The migrant workers

Those are not fields of wheat 

of our landlords

but the gold of our labour 

which brings morsels of food

to the ailing elders and crying children 

back in the shanty villages 

that no longer provided enough.  

These are not the brick and mortar 

for the homes we build for our contractor 

But the gossamer silks of our dreams  

that bring a new tin shed 

and proof the leaking dilapidated hut 

in our little hamlet by the river side. 

These are not mere machines 

that produce in surfeit  for our factory owners 

but the magic wands of a wizard 

that conjure up clothes for half naked children 

and dowry of our unmarried sisters 

as they wait every evening for the postman 

to bring by the monthly relief. 

At this home away from home,

my husband and I 

worked by the day bathed in sweat 

and dreamt by the night 

of all the succour we provided 

to the people back at home in the 

wasted villages that were once 

replete with self-sufficiency.  

In this home away from home, 

we were grateful for the benediction 

our masters so graciously bestowed. 

And then, it happened 

when the cities and towns were plagued 

with an unspeakable horror. 

A disease that alienated them from us 

and made them throw us out 

Of fields and construction sites, 

From factories and even their hearts. 

The disease that made us undertake 

the long journeys through the ghostlands 

where all magic fizzled away 

into an infernal reality of human apathy. 

- Neha Bansal