Beautiful as an incarnation of Nandi himself
A white bull roamed in my neighbourhood
Chewed overgrown shoots over boundary walls
Grazed monsoon green grass on empty plots
Sat on the pavement, people sprinted past him
Some touched him for divine grace
Mindful of his majestic horns.
Last winter while walking my dog
Up ahead a strange form cast a shadow
Through the fog, almost alien
My dog barked the spit out of his soul
Took me a while to tell him
“It’s the bull buddy, see” took a step closer
“It’s the bull, you know him..”
His large kind eyes below the horns
Smiled, his nose lowered to nuzzle my dog.
Saw him again today— I saw
One horn broken off clean near the root.
He, colossal, shy, beautiful,
Ran with his anxious tail twitching
To cross the near-empty street,
Scared of a measly scooter in the distance
One horn broken off clean near the root
What trauma!
Scared of steel, asphalt and machine
The memory of the pain branded on his heart
Which I pray forgives us in its cosmicity.
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at [email protected].
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