Saroja knocks the backdoor.
early in the morning,
With a vegetable basket
in her head
greets with a smile,
I help her to unload.
Small sized brinjals,
long snake gourd,
glittering green spinach,
tender lady’s finger,
robust carrots, dark beetroots,
slices of pumpkins,yellow capsicums.
she picks the best from the market,
from them she offers the better
gulps the hot coffee I give,
shoves the money into her pouch
walks fast to meet the next customer
with the same liveliness.
The familiarity which we both have
does not stop there,
goes beyond, a bondage
I am unable to explain.
It is a kind of purchase
we adopted some 40 years back,
a reliance, a friendliness,
simple and intimate.
distancing ourselves from the crowd.
promoting entrepreneurship.
( A poem recalling how things were four decades ago. This is the first
of the many poems in this series of “Social Distancing”, an epithet heard every day in recent times)
