Mahatma Gandhi's "Harijans, the "Children of God", spurned by one and all in the name of their own "God"...

The Night Soil Man

I

Nothing sticks to-get-her like turds
No border line nor skin to cross
Condescension's never a case for loss
High birth's distilled from fermenting curds

The day dawns where sleep reigns loud
Where the pitchblack venomous karunagam*
slithers out from its hideout in the ox-bow
touch-me-not underbrush
to make its hungry way into Vanar Kampung
Sandal-less the coarse makeshift sweat-soaked thalappa* fits
his disheveled scalp like some portrait halo yet to hang high
Thodti* strides majestic loping down the mired mud gravel pathway
(Who defers to whom : the " cobra " or the " pariah " ?)

One is out to catch rats romping in the rafters
zinc-roofed one-storeyed houses
nailed planks on cement stump stilts
The other to fetch slippery rubber pots
laced with diarrhoeac splashes phlegm menstrual blood
the day's un-read newsprint soaked with urine mixed
with spermatozoic squirts

The spent air breathes carbide dry on the back of the late-afternoon thunder storm
the dense morass of foliage
the taste of mashed mango leaf
the scent of spermatozoa durian reek
Late night cinema-goers lie clutching the blind Lata Mangeshkar hits
piped-dreams
spreadeagled on stained yarrow or atap mats

The Sikh guard lays out his elaborate night-out
at the Chinese saw-mill gate
his un-used one-barrel rifle bedded down
on his string-bed
fast asleep while the hurricane lamp flickers
dying by dawn

Crackling frail cicada wings pizzicato symphonic
milling frog harmonics
organ jamming rapping bagpipes heaving

A lone sentinel owl keeps base time
stalked by panther pawed musang*
in one crook of the sprawling rain-tree's
over-arching ghostly lumber limbs

The moon's full pallid sick for the earth

Road lamps dim into their dull amber cocoons
time out of time

The jungle-green sanitary van throbs discreet
on the overgrown tarmac under-brush sidetable
the Malay driver eyes the quasi-un-clad nightsoil women
their paps prurient
in sack-coloured khadar* sari cloth
as they hover on their hinds for
the Night Souled Man to bring in the fresh-filled shit pots
the leprous bleach of his hands and feet glint and glower
as the whites of his never-opened eyes
strain in the half moonlit dimness
at every giant distracted step
a trail of human dung streaming down
his loin cloth


Resources
*karunagam (Tamil) : a variety of cobra ;
*thalappa (Tamil) : a variety of headwear ;
*Thodti (Tamil) : " night soil man " in common parlance ;
*musang (Malay) : wild " undomesticated " cat ;
*khadar (Tamil, from Hindi) : rough un-smoothed-out cloth.

© T. Wignesan - Paris, May 17, 2019