Do you have any photographs to share, esp. those that have a
lasting impression on you?
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The poet describes a beggar he once saw in Bombay. The beggar was
old and sickly, lying helplessly on a pavement, unheeded by people
walking by. The poet, fascinated by the sight of the beggar, took a
picture of him (presumably to add to his collection of artistic
photographs). But later, he feels ashamed of himself, for having
been so heartless as to see the beggar only as the subject of a
photograph.
Decomposition
I have a picture I took in Bombay
of a beggar asleep on the pavement;
grey-haired, wearing shorts and a dirty shirt,
his shadow thrown aside like a blanket.
His arms and legs could be cracks in the stone,
routes for the ants journeys, the flies descents.
Brain-washed by the sun into exhaustion,
he lies veined into a stone, a fossil man.
Behind him there is a crowd passingly
bemused by a pavement trickster and quite
indifferent to this very common sight
of an old man asleep on the pavement.
I thought it then a good composition
and glibly called it The Man in the Street,
remarking how typical it was of
Indian that the man in the street lived there.
His head in the posture of one weeping
into a pillow chides me now for my
presumption at attempting to compose
art out of his hunger and solitude.
By Tulfikar Ghose
