Poetry: Vidya Hariharan

Vidya Hariharan

Love and Marriage in a Metro

Falling in love requires a phone.

With constant calls and messages,

The interchange is always on,

Every minute, each second there’s sharing,

Of loving words, jokes and memes.

The virtual world keeps reality away,

Text messages speak of dreams,

Of a life together which nothing may

Break asunder or keep apart.

Love you forever, whispers the heart.

Spending every minute spare

Talking of this and that.

Real time meetings are so rare

So busy are the couple even to spat.

After some months, the parents are told:

“We’re getting married, we love each other.”

This too is shared on zoom, lo and behold!

Thus, a marriage is arranged, end of discussion.

The hall is booked, friends and relatives

 E- invited, the hired hosts greet the guests, 

Gifts are Gpay remitted.

Which heaven are such marriages made in?

Who knows, maybe it’s like the internet of things.

Nobody understands how relationships work

A deep mystery it is, where emotions lurk.

Times are tough for lovers everywhere

They’re too busy to sit and share.

Work consumes these poor Romeos

Love blooms sweetly in the pauses.

***

The Fashionistas

Torn jeans and coloured hair

Seem like fashion flair.

The beauty queen and the local vagrant

Both are dressed similar.

Long bearded men wrapped in lungees 

Stretch on footpaths at their ease.

Draped in sarongs gliding on the stage,

Young models with stubble are all the rage.

Hollow cheeks, caved in belly,

Palms outstretched, always hungry, 

Begging at traffic signals for a fiver

Is she very different from a diva?

***

Inappropriate behaviour

What do they mean

When they say

‘act your age’

‘Cos as you know

I may be fifty

On my bones,

But in my heart

I am still sweet

Sixteen!

So when they say,

‘Act your age’

I sing, “I am! I am!”

***

Bio: Vidya Hariharan is an avid reader, traveller and coffee drinker.  In her spare time, she wrestles with crossword puzzles. She enjoys the works of T. S. Eliot, Ranjit Hoskote and Sylvia Plath, when she is not devouring crime fiction. The family’s poetic gene jumped across two generations, as her great-grandfather P.S. Rama Iyer was a popular poet and short fiction writer in Malayalam. Vidya also teaches English Literature in a suburban college in Mumbai. Some of her narrative prose and haiku can be found on Muse India’s Your Space page. One of her poems “Beauty” has been selected as Editor’s Pick for July 2024. 

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Setu, January 2025