Moon at Half Past Noon

The meter clicks, a steady, tired beat,
As Noor guides through the sun and monsoon street.
His knuckles, cracked on handles, worn and lean,
Now clutch a form, a future, bright and clean.
He stands before a desk of polished glass,
Where a man with cold eyes lets the moment pass.

“Pre-med coaching? For your daughter?” A smirk.
“The fees are more than you might… ever work.”
The air is thick with unsaid, cruel assumptions,
The scent of pride and powerful consumption.
“These dreams are large. The path is steep and long.
Perhaps your kind should where they must belong.”

Noor says nothing. Looks down at his feet,
In battered chappals, caked with dust and heat.
He sees the slum where he was born and raised,
The endless days, the ways the world had blazed
A path of hardship. He took what life gave,
And asked no more than what he had to save.

He never stole a rupee, cut a line,
Left God’s own business to the God’s design.
He drove his rickshaw, honest, through the years,
And swallowed down the insults, slights, and jeers.
He lived on little, kept his body whole,
And saved each coin to nourish her young soul.

Now, from the folds of his humble, faded vest,
He takes the answer to their scornful test.
A wad of notes, saved one by patient one,
Earned in the glare of every midday sun.
Then, next, a paper, smudged but proud and clear,
Her marks, like constellations, shining near.

The smirk dissolves. The cold eyes shift, unsure.
“Well… why not say you had the means secure?
The seat is hers. We’ll start the class next week.”
The language changed, now careful, almost meek.
But Noor just slowly takes his treasures back,
The money earned on every broken track.

He shakes his head, a quiet, final no.
“You saw the driver, not the dream, you know.
You saw the cloth, not all the threads within.
My daughter’s light is not for your dark inn.”
He turns his back upon the gilded door,
And knows, for her, he’ll find a brighter shore.

For he is water, wearing stone away,
The unsung hero of the bustling day.
Who built a palace with a humble hand,
And grew a forest in the barren sand.
His children now wear suits and pearls and grace,
Yet he still drives, and finds his old, worn place.

His wife still mends the sari’s fading hue,
They eat simple, and say their prayers, true.
The same small room, the same familiar street,
His soul’s account is balanced and complete.
He gave the world what was the world’s to own,
And kept for heaven what was heaven’s alone.