Does the awful jungle of concrete
Laugh in unison with them?
With the idea of being family? With heart? With warmth?
Why should they be made to laugh
With the cold shafts of indignity striking them?

They laugh when, at sunrise, the village laughs,
When joyful, flowing, dancing rivulets laugh,
When the morning meadows, buoyant with light laughs,
When the range of hills beside the meadows laughs.
They laugh when the smiling audience,
Touched by the folk songs, laughs.

Their hearts are not in the songs but
Speed like birds of passage, blossom forth
Now in the villages skies like flowers
Their hearts are not in the songs, but flow
Like rivulets by village meadows now.
Their hearts race with the footpaths.

Speak and they too speak
Laugh and they laugh too
You have to return their hearts
Back to themselves.
You have to bind their sarangis and their songs together
Like babies bound and carried in arms.

Why should men and women laugh
With jungles of concrete that do not laugh?

7:34 PM 15 March 2000
Putli Sadak