“Blessing” is a poem by Imtiaz Dharker. It is set in Dharavi, a shanty town on the outskirts of Bombay. In these areas, temperatures can go above 40oC during dry season and water is generally scarce. The poem describes an incident where a pipe that carries water to the city bursts in the slums and the whole community rushes to collect the water. Dharker uses various poetic techniques such as simile, onomatopoeia, alliteration, imagery and metaphor to portray how the people in this poor community sees water - as a precious divine gift from god, a blessing that has been bestowed upon them. She also uses a third person objective narrator to give the readers a wider perspective of the situation as compared to the narrower and more subjective view of one of the people in the slum. …show more content…
Similarly, the verses start off very short and abrupt in the first two stanzas, get longer and more flowing in third stanza and then become shorter again in the fourth stanza. This is just like the feelings of the people in the slum. In the first stanza, the people are sluggish and lack energy. Then in the second stanza, their spirits were raised when water started dripping out. Then in the third stanza, there is full of excitement and energy when water gushed out of the pipe. Then in the last stanza, the excitement starts to die down as the flow of water starts to lessen. It is very interesting the way the third stanza runs into the fourth stanza like water overflowing from the third stanza into the fourth stanza. Dharker uses some end-rhyme but it is inconsistent and there is no regular pattern in her