America
1
Apprehensions wait
in serpentine ques
at emigration counters,
Memories walk past
unchecked
without fingers being scanned,
face digitized
and sent to archives.
A woman in mid thirties,
with mother and a kid in tow
bursts in muffled sobs
of suppressed emotions
tears welling in her eyes
covered with hands
face averted from surging crowds,
a coiled serpent
uncoiling.
Her child
barely nine
tugs at the hem of her skirt.
The serpent moves ahead.
a rib forward
at a time.
Mind has depth
one can fathom
not by binary codes
but by emotions,
pure and simple.
Tears in child's eyes
smoothened by mother's palm
and a puff of even her stale breath
brings
smile on child's face
2
They wait......
emotions on the other side
and
apprehensions at this side
of emigration counter.
Serpentine ques this end.
Anxieties crowded at customs exit,
catching glimpses
through swinging half-opened
automated doors
No one can seen the future
not even through
these flipping doors.
Memories are cruel
to the last core and
vengeful.
They catch you unawares
when you least expect them to.
Weak from exhaustion,
of waiting
mother and son,
Brothers
wait at two ends of
whatever is left of
civilization.
The voids of the lost ones
trapped behind borders
and guarded by gun trotters,
not filled even by zeros and ones
is a black hole,
A silence that weeps with rage.
If silence could speak
even with language of deaf and dumb
with gestures of hands,
that refuse to hold guns
for one can not talk
without hands
freed from trigger.
3
I look
at the head behind the counter
not really the face
not even the head
but look for a hint of
a mere nod.
A nod was manning the immigration counter...
...Right hand fingers on scanner
nod
'right thumb'
nod
'left hand fingers'
nod
'left thumb'
nod.
'look straight in-to camera,'
'remove spec's'
'OK',
a faint smile,
a stroke on the keyboard
and lo
I enter America
before I actually cross the barrier.
my face, grim,with spects removed
helpless,
without my myopic vision,
digitized in zeros and ones.
leading one another,
holding index fingers
rush down the data highways
of optical fibers
in colors of the rainbow.
4
I see my being reduced to an icon,
my face
representing the whole of me,
digitized at the counter
being chopped on a kitchen chopping board
with a knife
sharp enough to cut through
anybody's soul,
into binaries
compressed to manageable format
both eyes in one pigeon-hole
ears in another
nose,
lips
'-that incidentally had a crooked smile,'
in another,
the distance between the eyes measured
and ridges on my fingers
classified and tagged
with suitable digital flag pinned to me
I see myself sent to the digital mortuary
and stored in extractable drawer
as cold and as impersonal as should be
in any morgue.
I lie there now
in that digital morgue
profiled
religious,cultural,political,social
and personal
added bit by bit like a jig-saw puzzle
of infinite corners.
5
The hands that picked up
my baggage wearily
were not mine
The mind that made me pick up
my past memories
was contaminated
with humiliation.
Legs burdened by existence
of ever diminishing returns
I walk past the doors,
swinging open on my approach
the nod was invisible
to my myopic eyes
I arrive in America
straight in to the lap of emotions.
6
Her love steams from
a pot of cooking rice
for her McDonalded son,
fingers impatiently throbbing
to put mustard oil in his hair,
putting behind
twenty two hours of cramped
economy class travel,
jet lag,
and her past
separated by 17000 km and two oceans.
Her eyes moisten
seeing his receding hairline
7
I arrive at the digital gate
Shoving plastic cards everywhere
up the nose of card readers
enter
a society of digitised emotions
divided along card lines
and credit ratings,
a society of surveillance cameras
without a soul
on side-walks.
Digital gates open
and close
I lie in the morgue
cold and impersonal
on a silicon chip
deep down under layers of
data highways
ashes interned,
behind high security vaults
of home-land security.
The phoenix is now past the exit.
