Neo Fatal Intensive Care

The only thing my father taught me

was to kill. He showed me

many ways to do it: To put a pill

in someone’s milk and fill

their potbelly with poison

and painless death. Or to take

a dagger and drive it deep

into their stomach and spill

their innards out. Mummy taught me

that all it takes is a big blow

to the tummy and a person dies slowly

of internal bleeding.

My father tutored me in advanced techniques

to kill: With X-rays that exterminate the XX or vacuums

that suck the life-breath out. Or with dilation

and evacuation

or curettage

which are the most modern methods of murder.

Mother said this world

is too cruel for a girl and she must learn

to kill to protect herself. Father’s read

the Law and he said it’s okay

to kill someone

in the first three months.

Mother killed me today

and I killed her back. Father’d said death

in self-defence isn’t a cognisable offence.

[Stop female foeticide.]

The Lost Flamingos of Bombay

© Ajinkya Gaikwad

I wound my way to Sewri

one day to see flamingos.

Over the years, I had pieced a map

of the place in my head but never been

there; nor had I seen flamingos.

At seven, Sewri was full of sewers

filled with the filth of the city, but kept safe

by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

in their underground bunkers.

At ten, I put up the Sewri Port, at eleven,

I built the Sewri Fort

with the Brits to ward off

he Siddis, and at twelve,

in the Sewri Civil and Sessions Court, I slammed

offenders behind bars.

At sixteen, I added

a Christian Cemetery, and at seventeen,

a friend shifted to Sewri

from his South Bombay house,

which felt like he'd shifted abroad.

Twenty years had gone by for me

living in this city, and in

the one score years that had passed,

I had never been to

Sewri; nor had I seen flamingos.

This is the Lesser Flamingo, the girl

from Hornbill House informed me.

Biologists elevated

the Greater variety like builders

built "Upper Worli".

I could not make out the Greater

from the Lesser from Geese from the jetty or if

one of them pecked

another and the two of them made out

a fuchsia love symbol with their necks.

The flamingos mate

all round the year, and migrate

yearly from Tanzania, sir, would you like

to buy a T-shirt sir? 350 only? She held up

a magenta-coloured garment that said

‘Save The Flamingos!’

But why Sewri? What

is just so special about here? It must be

the mangroves and mudflats here, sir,

are you buying this T-shirt now sir?

Sewri these days is an important place

bridging New Bombay with the Trans-Harbour Link,

and alienating our migrants pink.

The flamingos didn’t go

to Sewri this year. Nor did I. I know

I should have bought that damn shirt.

_

[Sewri is a locality along the eastern coast of the city of Mumbai, while Worli is a locality along its western coast.]