
Where was the opportunity to elude her agony?
She became a commodity to be used by any one
As and when required like a dustbin
She had no heart, no soul, and no mind, nothing
Only was left with the mortal body and looking blank
Became naive, impassive and unperturbed
The lonely lady was not seen there after a few days
But while passing through the road
She appears in my memory lane now and then
And her vulnerable and desperate look
Hunt me time and again.
Since then I am pondering over the matter
Why such precious human lives on the earth are behaved
As puppets in undesirable conditions
And waning unnoticed in the passage of time?