Human Safety Poem by P K Joy

The railway minister flagged off the train,
Ceremoniously, on the new rail line.
Spectators cheered. Flower petals rained.
The minister harangued. His cronies bragged.

The new line fulfilled a long-felt need.
It’ll speed up the region’s progress indeed.
It had long been a contentious demand.
On its fulfillment, people sang and danced.

The project’s team members boasted, rejoiced,
Were greatly anxious to be noticed,
To meet the minister and get introduced.
In general the place wore a festive mood.

Standing at a distance a boy of ten
Was watching the entire goings on.
He sobbed with anguish. His eyes were wet.
When all others rejoiced, this boy alone wept.

Sun-tanned and famished, in dirty rags
He lives on footpath. For food he begs.
His parents died in a tunnel roof fall down
While laying this line. Thus he became orphan

Standing there he recalled the day
When his parents’ both dead bodies lay
Near the tunnel, after a doctors’ avowal
That they’re beyond the hope of revival.

His cries and insistence to jump into their grave,
The men who stopped him and asked not to grieve,
And all the misery of the past two years,
He recalled and grieved with flowing tears.

None took any care of the orphaned boy.
He got abandoned as cruelty’s toy.
Some nights he’d stand at the tunnel’s entrance
And call out his parents and narrate his grievance.

People have heard his parents’ yell
In silent nights from inside the tunnel.
“For the project’s completion we gave our lives.
With dogs and pigs our child now lives”.

Legally assured benefits, the pursuers only get.
How could this child have pursued his right?
Minister! Your system should take care of it.
Protect human safety and welfare in each project.

Today before you proudly commissioned the line,
You ought to have spoken about the couple, who’re slain
By the lapses of the bosses of the project execution,
And enquired about how their child is living.