2nd June, 2019

We will always watch them from behind a glass wall of air conditioning and reclined chairs. They reach their hands up from the dirt dusted roads and palms caked in falling webs of skin to our windows, imprints of desperation, a daily calamity. Running, wandering, weaving their wares of popcorn, coconut, sunshades, and books in between our boxed chariots. We are the divine who have pity on them, the ones who shift their gazes suddenly; they were peering through the wall. You wonder why the idols in our homes don't answer anymore; statues of ivory and gilded gold with their thrones and their prayer-room sanctums. They sell idols of our gods to their divinities that traverse the earthly bounds. Your horse less chariot keeps moving, undeterred, fearless in the stifling stampede and they stand aside, their gazes but an imitation of the newly laid concrete. Their new home, they stare from the underbellies of the skyward carriages with what I never know. Envy? Anger? Pity? From another time peering into this age of metal giants, they would be the trolls living beneath the bridges; best kept a safe distance from. But every once in a while, someone pays the toll. Papyrus currency in age and felt. Its only fair we reserve the fresh emulations of our devotion for our carved divine. We revere those who came from under the bridges. We study them, with the mountains, seas, and villages as their homes while sinking into mahogany and teak. We live unknowingly and worship idols borne underneath bridges. We know the work of cracked palms to be divine.