Kolkata Airport

Kolkata Airport

Faces are sleek and steel
Eyes glued to crystal screens.

People weigh beauty
And take selfies.

Smart boys and girls,
Ears adeptly wired, billow
Smoke in lucent boxes.


In the lounge
I loiter among flabby faces
And find a family of four.

Father, mother
And the children two.

Faces dry, pale,
Eyes, socketed deep, vacant,
And limbs anemic.


Maybe they sell a plot
Or two cows or trees,
And are on their way to
A famed speciality clinic.

Parents are silent and wary
And the children are scary.

Strange is the port,
And strangers are the co-fliers.