As I lie down on my bed I saw you pushing the half-closed door and entering
You wore a red saree
You are as gorgeous as ever
Sacred like a temple in the dawn
Like a woman who has bathed in night dew
Someone who knows everything about me and yet come to know me from the very beginning
The old door swings in the air
I can see your face as calm as neat as clean
Like the moon outside shining
Let it be cliche, but today it is truly a full moon night
I cannot say what I wanted to say you
Everything has been dusted in time
How do you find the old address of an expatriate?
The yellow envelopes and the red-inked words must have turned blue now
Once I sent within them the clouds
Which kissed you as rain
You in red saree stare at me
Ah! Is it really you?
Or it is all a surreal magic of hallucination
But at that moment you sat beside me on the bed and kissed me deeply
And whisper in my ear
Like a fairy tale told thousand nights ago,
"You still smell the same? And me?"
The last tram of the night goes through
On the empty tracks now lay, love.

I miss the Norwesters
I miss the heavy rains
I miss hurrying to catch a bus
Completely drenched

Oh Kolkata!
Without you I am
Like a fish out of water

I miss the olden buildings
I miss the bustling streets
I miss riding the tramway
With a song playing on repeat

Oh Kolkata!
Without you I am
But a fish out of water

I miss the winter sunsets
I miss evenings by the lake
I miss Maharaja's kachoris
And jalebis on a steel plate

Oh Kolkata!
Without you I am
Just a fish out of water

I miss the yellow taxis
I miss the hawkers' stalls
I miss the political graffiti
Adorning the walls

Oh Kolkata!
Without you I am
Still a fish out of water

Now I'm so far
But yet so near
My heart can't shelter
These hopes and fears
Rejection, reduction
I feel choked once again
Within your walls of nostalgia
Maybe I'll be safe

Oh Kolkata!
Show me a way
To return to the water

He called me 'little swallow'  
Dark kisses like planting seeds, dotting the bumps on my spine.
Breathe sweet with curry promises heat pools on the skin of my neck.
My ******* he holds in the dim light as if they were the most precious fragile china.
Urgency and endlessness twirl as drunken dancers in my stomach.
Infinite and the finite.
Little swallow, he begs. Little swallow.
Traces of invisible letters drawn on his dark skin with such a soft rake of my nails.
He arches his back in a bridge from delight to despair as he digest the pain of lust.
I could trace the map of India on his neck, the constellations on his back.
"Little swallow," a whisper that comes out as a groan.  
"You are flight of swallows, living cloud.
That I could hold you still
a thought in my head
"restless girl with her heart beating fast."
Now he roughly pulls my hair back
and my neck whips with it.
He has my arm in a lock beneath my chest, kissing the side of my neck.
'my little swallow' he entreats in a dry cough of sound
and i trace Calcutta with my feathery tongue.