The following poem by Satish Pendharkar from Mumbai was selected as a commendable mention in Wingword Poetry Prize 2020
Can you blame Laxmichandra and Babita
For not having possessed
Prescience in adequate measure to foresee
The nightmare that was looming large?
Their solitary child Avinash was dying.
However, they had pinned their hopes
On the monuments of Super Speciality -
The Taj Mahals of Medical Hospitality.
Shuttling from one hospital to another,
Begging that their sinking son be saved;
Racing through streets - their ambulance’s siren
Muffling the pitiful wails of their lad.
Yet everywhere encountering the trauma
Of doors being slammed on their faces.
The cruel discovery: One is an outcast
In a city one regards as one’s own.
The caring hands that readily caress,
Cuddle, calm and coddle the affluent
And the influential – those very hands
Often crush the spirit of the multitudes.
Their boy on the verge of the precipice,
They saw Hippocratic Oath-takers
Turn hypocrites to shut them out, realizing -
When one’s untitled, one’s not entitled.
Deflated, they resumed their leather-hunt
Finally finding an oasis in the desert.
Soon thereafter, calamity struck
Snuffing out the flickering candle.
The ruthless world yet continued
To extract from them a further price;
For what greater sorrow can visit one
Than one having to bury one’s only child
Feeling awfully lonely, utterly hopeless
And terribly guilty, they stared hard
At the gaping ground below before tying
Their hands together to take the final plunge.
“It’s nobody’s fault” they had written.
Incorrect. For, we as a nation failed them.
So, what plans have we – acts of atonement,
To ensure their deaths have not gone in vain?