Two Faces of Delhi

Heavens use their chartreuse painting brushes;
Chapels, pagodas fan out their doors;
Sun’s print on my tea, the mad crowd rushes;
High-pitched bargains at greengrocers’ stores;
Buses’ bodies filled with names of places;
Monday-minded men march with briefcases;
Couple-boarded bikes rev on the lanes;
Swans on high like chevron-shapen planes;
Kachoris: in each mouth hot spice gushes,
The radios yell out the cricket scores.

Dust-clad kids in tatters roll on footways;
Cleaver users start off with blood tasks;
Autumn’s almost approaching its last days;
Salvias, for now, have ceased to bask;
Qutub Minar’s head hides in the smokescape;
Delhi’s a page, once it was a landscape.
Who needs Jazz? An engine’s vroom is Blues.
Friends stay lip-latched; strangers gladly schmooze;
Penniless youth bears oligarchic ways,
And every face that’s gentle wears a mask.

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