Environmental Poem: CHATAKA, by Vinita Agrawal

Chataka Never mind that I’m a brood parasite flawlessly matching the turquoise blue of babbler’s eggs never mind that I watch nonchalantly, my chicks being raised as their own I eat berries and caterpillars pressing the worms end to end to remove their guts poets build shrines where they spot me forest-dwellers watch me fly with folded hands I don’t drink earth’s water thirst is my middle name streams, rivers thunder past me but I remain parched drinking only when it rains, opening my beak wide guzzling raindrop after raindrop falling from a thousand kms above such a sublime quenching of thirst in the monsoons you have no idea how much a dry-as-bone-longing satiated by silvery droplets of water Once they caged me offered water in bowls stood defeated when I refused to sip they sprayed water on flowers, plants were relieved to note I drank dew people rejoice when I sing pray in gratitude for things that are out of their hands I, the epitome of thirst, am the harbinger of rains * Chataka – Jacobin Cuck