Sleep Denied
Dancing wild…
Music loud…
Graceful moves…
Swooning crowd…
Sleepless nights…
Raining cash…
A drunken bar…
A drunken bash…
Some money earned…
A Family fed…
Thought of as base,
Yet all reveled.
A ban imposed
For sanctity.
Victim of your
Hypocrisy…
No food to feed…
All time to sleep…
At Stars I stare…
As I weep…
No blaring beats…
No leching eyes…
All holy but,
The body dies.
A struggle ensued…
Of work deprived…
Empty Nights…
Yet sleep denied…
The poem is about a honest female dancer in a bar in Mumbai. There was a recent court ruling which banned the bars' operations. Largely these "dance bars" are seen as filthy places, as hang outs for criminals, and it was more of a moral crusade to cleanse the city which the proponents of the ban were trying to achieve. Though bar owners lost out on a lucrative business, the women dancing at these bars were more severely hit. Like the protagonist of the poem, overnight they were jobless, with no other ways to earn money and provide for their families. That's why sleep denied...