101
This is a tribute to Bombay
The city of my birth
A place of enormous contrasts.
Wealth and squalour - sorrow and mirth.
The rich live in luxury dwellings
With everything money can buy,
Marble floors - silks and jewels,
If they want it, no price is too high.
The poor live by the roadside,
Running water's the drain overflow,
They live and they die on the pavement,
There's nowhere else they can go.
It's a town of many contrasts,
Religions - colours - creeds
There is generosity - kindness
And corrupt and evil deeds.
Near squalid, rat-infested slums
Where mange dogs root around,
In small patches of tropical green
Birds and butterflies abound.
It's a chaotic, congested city,
But the sunshine seldom fails.
|It's a measure of our tolerance
That peace nearly always prevails.
January 29th 1988
