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Air India

Delhi-Heathrow

A haughty camel train in the rush hour,
a holy cow chewing a cardboard box,
sand-thudding fruit, a dusty star —
these are the images that recur,
and the new office blocks.

Sand-scraping branches making namaskar
to the brown sea from a "Bounty"-wrapper beach,
a nipper's goofy toy inflatable shark,
idle kites circling a railway bridge,
old Delhi after dark;

a woodsmoke evening, the pink architecture,
moth-fluttering crowds around the sanctuary
where six-branched Shiva sits like a gilt candlestick,
some hunched-up creature watching
the sunrise from a cedar tree . . .

But the clearest picture
is a weed-trailing yard of wood and brick
up a dim lane behind a bicycle shop
with a quick monkey, rhesus or macaque,
clinging for dear life to a water pipe,
the slowly dripping tap.