The Vizag Coast
I
History
I was born
at American General Hospital
it is in / at Vizag,
a port city with pebbly beaches
(where most landlubbers who swim are already drunk)
lovely sea-side roads
and beached-whale like hills
from the pinnacles of which
you would bless yourself, cross yourself
that Vizag isn't yet skyscrapered enough to be called,
India's windiest city.
II
Agelessness
To be frank,
and poetic, not bothering much about
what my assorted cousins now in the States will say,
Vizag has always been a city where afternoon siestas
and elevenses that kind of rhyme
masquerade for progress and poetry,
and for which every other year,
I am in mortal fear,
for either cyclone or tsunami
hides below the surface
of that sea I hold so dear!
III
Nostalgia
Digressions just end up ensuring one wanders
but digressions also give one context,
ramblings and rants apart,
I have managed to pass through Vizag,
and somehow not managed data about American General Hospital,
a.) its location
b.) the Doctor who operated me out of my mother
c.) the Nurse who gave life to / burped me
d.) the rich guy now owning the hills of my adolescent days
e.) the number of drunk engineering students who drown every year
and eff.) how many kms of that coast's beaches can be ridden on.
IV
The Present
I am told rates for land
are shooting up at Vizag, at locations far from the "beach"
where the water table starts at 180 feet
and most of the hills are already sold
and will have resorts on them, pretty soon
and also that there are no takers for sea-facing apartments,
because the beach is now "too" close
but then, this is the way a city grows
from masquerading about poetry and "beaches"
to the prosaic truth called progress
and anyway, I have always been just passing through.
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