Vidarbha......

Wilted plants in the cracked ground,
With showers refusing to come around,
A countless lives gone without a sound,
Tears and blood wet the barren ground.

Under the tin-roof the heaving breasts,
Crying over the children's wrecks,
Hitting the stolid earth with tightened fists,
As the virgins they slash their wrists.

Warring life itself for the daily bread,
It's harder done than earlier said,
And the lines on the palm the astrologer read,
Long erased in the wretched graves......