Forty-five kilometers from Aurangabad
in the outskirts of village Sarifpur
sits a generation: Vanjar Vasti
in squat blue and green house,
etched with tragedy dreadful.
Vijay, the youngest sits on the pyol,
who lost his eyesight after turning twenty-one.
It started with cataract, he says
without a trace of self-pity,
before converting irreversible blind.
The Vastis of half-century have suffered
an incurable: Retinitis Pigmentosa,
a genetic disorder rare.
His elders, in-laws and their children
all beg out of misery, all blind.
Vijay never hoped to join them,
he cried on his first day.
He reminisces how he worked on cotton-fields,
meandered places on his Hero Honda,
favorite visit being Mumbai
on mahaparinirvan day of Dr. Bhim.
His wife who is a daily-wage laborer
gave birth to a son a year ago,
Vijay longs to see his face.
