Two Comrades

The mouse from the TATA house
Asked the slum mouse:
Comrade , how do you do ?

Biting the lower lip
With the upper
The slum mouse said :
It is very hard ,comrade .
Doomed to stay all the time
In some burrows like a hermit
Scared of coming out.

Nobody knows where a trap
Or poison is hidden .
And where ever we look
Stare cats ,fat and fleshly
Eating man’s fish and meat stealthily,
Man holds us responsible
For their incurable diseases
Which their follies in life bring them.

Oh! Had that pipper in pied ,glowing, garments
Come and bewitched us playing his pipe
To a watery samadhi in the sea,
We honestly wish.
Leave my case
How is your life, tell me comrade
Oh! How can I tell you…
The TATA mouse almost wept
And said: nothing to say comrade
Everyday bread butter jam
Orange apple or pineapple juice for breakfast .

For lunch it will be invariably be
Biriyani, fried rice or pulavu
With chicken 65 and mutton stew.
Dinner begins with vodka wine scoch
Or bloody Mary
Accompanied by music and dance
And some occasional business talks.
After all I always stagger
On the Italian marble laid floor ,
My dream is still of crunching
A piece of tappoccia root
In some garden

**
Both of the mice were swimming
In search of a safe shore
In the flash flood that broke out
In an unexpected rain
In the city.

*

Image: BBG Tilak