Salaam Comrade

the shifting space, the step

outside, away into another life

on a street next to mine

that drew me to itself,  you and her

a few bricks, some wood, a little

withered grass, and children, shrieking

as they played

so save the hours, the days, the months

that you dreamt of a new spine

in the universe, as you made tea

listening for the whistle calling, calling

for time spent

amongst spindles, shuttles

wisps of cotton, bundles of cloth

steam, sweat and that hollow

sense of tomorrow

that it could be different

was the difference that drew us together

a brief season amidst

the dogs, the smouldering coal, the filthy fields

all lit up with certainty

that it could be different

you spent that time, saved a life or two

looking beyond the evening’s embers

upon which the last cups of the day’s earnings

swelled up in the pan as surely as

the day would come

when it would be different

in another world

in the street next to mine

Bishambar Dayal (aka Bishen) was a mill worker, a proletarian communist in Delhi’s Birla Cotton Mills. He, his wife Chameli and his family were dear friends to me and other members of our student Maoist group in the late 1960s. We went through many vicissitudes together. Bishen was jailed during the Emergency and died about a decade ago.