Poetry feature: Overhead Establishing Shot

Tread softly through Yamuna Ghat,
feather-light steps across the riverbank.
Walk in step with the water’s flow,
ahead, behind, in tandem with what you know.

Look at the ripple when you throw a stone in,
stare at it, glare and gawk until you sicken to your core.
Heave in your lungs some fresh air, but then smell the gore,
stare at the tar-coloured liquid seeped with sewage, don’t ignore.

No, not broken dreams, not days of yore, sewage and trash, heaps and heaps of it, you have rendered me a municipal dump

No, not broken dreams, not days of yore, sewage and trash, heaps and heaps of it, you have rendered me a municipal dump.

No one comes to see me anymore. People learn about me in seventh-grade geography — my sacred status, my wide expanse, and then nothing.

Not clouds, not milk, nor cotton dust. All your filth fluffs in with me, crab foaming at the mouth, person foaming from their lips. What have you done? What have you all done?

Make fast your action plans, but drive by when you see me. Tell people they can’t pray around me because they will die when they do. Cloak me in metaphor and fictional analogy, slowly kill my inhabitants till they dwindle by. Leave nothing. Drive or take a train up to Uttarakhand and take in the hill stations, but don’t trace me onwards. Have chai and Maggi, sitting around a makeshift table on makeshift benches. Peer over peaks, precipices, ledges, and then crack wise about how beautiful and fleeting life is.

Do anything but see, do everything but see.