My Sister's Coat

There it hangs,

The coat, labelled and high-branded;

The fast cars pass by and the traffic jams,

A drunken old man sleeps on the middle of the road,

A girl in half clothes wraps her mother’s baby inside her arms

It is a few degrees down than last year around this time,

Smog has eclipsed the view,

I cannot find my friend, a few paces ahead of me

The owner of this piece is nowhere to be seen

But the coat is shining clean

I catch up to my girl and grab her arm,

We hold on to each other

Somewhere in our talks, we’ve ignored the weather

The jalebi’s and gulab jamun being served just for ten a piece

The sweet quickly melts in our mouth

My purse is empty again

It has been a month wearing the same pair of sweaters

The wind blows and there goes my wish for another layer to put on

Perhaps, I’ll wait and shop, manage somehow

This season I have a big job

To safeguard my sister’s coat from the bugs and the thugs,

Till she returns again next year

There it boasts itself, tucked and bolted inside the wardrobe

The coat in its greyness!