जिजीविषा

Every time my feet touch home,
I never see the blue sky anymore.
Once I giggled, ran in the green park
Now I suffer,
cough,
choke and gasp
as I call for oxygen
through my teary eyes.
The thick smog blankets the skies
Of young and aged lungs.
The air quality index is deadly,
very poor,
hazardous,
as the stubble burns away,
and yet all we do is breathe it in,
smoking cigarettes of pollution
every day.

I never see the bougainvilleas and bright eyes
For each year, something fades to dust,
layer by layer,
until crushed beneath it,
and life seeps out of them.
The kite sits in the peacock’s place,
hunting for his next prey.
I never hear the cheeps of sparrows,
or see their small nests cradled in corners,
nor do I see the green in the leaves
as the blackboard tree
and the sweet neem are cut.
The water bowl is broken now,
and so are the dead roots of
the pomegranate plants.
The bacteria drain their life out,
unless, they are cared for.

Where once were cotton clouds,
and the sun rays reached us,
now a mountain of trash blocks the view,
a landfill so filthy,
where ravens fish for food,
a mountain made of us
and our endless issues.
I stand,
I wave goodbye,
to those fallen landscapes,
that were once alive.
They still don’t hesitate
before dumping litter
out glass windows
wounding the natural
with their soulless
aloof faces.

I can’t see the waves of Yamuna,
as she screams and cries too,
the pungent white froth devours her,
while the people bathe in it.
They bathe and drink the noxious,
their eyes,
blind
to the dreary truth,
how home is dying,
under our poisonous ruins.
I never feel like my home is home
ever since the melancholic destruction
is all that is announced,
I hear,
I frown,
I wonder where it went wrong,
I wish people could stop living
with their eyes wide shut.