The Tribal Maniac

Under the unbolted blue sky, with wondering puffs of human eagerness,
The Forest Man stood quite long, looking at buffaloes in mediocre fields,
Not on their own, but with a helper in topi drawing thick milk for butter,
And a woman nearby in brown salwar-kameez, her hair flat under dupatta,
Cleaning her child’s head chock-full with red lice killing in between nails,
Also looking after the dry bush on fire to ward off flies and mosquitoes.

20 in totality he counts, the black buffaloes are, on plains arising from,

The Indus and Ganges, paralleling the Himalayas, sundered by valleys,
His deranged laugh and anxiety both emerge on top, suffer no attention,
From the trucks loaded with buffalo manure, ethno veterinary services,
For the contained small-holding farmers who practice no transhumance.

The Forest Man’s impish hobble was a straightforward walk to bugyals,

Every summer he moved upwards with pastoralists’ indigenous progenies,
Symbiotic with silver fir, chir pine, deodar, not brown bear, snow leopard,
That was two decades ago after the grey monsoon passed, the deras were lit,
Unlike the extensive urban centers where He was hit by iron and crane in legs,
Numbed his continuous identity of a greenwood dweller in a traditional vase.

Out of a profound turndown from guards to stay inside his aged whereabouts,
Displaced to an outlandish territory of bitter cold, wild animals, toxic shrubs,
Left him pondering for his companions interspersed during forced settling,
Wrecked out of dry hunger after warm Sun and icy Moon vanished for each other.

He gave up his sanity counting boulders, animal hair, and hidden yellow grass ticks,
With freezing chills blowing through his ears cumulated in subconscious mind,
As horrific laughter deafened his veins and skin at the correlative time interval,
Someone from his tribe awaited on a rock, potential of whom carried him back,
To the alpine meadows, for years now He lives there, in his own world, a maniac.

Author Bio: Sonali Sharma belongs to Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. She is a postgraduate in
environmental studies from Panjab University Chandigarh, India. She is also a published poet
and writer. Her poems have appeared in the Indian Periodical, Indian Ruminations, Indus
Woman Writing, International Human Rights Art Festival (New York), Kali Project: Indian
Women’s Voices (USA), Femasia (UK), Our Poetry Archive (US), Setu Bilingual Journal (Pittsburgh),
Period Magazine (Netherlands).