Monorail Mumbai

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 This is a piece I wrote while travelling in the monorail from Naigaon to Chembur. It was raining and I passed the oil depots near Wadala. Got a Blade Runner shiver.

Oil depots and oilery chimneys
 Burning bright, burning nights
 Skyscrapers puncturing pregnant clouds
 Grey soot, black rain, drip down the city.


The stench of wealth rises to the skies
 Condensing the tears it carries with it
 Taste the drops that return to the gutter
 Grey death, black blood, poor sweat all over.
 
 The CEOs in their butcheries and the Ministers in their mints
 Slice and dice, extract and exploit
 Noisy cries reverberate and echo
 The clouds reply in kind:
 Grey ash, black floods, a caustic sewer.


Loved humans, pedestalized into stars
 Their glamorous lights glow the heavens
 The hellish skyscape flashes back
 Electric touches, charring smells, dust swirls in the city.


Incessant, unshakable,
 Without respite, without mercy
 Drowning the city, a punishment futile:
 The people slave on;
 for Bombay drowns them daily.

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