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Bastard Wheeler-dealers

Aryan-adopted children
With glued feathers
leap high seeking
Higher in desperation
Loud is their voice
With eyes seeking
Louder is the voice
When not heard

Then they begin
Of course in desperation
Strutting in the feathers
Then repeating
Of course vigorously
Only to fail with shame

Then the bastards rethink
What they must employ
Must they relearn all?
Must they recite the verses?
Must they be like the naga
Smeared in ash paste ?

Then they look West
Try to rephrase
The hackneyed slogans
In that they fail too
So they holler down
The borrowed slogans
War on Drugs
Prosecute the violators
Skill the farmers
Root out poverty

These they holler
Without failing a day
As though to spawn
More contractors
Than farmers
The ingenious kind
Who can top roads
With paper-thin tarmac
Or who can brush roads

Such a place they create
Where men in Hinglish
Cased in misnamed suit
And tip-curled shoes
Curled long enough
To shame even Italians
Are placed with painters
Who paint our roads
With dripping brushes
Who spend all day
Barking from their SUVs

They are not to be ignored
For they are our people
Our important wheeler-dealers
Out all days, most nights
To cut deals, to cut ribbons
Of roads and of buildings
Of which they made fortunes
Which farmers know not
Which intrigues the youths
Yet pleasing the bastards.

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