Greencards and greenbacks


We saw them laughing
In beween their smirks
Trying to catch our attention
We really didn’t care
Our gait reflected confidence
Deep under there were sounds
Of reverberating emptiness
Our shirts had no front pockets
We clutched at our hearts
A cell phone ring in the pocket
Would directly send waves
Our hearts are in their places
We were going about on our business
In our green safari suits
Wearing our best Seico watches
We also spoke Indian English
With our vernacular accents
Why were they laughing
And crying in turns ,without reason,
In our country we love all men
As our brothers and women as aunts .

On the BPO circuit we laughed at them
Our men and women took just a few rupees
To take care of their washing machines
And their micro-oven machines
We wrote all their medicines
On scraps of papers in legible type
We stopped blaming our colleges
And the Government long long ago
They taught us English comprehensible
To neither our countrymen nor to the English
We are still proud of our English skills
Our NRI novelists wrote exotic English
To win Pushcart prizes and Pulitzer awards
Our clerks are English keyboard-friendly
We all love dearly our dollars harvested
In their country’s Java and Oracle fields
We really don’t care if they laugh and cry
In turns , calling us names as long as
Our greenback is forty seven crisp rupees.