Mumbai Stampede- Pain and poetry

THE tragic stampede at Elphinstone station has shocked every citizen of this city and beyond. Several have even shared their stories of the Parel-Elphinstone area. Like Indian Foreign Services officer Devyani Khobragade, who studied medicine at the KEM college here from 19911997 and took the train to college daily. She has penned a few verses show her anger and pain.

She writes:

Pile of files (read life)

at footbridge

Six years of my life

I ran Down your bridge

To catch the fleeing local train

A drop in the sea of humanity,

Never drowned but Like so many today

In the stampede of human panic?
Or overburden ?
You Elphinstone railway station?
Never aware that mine could be Among the littered limbs

Or torn clothes or broken phones

Scattered one wet day on

Astounded steps to nowhere.

That, long before a slipped step

Triggers an avalanche of death,

An orgy of neglect oozed out of

Everyone who could care

But did nothing.

That long after broken ribs

Punctured breaths out of lives

And heartbeats stopped under Piles of falling bodies

Focus will be not on

Mending but blame.

On streets anger will spill

Debates will thunder on

TV Raising TRPs and forgetting

Lives that mattered,

over Deaths that shouldn’t be.

When I sprinted across

In and out of you,Elphinstone

Never I cared that

No one in high offices cared

To look after you

And the swelling human ocean

Raging through your sagging seams

While those in high offices

Glided over time which

Waded through dusty files

On your upkeep,

Just as termite gnaws through life.

Today, out of that pile of Human morass

I stand and think

How naive I was all those years

Not to think of life

Or actually of my death

Through neglect of your servants

Pretending to be my masters.