Kindness

A fat man on a pricey bike

 Stops nearby--- to feed a brown cow

Near a busy curb, while other motorists swerve

Around the idling figures,

And the lolling cow nods her big brown head

To his reverential touch;

Another slim woman in a Punjabi dress

Enters, once the man exits in a jiffy,

Offers a pale-yellow banana to the placid bovine,

Touches her forehead and is gone

Random acts of kindness and empathy,

In an Indian metro known for cruelty

For its hapless strays and homeless alike.

Figures in the sky

In the in-between sky,

A rain just gone and a rain

About to arrive,

 Tinged with hues electrifying,

Some dark-light and some light-gloomy;

Swollen clouds, dusty and grey

Alternating with gossamer white/pale-white;

Like a swarm of kids unleashed,

Enjoying the heavenly drops,

On the broken footpaths,

 Outside their leaking hovels,

These ethereal figures dance and gallop,

At the edge of a muddy ocean and jutting

Shadowy islands in the immensity above,

Created and then left hurriedly there by

The angry monsoon that reluctantly has

Finally reached Mumbai and nearby.

Frailty

Solitary flower on a bare branch

Of a skeletal tree, in a vale brown,

In early summer, looking back at the

Golden autumn, retreating hurriedly.