The still air,
hot, dry and dejected,
reminds of the fever last night.
Where... when,
in a mindless act of restlessness,
the citizen, a protagonist,
took an umbrella,
stood on the terrace,
and sang the rain song,
cried for childhood!
It was windless even then,
but the trees swayed,
a dance, a trance,
to the tune of
amendments made in haste,
in hatred, in apathy...
Oh, the fervour.
Fever it is,
in the many shades of skin,
in the diverse layers of nationhood.
-- Leslie Xavier
