In Memory-Pushpa Gandhi

A family member passed away a year ago.  In her memory.....

Pushpa

She was 

with no one

among us,

only disenfranchised

to call her own

She served slums,

poor and needy

not all but some

yet, much too many.

She once took me to a field  trip,

Juhapura we went

where I learnt, 

slums and ghettos

have slums and ghettos

of their own.

On to her work

we stepped over 

open sewers;

covered our noses

to stem the stench of 

human excrement,

rotting dead rats and dogs.

We walked dirt roads with

puddles turned swamps

mosquitoes a-swarmed.

She helloed owners

of butcher shops where 

animal carcasses

hung from the hooks

buzzing with flies. 

She befriended women

suffering abuses

of all versions. 

She taught them

the art of survival

by helping them

market wares they crafted 

with their own hands.

It brought them

pride,  joy

and perhaps

two bits of coin

This,

I saw first hand but once 

and lost my sleep;

she made her vocation

and slept well through

for she did her part.

True to her calling,

she donated her live body

to a cause, poor.

She donated her dead body

to a cause, medicine.

A true Social Worker.

.....charu