Mumbai Building Collapse - A Sorrowful Reality Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

It is every year, the flooding
the streets get filled with dirty water
from the over-flowing gutters where children
play in the rains as they hold their umbrellas
or in their raincoats they walk in the puddles
to schools, happy to get drenched
and later to sleep with fever at home.

When monsoons come, the city gets flooded
old buildings fall, children drown in open drains;
there is no calculation about prevention
everyone knows rains will bring calamities;
the unfortunate, the poor die
or face the wrath of the havoc the rainfall creates.

Many loose their homes; many lose their lives
they have no shelter to go to and sleep
yet they pull thro the flooding and the murk
nobody really cares, nobody really sympathizes
but as the death toll keeps rising
everyone speaks so loudly on the television,
telling that a very old building has collapsed.

Everyone eagerly awaits to know
how many have survived,
how many have lost their lives,
every face they see breathing gives them relief
every death brings in anguish and agony,
the loved ones weep as the rescue workers find corpses,
the ambulances keep rushing the injured to hospitals.

In a few days Mumbai will wake up to new movies
and the same hustle and bustle at the train stations,
at the bus stations and at the Municipal corporations;
the dead will be cremated or buried silently
their loved ones will collect compensation
the old building will be forgotten.

Haji Ali will be crowded with worshipers
and morning walkers jogging along the Worli sea-face,
life will go on, the dead will be forgotten,
those who miss them will silently mourn forever.
but the monsoons will come again
and more old buildings will keep falling,
a few people will be dying again.

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan - this is how Mumbai is...
where the rich live in skyscrapers and new apartments
the common man lives in old buildings
yet each one keeps happy and content
in their own homes and habitat
but on the streets rolls mutual concern
and respect for each other everyday
but when calamity strikes Mumbai weeps together.