The Old Fruitseller Lady

It was a new day and the crowd was growing thick,

With fish, food, vegetable, and fruit stalls.

With more people crossing paths, the place was getting hectic,

Busy and uproarious with vendors’ bawls.

People scuttling all over the place,

Pulling cycles with vegetables and bags at a hurried pace,

Making way for confused dogs and bulls in between,

Engrossed in the usual chaos and restlessness.

 

The Sun had just grown strong,

From a soft red blush among the clouds,

Casting shadows short and long,

On the muddy and littered ground.

Further to a humble stall selling tea,

The market gradually merged into the dump yard.

And just before, there stood a huge banyan tree,

Below which sat an old lady looking tired and starved.

She sat there under the tree’s shade,

Behind some fruits laid over a soiled sack.

And a balance besides, through which she weighed,

A meagre livelihood which her efforts paid back.

She seldom had customers,

And spent most of the day turning holy beads and warding off insects and crows, 

And as the day grew warmer,

She waned in prominence, like the shadows.

It was hard to guess her age from her looks,

She seemed to be there as long as, the banyan tree over her.

Her face was shriveled up like some of her fruits,

She was there when this land was bare; the market had slowly developed around her.

She strained to look at the customer, who had stopped by to ask the price,

From behind thick cracked lenses, was visible a pair of dried eyes.

Her lips were barely visible, but they still parted to give a smile,

She held up the balance with shivering hands, as her strength defies.

With the Sun the day progressed,

As people toiled hurriedly to earn a daily living.

But the place under the banyan tree seemed to transgress,

The clutches of time; harsh and unforgiving.

A bliss always prevailed under it,

A part of this hustle yet so aloof.

Even after fading abilities and she did sit,

Eternally like her shading roof.

The day passes quickly in such a place,

The Sun went down and the darkness set in.

She slowly dissipated into the evening’s embrace,

And soon was nowhere to be seen.

She was as if the embodiment of hope and simplicity,

Within the discordant music of the busy world.

She reflected aspiration and tranquility,

Boldly working away the loneliness which life had hurled.

She represented the life sublime,

With its struggle for livelihood.

Blissfully unaffected by the worlds rat race, intolerance and malign,

She faced life wearing a smile so good.  

She was left with no one at this stage of her life,

Except life itself.

Still her heart seemed pure and face bore no vice,

Turning beads, I imagined her praying to God,

“A few more breaths would suffice.”