Ladies and Gentlemen Lunch is Served

by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca (Calgary, Canada)

After Tadeusz Borowski’s ‘This way for the Gas Ladies and Gentleman.’

The well-groomed student 

Formal yellow jacket, white shirt black pants bow tie

Starched white napkin over his left arm

Announces lunch at the College of Catering

Where I teach English in a pristine environment,

‘Ladies and Gentlemen lunch is served.’ he says

No pistol by his side, no baton thrust into my ribs

No barking command for immediate compliance.

A flash of white sarees, black pants and white shirts

Move in animated chatter

Professional dress as per the code

Rushing up the stairs to the dining room

Following the tempting aromas.

Taking our seats quickly, we study the menu

Devour the three course French meal

Served to us in style, the company delightful

No food fights necessary, portion sizes are generous.

A walk around the campus

Works off the meal and it’s back to work.

No guards or dogs to chase us

The walk is leisurely, pleasant

The hot Bombay sun the only thing at my back

I imagine the barbed wire around the campus

My imagination cast back to prison walls 

Only beautiful trees and flowers bloom happily.

Here by the friendly gate.

Borowski lived  history, I read its horror

Dazed people stumbling out of cattle cars

Stripped naked headed for the gas chambers

Unaware of their gruesome destination

Unlike me headed for a sumptuous meal.

What evil could devise this violent plan?

I want to give away Borowski’s collection

With the haunting title, but to whom?

Everyone wants to read something edifying

So many are in denial

Survivors don’t lie, make up stories. 

The plateful of food  before me now could  feed two

I put some back into the pot, remembering

The children starved by hatred

The women beaten violently

The man calling out to his God

His mouth dry, his thirst unslaked.

When white smoke emerges from the chimneys

Here in the winter landscape 

I see the blackened sky

The birds fly frantically for fresh air

Trees turn to the color of ash

Some birds disappear and I weep

When I can’t see them.

The six million blur my vision.

What violence prompts people to herd others

Like cattle over a cliff?

Violent thoughts stirring in a violent mind.

The camps an invention of cruel machinations

The journey, the deliberate torment of hell.

I cry out to the oppressors with Borowski

Your country — a stock market transaction
 and hoarded sacks of grain.
My country — the gas chamber
and the Auschwitz flame.*

In a career spanning over four decades, Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca has taught English in Indian colleges, AP English in an International School nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains in India, and French and Spanish in private schools in Canada. Her poems are featured in various journals and anthologies, including the Sahitya Akademi Journal Of Indian Literature, the three issues of the Yearbooks of Indian Poetry in English, Verse-Virtual, The Madras Courier, and the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, among others. Kavita has authored two collections of poetry, Family Sunday and Other Poems and Light of The Sabbath. Her poem ‘How To Light Up a Poem,’ was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2020.  Her poems celebrate Bombay, the city of her birth, Nature, and her Bene Israel Indian Jewish heritage. She is the daughter of the late poet Nissim Ezekiel. 

 *(Author’s note: These lines are from Two Countries – Poetry of Tadeusz Borowski (wordpress.com))

(Editor’s note: This poem was originally published in the Usawa Literary Review in a slightly different form with the permission of the author.)