Too Callous, Man’s Crocodile Skin Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

The sea face off Navy’s fabled lighthouse,
Which once took every breath did all the more,
The tide once unbridled did no more roar,
Soiled with oil sledge, nor could my spirit rouse.

The waves battered the sticky coastal rocks
Sending salty sprays to shocked beholders,
But seemed somewhat shy of the scornful mocks
Of peeved passers by, of sad bye-standers.

Receding tides the nude rocks when revealed—
Revealed dark drag right up the house of light,
What once teemed with the mangrove’s rich green shield,
With flourishing life, lay wrapt with black blight.

Where once hermit crabs roamed with tiny fish,
With limpets, sundry crustaceans before,
Reek of spilt oil seemed to clamp a dark leash,
And Nature walkers of ere shunned the shore.

With verdant mangrove turning death-like black,
The stubborn sticky oil ruling the spot,
Visitors ventured no more yon the deck,
Time I hope would ere long stem sticky rot.

In distant sea I saw yon a rocked ship,
Perilously perched, her shy posterior to coast,
As if blind to damage; her deadly whip
Of Black Death warning: it’s no idle boast.

Let pity be to poor species of sea—
Let me more hope: the life that there’d once been,
Robust as ere and resilient be,
Despite man’s callous crocodilian skin.

Hope, his greedy plunder upon the parched Nature
Would not keep pace with his footprint’s rising stature.
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The mangroves that the poem talks about are off Navy’s Prongs Lighthouse in Bombay’s
Colaba, , which I had visited decades back. Later, I read about the destruction wrought by
the oil slick following collision of a merchant vessel MS Chitra with another ship near
Raigad, close to Vashi coastal areas. A stretch of 100 Km was devastated by the resultant
oil spill of around 1000 metric tonnes. I felt as if it was personal loss when memories of
Navy’s verdant mangroves rushed to my mind for a while. The sadness that pervaded
gave birth to this poem.
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- Happenings | 01.09.10 |