The Best Juice Wallah in Town

He rose, filled with juice,

As the first rays of sun threw needles

Into his eyes through the holey tarpaulin.

He took a bath while the

Other men squabbled with their wives.

He loaded his cart with the

Oranges and Yellows and Greens

And his beloved Usha,

While other loaded up their carts with

Lakshmis, Radhas and Poojas to sell.

He half ran, half glided across the road

To his spot of twenty years, outside the hospital

And waited, sign ready and in place

Bombay Juice Wallah:
The Best Juice Wallah in Town.

He put in the globs

of mellowed sunlight

And thrust with all his might

One hand moving the wheel, 

Grinding, extracting juice out.

He'd pull out the ugly carcass

Fibrous, tired juiceless mass

Devoid of any use

Falling wrinkled onto the

Flat plastic underneath.

He'd serve the juice with 

Right spices in the right amounts

He'd take his time, let the spice mix

Before he'd serve it with 

His own zest and fervour.

Evenings, he'd stumble back

Into the tarpaulin, having had

A juice quite unlike the one he served

Listen to his daughter sleep beside

Her ragged doll and her little two times table book.

He would kick his wife awake

And smell the municipal water on her breath.

He'd make juice like in the day

And roll back to sleep

Leaving her to cry in silence

For the tarpaulin was thin and

People would talk and in the moonlight

And the eerie shadows of the tarpaulin

She'd see he wasn't a good man.