PRIYAMVADA DILIP KUMAR

PRIYAMVADA DILIP KUMAR Poems

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Little Black Beetle

I saw him as I left the house -

Upside-down; quite undignified; flat on his back,

He was waving his various legs in the air and moving his antennae around.

Ignominious, he was aware of how ridiculous he looked.

I mused for a while.

How does Nature help these creatures to hoist themselves the right way up again?

Interesting - let me look at him awhile -

The sadist that I am.

Oh but that's our cat meowing: she doth advance.

She's an even greater sadist; keeps a pet cockroach in my work basket; takes him out; looks at hime; bats him about; and puts him back in.

She checks to see he doesn't escape. The next day, she repeats these games.

Oh no, but not my little fat black beetle lying on the drive-way.

I pick up a fallen gulmohar twig and turn him the right way up.

He scuttles away, just in time to escape my cat.

My husband sits in the veranda, basking in the sunshine.

He has a broken ankle; three legs including that elbow stick,

Which he waves around like "House".

Yet, for everything else, he acts helpless, like the beetle overturned, legs flailing helplessly.

I've turned him over several times; helped him with his elbow stick to get wherever he wants to.

Even God helps only those who help themselves - but not this three-legged man:

His water needs to come to him; so do his salads, his meds, his cat's fish; his bathroom thingies arranged just so and just so in a tray; his 4 or 5 towels; his napkins, his fruit (peeled, if you please) , and his newspaper.

His shirts get ironed automatically; his neighbours wheel him into the huge ambulance for his ortho checkups.

And these get done, these get done, because people do not act like that cat or that genuinely helpless beetle,

or even like the don't-care-master, God!

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