This poem is inspired with an old woman, who runs small business in a bamboo tray in the footpath.

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When the day is dropping

A log silhouetted she seems.

One has to get pretty closer to

Know it is a human:

An abandoned citizen.

The frozen sneeze on the back of her hand coruscating traffic beams

Put me in a predicament after I have received fags from her.

sometimes I get touched by her skin too.

Last time when I reached Gaulsala

the police had just moshed

Her tray for

Encroaching public path

I remembered the Lipulekh

I remembered the patriots,

comrades and their helplessness.

That day,

I, only watched her gathering

scattered things.

But to keep looking at the scene

felt waste of time.

I had walked far

yet she could still be heard.

Her every billingsgate was

followed by asthmatic coughs.

Coughing, cursing frail body and age, beating jammed chest are her habits.

I know it because last time too

When I asked for cigarettes

She coughed for a long time after she grinningly said, ‘Take it SON’.

By Parbat Limbu

From: Nepal

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