Downshift on the highway,
we leave the lecture hall behind—
the speaker, an editor-turned-author, once
a gatekeeper, now a filmmaker’s muse—
Tea steam coils around a black dog,
stray philosopher beside chipped mugs.
Censored professors huddle in tobacco haze,
escaping the glass fortress of drones
and algorithmic eyes.
Bumpers kiss bumpers—
The e-rickshawwalla leans in,
“Can I take two more sawaaris?”
With the odor of unborn cauliflowers in his plea,
stretching beyond Sonipat’s cornices.
Noonday laborers-turned-waylaid-passengers,
extract worn-down notes from phone-case vaults
as gingerly as from clandestine deposits
in banks they have only seen in broken dreams.
And all I can find is Google pay
Bungalows and towers sprawl,
whitewashed horizons of aspiration;
housing complexes rise
like concrete corals
athwart a sea of mustard green.
Retail cathedrals loom:
warehouses where more
is worshipped daily.
Somewhere, biryani simmers—
spiced velvet in plastic spoons—
soya-chaap silhouettes
charting vegetarian futures.
Bohemians in echo-chambers
rehearse applause for their own names,
amidst stadia and pools that belie
neon fantasies from the mid-nineties:
Oxbridge in neoliberal Haryana,
celluloid campus dreams.
The rickshaw’s horn bellows—
another detour, another fare—
this winding homeward
chart of class and hope,
where every rupee buys
an inch closer to belonging almost nowhere.
Arup K. Chatterjee 