By Radhika Oberoi
Erstwhile collector of handwriting:
convent-school cursive or
marching battalions of alphabets or
vowels, wanton and ruined or
sentences that glide or fly or
slant left or slant right or
trample on punctuation or
Erstwhile collector
of intimate cartographies:
the latitude of new crockery on a shelf or
the location of a heartbeat on a sonogram or
the physical features of disharmony or
the contours of a marriage or a job or
the political subdivisions of the bedroom or
the elevation of the bowl of fruit on the dining table or
Erstwhile collector
of the many histories
that fit into an envelope,
stamped and sealed by efficient tongues.
Cylindrical employee
of the State
and its overzealous minions.
Now unemployed.
Empty of handwritten epics on aerograms.
Free of its duties, it stands
rooted to the pavement
Wondering when the world turned prosaic