Morning Conversations With A Rickshaw Driver Poem by Lalithashree Ganesh

The morning begins
with conversations,
sparked
by potholed roads,
and ambulances
sirening by.

The wheels
they go rolling...
amid hurried faces,
of men chewing paan
and women buried
in smartphones.

The conversation,
it continues...
metamorphosing ~
into stories.
of life,
of death,
of poverty,
of drunkenness.

And,
somewhere in between narrations
interspersed with curses,
the conversation
shapes
into chapters great
and small.
Stories unfathomable -
More twists,
More turns.
Until the pull
of a brake
and the screech
of the wheels.
We halt. Standstill.

Destination. Arrived.
Mission. Accomplished.

It's time
to say thanks
to each other,
for the great morning sharing
of words
and experiences...
Jolting. Enriching. Unimaginable.

Which
I tell him
would be best inked,
in a book.
In a language
he knows best.
So that the curses
remain raw,
and the stories remain honest.

~