Serious Men

by Manu Joseph

In the institute, they looked down upon money. But they respected funds.

Buddha’s eternal smile, she had always interpreted as the peace of a cosmically powerless man.

Majestic men went in cars, in the isolation of the back seat, studying laptops on their way to work where they would think of ways to fool people into buying cola, or a type of insurance, or a condom that had dots on

It was so easy to be the big people. All you had to do was to be born in the homes where they were born.

They were the nation now, and they oppressed the Brahmins by erecting an incurable commotion on the streets.

It was simpler for the universe to make a Jupiter than a frog, or even an ant.