Just Another Day In Paradise

by Joyjit Sengupta
(Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India)

The place was
a sinner’s paradise
With alcohol, drugs
crime and red lights
Where no human survived

Bad news made no news
It was just everyday life

If a loved one wasn’t back home
Late in the evening
Perhaps you won’t see him again

Things were bad as they were
One day
A saint walked in
His orange robe
His shaven head
His rosary bead
Were all too alien
To their scheme of things

They wanted him to leave
But he wasn’t willing

He sat on the pavement
And his fingers kept
Running the rosary beads

People began to
gather round him
The criminals, addicts,
Men and women
Without morals or ethics

He just kept counting his beads
They tried talking to him
But he would not speak

In anger they waved
Their guns in the air
He simply smiled

They were too tired
And defenceless
Against a harmless saint
Whom their guns
Had failed to impress

At length he stood up
Facing him was
A scarred face

He touched with his thumb
between the eyebrows
on the fore head

And the man
With the scarred face
Rolled in ecstasy
It was nothing like
he had tasted before
Not even his best cocktail
of drugs and chemicals
could provide

The ruffians, the hooligans
The barbarians all stood
In a long queue

The Master showered his grace
endlessly
With his magic touch
Raising lesser humans
To levels of divinity

He was finished
Ready to leave
But he had followers now
Who had found their
New addiction in him.