An evening in Mumbai

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A stark contrast on an evening in Mumbai:
Sounds galore
Blaring horns
Dust-clouds
Dug-up sides of the roads
Rugged and traffic-jammed with hordes
Trying to cross to get to the other side
Squabbling over petty issues
All in a jiffy
Some returning from offices
After a weary local train commute
Some haggling while purchasing veggies and fruits
Loud voices
Kids yelling, playing, sprinting
Tripping and wailing,
Chiming of the holy bells from a distant temple
Domestic maids returning pooped
After a tiresome day
With small parcels for their little ones of the left-overs
Ill-clad women, frustrated with their impoverished lot
Whacking their hankering brood
Corporation vehicles coming driving
Sending the road-hawkers scurrying with their wares
On the other hand,
Audi, BMW, Toyota, zooming past
Pretty women in lavish and chic outfits
Oblivious of the poor,
Giggling and excited
Entering MacDonald, Monginis and Dominos
Celebrating birthdays
Purchasing basket bouquets
Film buffs queuing out at multiplexes
For Brangelina-starrer movie tickets
Holding big packs of popcorn and cans of coke
Exuding Versace and Gucci
A contrast that highlights
The yawning gulf between the
Indifferent noveau-riche
Unsophisticated and hedonistic
Heedless to their unfortunate counter-parts

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About sangeeta sharma

Dr Sangeeta Sharma is head of the department of English at Birla College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Kalyan, affiliated to the University of Mumbai, India. She is widely published as a critic and poet. Besides that, she is a regular freelance for Mumbai-based national newspapers. Recently, she published a book In the Shadows: Women in Arthur Miller's Plays and co-edited Delightful Dickens: Some tributes with Sunil Sharma published by YKing Books, Jaipur. Many of her literary and critical articles have been anthologized. Currently, she is engaged in a UGC-sponsored Minor Research Project on the Structural, phonological, orthographical, grammatical and lexical differences in British and American English. Under Faculty Exchange Programme, she visited the University Department of English, Clayton State University, Morrow, Georgia, USA, in March-April 2012.

8 thoughts on “An evening in Mumbai”

  1. Louis Kasatkin

    ” An evening in Mumbai ” ,conveys more than adequately the cacophony , commotion and human hurly burly that sketches an impressionistic picture for the reader. Doing all the aforementioned as well as drawing some philosophic insights all within the confines of poem ,does however prove rather more problematic. There is a flabbiness with certain sections of the poem;where concision would clarify details for the reader we are given yet more embellishment and description. Thinking about beginning the poem with , ” blaring horns ” and ending with ” Exuding Versace and Gucci ” ,might prove a worthwhile exercise.

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