Putting The ‘Bad’ In Allahabad [#Poetry]

A dip in the holy Ganges is supposed to wash away sins. But whose sins, exactly, is this woman washing away? 

I book a ticket to Allahabad
Once
Fraught with repentance,
To a devout confluence.
On the Holy Ghats of Haridwar
Repentance,
shrouds the crescent yellow moon,
Invariably distraught with desires.
I scrub,
On the half immersed flight of stairs, I run down, to cleanse,
Like million others who douse next to me.
Their sins leaking like green leaves
in a boiling pot.
These rivers will spill someday,
It is a labyrinth of untold crimes.
Ripe with human desires, and,
Repentance,
Just like mine.
All the elements we are made up of,
Like tides, wash up on my feet.
A torrential verse of impiousness,
Replete with chants of unholy saints resound.
I immerse myself in the murky water,
I can’t see a thing, no more.
If that is what it means to cleanse, to be blinded to sins,
I am not a sinner anymore.
A Godless city I seek him in,
An impulsive dullard with a pen,
Looking in daylights, for,
The holy ghost of a living God.
Come night, my plain verses,
Succumb to lustful men,
And thus,
In double entendres,
A flailing heart breaches divine assertions.

Published here earlier.

Image source: shutterstock

Comments