Malli

He stretched my patience across

the long wet pull

on a biri and said it'll take time, sir

my hands are full

Why don't you have a glass of tea

while I seal

the puncture inside your flaccid wheel

Motor and compressor

sweating kerosene

a disembowelled Ceat tube

converted by a keen

blue knife, aplomb and a grin

into a giant rubber foreskin

vanishes inside

the thick truck tyre

Tista flexes muscle

through the iron dusk

truckers talk in low tones

manly, brusque

Along the black valley

a myopic jeep

carefully skirts a Tata

grunting in its sleep.

By the tottering tyre-shop

loafers hang around

jaundiced by the petromax

spellbound

in secret admiration

at the prestidigitation

by Kumar

of Kumar Tyres

On the scourged hill,

above the far bank

the mud closes fingers

liquid, lank

over skull-coloured boulders

fallen from the shoulders

of the road to Danny's brewery

Insects creep creep

creep as three lights vie:

neon, the petromax

and the crepuscular sky

by the river a mournful fox

concedes

the moon has risen behind

what's left of the trees.

Tista at Malli —

not a pleasant sight

even when muted

by the seeping night

I can sit and watch the ballet, though

of rubber and the steel

and the man who resuscitates

my motorcycle wheel.