Lunch
She eats lunch
spread out on a table of rough stones,
this frail stone-breaker.
The lunch consists of dried chappatis
and mango-pickle
carefully wrapped in
yesterday’s daily paper.
The dust
of breaking stones blows and mixes
with her thin wheat-chappatis dear.
Unmindful of the din,
under the frugal shadow of a dusty
tamarind tree,
she sits, holds lunch in her thin hands
and eats slowly,
surrounded by hard stones everywhere.
Morsels swallowed hard,
washed down later with
polluted water
from a plastic crumpled bottle.
Rest of the meal she carefully folds
in the old newspaper,
for her sweating sinewy husband
working along with the other stone-breakers
while my obese teenage son,
plugged into his i-Pod,
complains again of less variety
on a well-laid
rosewood
shining
dining table.
SUNIL SHARMA is a bilingual critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. Some of his short stories and poems have already appeared in prestigious journals like: Munyori, the Bicycle Review , Muse India, Kritya, the Seva Bharati Journal of English Studies, Indian Literature, Indian Journal of Post-colonial Literatures, and Prosopisia; and have been anthologized in national and international collections. His debut novel—The Minotaur—dealing with dominant ideologies and sociopolitical realities of the 20th century was published from Jaipur (India) in 2009. He has edited, along with Dr Jaydeep Sarangi, an anthology of shorts, The Editors’ Chioce: Contemporary Short Stories in Indian English, published by Gnosis Publications, New Delhi, 2010. He is one of the editors for the NFJ (New Fiction Journal). Contact him through email at: drsharma.sunil@gmail.com
She eats lunch
spread out on a table of rough stones,
this frail stone-breaker.
The lunch consists of dried chappatis
and mango-pickle
carefully wrapped in
yesterday’s daily paper.
The dust
of breaking stones blows and mixes
with her thin wheat-chappatis dear.
Unmindful of the din,
under the frugal shadow of a dusty
tamarind tree,
she sits, holds lunch in her thin hands
and eats slowly,
surrounded by hard stones everywhere.
Morsels swallowed hard,
washed down later with
polluted water
from a plastic crumpled bottle.
Rest of the meal she carefully folds
in the old newspaper,
for her sweating sinewy husband
working along with the other stone-breakers
while my obese teenage son,
plugged into his i-Pod,
complains again of less variety
on a well-laid
rosewood
shining
dining table.
SUNIL SHARMA is a bilingual critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. Some of his short stories and poems have already appeared in prestigious journals like: Munyori, the Bicycle Review , Muse India, Kritya, the Seva Bharati Journal of English Studies, Indian Literature, Indian Journal of Post-colonial Literatures, and Prosopisia; and have been anthologized in national and international collections. His debut novel—The Minotaur—dealing with dominant ideologies and sociopolitical realities of the 20th century was published from Jaipur (India) in 2009. He has edited, along with Dr Jaydeep Sarangi, an anthology of shorts, The Editors’ Chioce: Contemporary Short Stories in Indian English, published by Gnosis Publications, New Delhi, 2010. He is one of the editors for the NFJ (New Fiction Journal). Contact him through email at: drsharma.sunil@gmail.com
