Jussawalla's Sea Breeze, Bombay And Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay: A Reading Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Partition's stitched people
Telling teior tales
Of re-knotting of ties
And re-settlements
And the sea breeze refreshing
It all, the landscape and scenery of it

The ships sailing, drifting ashore,
The hectic activity
On the sea shore,
The mariners, shipmen going,
The sea farers, adventurers
Taking the pleasure.

Striding it all
The calm and clamour,
Bristling business and hectic activity,
Bombay has always opened
Its harbours and beaches
For the peoples of the world.

While Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay
Is a poem of landing,
The plane touching down
Santa Cruz airport
And he feeling about Bombay,
The place so endeared to him,
The locality and scapes of it.

The missing person sharing the talks
With the diplomat
In the plane
About the rich and the poor,
The poor will remain poor,
The rich rich
Thinking of the touching down.

Loud benedictions of the silver popes,
The masts of cathedrals, chapels,
Churches and cemeteries
He could see
With the name Cruz doing the rounds
Portuguese perhaps, meaning the Holy Cross.

But Bombay is Bombay,
Of the Bombayans,
Where his home is,
Mumbai of Kolis, shipmen and boatmen
Mumbadevi,
The working class people,
The slums abounding and with skyscrapers.

The history of Bombay
None strove to know about,
How was it,
How has it been filled
To have a passage,
Linking it with,
The mainland history who to learn it?

The history of Bombay says he
Of ports, posts and harbours,
Ships and beaches,
Sailors, shipmen, boatmen,
Captains and the crew,
Shipwrecks and forlorn brothers,
Refugees and settlers