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Mother India, circa 1997
There she is
the much celebrated and glorified
Mother India:
almost fifty,
but only 4'10",
eighty-five pounds, illiterate,
and pregnant.
She's thin of limb,
mildly anaemic,
giddy and short of breath;
she gets only half of what she needs to eat.
Besides, she has an intestinal infection
and is sometimes malarial--
poor housing, bad water, no sanitation.
She has low self-esteem
and is the perpetual giver.
In a few weeks,
another baby will come tearing out of her,
but she trudges and toils
to the very end.
Then, though herself famished,
she puts another
low-birth-weight infant
to her breast.
With all this she survives;
how she manages it
is a mystery.
So Vande Mataram,
hail Bharatmata,
long live Mother India, etc.
