“Why do you call me?

Can't you see that I have left behind

my small domestic world ?

I have my anklets in my hand;

I have no need

of baths in winter mornings,

or of wearing kajal and sindur.

Nor do I have desire for sannyas.

I want to become only his

whoever seeks and desires me.”

Now even crows are not to be seen;

they have flown away with the vultures.

Sometime back,

eating at Sona Mani's roadside eatery

I had asked him:

where is your village?

what about your land?

who are your relatives?

when did you lose them all?

Mani Sahu’s son Rebati Nadan  was crying

and I searched in the pavements

At last I had to console him with a crow's picture

in a children's book.

He burst out laughing.

The silly creature!

Felt so thirsty?

Made so much drama in the blazing sun.  ?

There was  a cage in my  house

If the crow were not  a bohemian

I would ask him to stay in that  cage.

Running away from bits of leftover food

it now sits on the column

in front of the Mania Baba’s  ashram,

as if in meditation!

You should never think of running away.

What need do you have of sannyas?

It is only a fleeting phase.

Do you know ,

how my  brother kept worrying for you

during my father’s  funeral rites

even as the soul hovered

over the charred bones on the pyre?

............................