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The city: A poem by Indrani Chowdhury


Intrepid dreams, beckoning the rooted, giving them a thousand reasons,
To prepare themselves to be uprooted.
Now begin their nomadic tales,
In the city life, echoing their silent screams,
A price which must be paid dearly to this ‘Charon’,
To pass his river Styx.
The undercurrents of tension, despair, and for that matter failure,
Should not deter the city-bound journey of,
The swarming locusts called mortals.
And as such the city, like a true enchantress,
Adorns itself in its best attire, 
That is, the lights grandiose,
To bedazzle and to make one feel that he is uprooted,
For a better cause, for a noble purpose.
And what then follows is a hackneyed tale,
The locusts encircling themselves around the alluring lights,
Some lives, some dies, and some flee realizing the trap,
But the best-kept secret is that they would return again,
This time grooming themselves to fit in, to win,
In other words, they would return with a better stratagem.


Note: In Greek mythology, Charon is depicted as a boatman who ferries the dead souls through the underworld river Styx.