Desire Path

You're the yellow pages of my second-hand book. 
You're the shoe bite in my old pair of shoes. 
You're the red in my swollen, melting eyes. 
You're the lullaby of my sleepless nights. 
You're the aftertaste that burns my mouth. 
You're the nightmare of my dreams uncouth. 
Breathless. Gasp. Smother.
You're my desire path to doom.  

Autumn

 We were walking through the dilapidation of an old city. A city that stood like wisps of a dream forgotten upon awakening. I cannot recollect the name of the city. Perhaps its name had withered off with age.

 I was there looking for something. Old cities attracted me like forbidden love affairs. I had not even the slightest inkling of finding you there. Not in at a time like that. But we ran into each other. It was autumn and we took long walks. We walked a lot. Talked little. Sat on ruins with the sun frolicking on our faces. Climbed debris with the moon clinging to our backs. Sometimes our shadows were behind us, sometimes they were before us. Some of the architecture was still holding in that city of ruins. We discovered those crumbling walls, caved in roofs, overgrown gardens. During the afternoons, I often read myself from Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Something about the book resembled this city.This was once a place where warm laughter wafted out of wooden windows. This was once a place where food simmered on fire while children abandoned their play to come running into the house, the smell of food arousing curiosity in them. This was once a place that bustled with the conundrum of a marketplace. Now tourist guides stampeded through the silence that had settled on the city like a shroud, parading camera-clad tourists, feeding them made-up stories. 

 We were headed for a magic show. It was nothing fancy. Just an ordinary tent and an alcoholic magician who showed card tricks and had a tired looking crystal ball standing on a three-legged stool at his side. He claimed that he could hypnotize people into a perpetual state of stupor. Not many people came there to watch him at his antics that day. Perhaps they being locals were tired of his old tricks. By the end f the 'show', he flashed us a gap-toothed smile and told us that he could hypnotize us into a dancing couple inside a glass dome. You smirked, tossed him an extra coin and grabbed my hand. We were standing outside the tent now. A weak moon hung over the cloudless sky.Crumpled into a tiny ball was the slip of paper that had sufficed as our ticket. I wanted to know how that perpetual state of stupor felt. The meagre smattering of people slowly dissolved into the night. You kissed me then. The flap of the opening of the tent was fluttering in the night breeze. 

  Kissing you was like loving autumn. It was melancholy. Heady. Intoxicating. Yet I knew the leaves of autumn were the fallen ones. 

The City

The City drifts
like an insomniac
over the flyover
over the rail bridge
in the hiatus of the bazaar
with a day's leftover rotting
in its belly.

In this City
Everything rots.

Fish scales
pools of blood
outside the butcher's
vegetable peels
thongas of jhalmuri
rusting windows
of North Calcutta mansions
case files in High Court
torn tickets outside Academy gates
newspapers.
Hunger.
Dreams.
Even delusions rot.

The City sleepwalks
toward the washed out sun
emerging out of Ganga.

(If things don't rot
How will the city
Be fertile enough
To carry so many
In its womb
Each day?)

Your Pastiche Heart

The day I kissed you 
I tasted
your pastiche heart. 

The frothy tang of 
pineapple juice gone stale,
from the day you were too lazy 
to get out of bed. 

Freshly pressed newspaper smell
rolled up, lying at your doorstep.

Crinkles in your bed sheet.
The shape of you sleeping. 

Curled toes on a cold floor
after that long sleep you had. 

Smattering of instant coffee
on your kitchen counter.

That pesto stain from 
the dinner date down town. 

Everything made up
Your pastiche heart. 

There were also
certain things that
your pastiche heart
was not made of. 

It was overcrowded.
So all I left behind
was some glue
to hold together
Your Pastiche Heart. 

Street Lamps

I was walking down the boulevard
that was taking me away
from you
because my back was turned.
If it wasn't I'd bump
into you.
Rows of street lamps were my
knights in shining armour-
Delivering me from memories,
one at a time.
Then you called out to me
Saying I've left my keys
The boulevard melted into sea
The lights went out
Plunging me in
leftovers
of where the glow of lamps had been.
After all, the road that leads somewhere
also leads away from it. 

Hiraeth

Once I left a letter

in the folds of a book

and forgot all about it.

Days after dust had gathered

when I pulled it out 

to survive one draughty afternoon,

out fell a square piece of

neatly folded paper. 

A letter I had stowed away

which you had written to me.

I do not remember you lover!

A blurry face peeks at me

from a crowd of faces

I've taken to various places

inside me.

Doorstep, foyer

nooks and crannies

Bed chamber or the attic.

I picked it up unknowing that

the smell of old memory 

lurked in the folds of your letter. 

Filling me with a longing

for a place I've never been

Or may be once in a dream

seen a tiny cottage on a lonely hill

with yellow lights in the window

and a silhouette of a woman

who hovers unsure, from room

to room, looking for a prayer book

in a cottage under somnolent stars.