In celebration of progress

I am in the upper room with the Mao-ist, breaking bread under an image of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and, of course, Mao, all smiling as they face the hammer & sickle ---

the only adornment in an otherwise concrete room, sans the mat under the knee high tables. All the chairs are mismatched -- some plastic, wood benches, a couple stools of bamboo and bike tires -- standing room and wall space

an ebb&flow of red&white hats, t-shirts & flag draped shoulders up an iron spiral stairwell. The salty sweat of pressed flesh, sun and hard baked earth. A man, from the back, brings a big metal bowl of rice & pumpkin. Spice&steam. Another group ascends. The room erupts, as they show red thumb nails.

This is the first time they have voted in 20 years.

Across the chowk, the Sun celebrate in a house. Congress. Marxist-Leninist. A line of robes, or pants, of shorts & sandaled feet chatter animatedly,as they wait in a river awaiting their chance to rise. Tribals in bare feet. Adidas&bling. Move a few steps. Chatter more. Friends. Neighbors. Countrymen. Lending ears, to discuss this 
                                                                                                           moment.

A man, no more than twenty, tries to explain all thirty political parties at once. Their all Communist, but each different. How one-third of the seats have been reserved for women. How they stamp with the seal of their party. The rest is lost ---

A group leans off the balcony, yelling to those in the street. Small knots of men bend over bowls using their fingers to eat. Through an opening, the women in another room talk, point, &speak in tongues beyond my hearing, peek in on us. 

No one wants to leave. 
This is the democracy they have sought.
Have fought for.

Tomorrow, they will return -- to town, villages, to work. At the river, women will carry baskets of sand, gravel and concrete to a mixer. A man will add water. Boys will wheelbarrow the mix to as far as they have gotten. Another year, they'll have a bridge

connecting the city, to the town, to the villages, to the jungles and the mountains, to bring new stores. There is already an all inclusive four-story shop in the city. Not as cheap as the market, but convenient. With no haggling.

It sobers me.

But tonight, they celebrate, 
in one voice,
              and in many.

for PU