Photo courtesy of Twitter
Thugs, goondas, thousands of them, gathered in villages
and towns in the interior and boarded buses to the capital–
their purpose, to break up the tents set up outside
the Prime Minister’s residence, to rough up protesters
demanding the resignation of the PM and President,
asking for Gota and the whole clan to go home. But
something went wrong with the plan. People found
the buses parked in town and punctured holes
in the tires. People found government advocates trying to blend
into the crowds and harangued them asking if
They too had no fuel or bread or paper or hope.
Or were they just fooled?.Outside the PM’s residence
where three thousand had gathered to hear from
their lord before heading out to take down some tents,
police began to fire tear gas and water cannon on them.
Can you imagine this? On the family’s own faithful?
Then running back to the buses they found them,
as described above, out of commission. What does
a villager do in the city without transport, without money,
without bread, without fuel? Some wag suggested
the real thug, the true hard nut, ordered the buses to gather
troops, saying come to the capital and save the family from
the hordes. I will not (overheard by the servant) walk away
from the nest egg despite pus sprouting from the cracked yolk,
spilling out. And I will not listen to the IMF, the World Bank,
trade unions, teachers, Christians, Buddhist prelates,
garbage collectors, foreign diplomats, Tamils, and everybody
and anybody willing to opine outside the palace walls.
I am deaf to your cries and focused on the work I have
still to do, the country from which I must earn my keep.
