Breathe;

I know there was a time when you thought,
you would burn bright like the shooting- stars with me;

Does it make you breathless,
How we became,
Candles throbbing with a steady flame.

If you were nineteen acts of my Broadway classic,

I would pause time to watch you make me proud,

And scribble poems on backstage passes,

On a different day, In a different crowd.


But When the notes are changing now,

On grand pianos of mice and men,

You’d still find me writing another verse,

On a different day, With a different pen.


Yet Beware the ides of march they say,

Even as they feast on your incredible smile,

But beyond the journeys of lost tenses

There will always remain another mile.

****** on the rice fields of Vietnam,
Where was God when his children wanted to sleep,
The burnt villages should make you question;
Is your love really too young to weep ?

(Grandfather’s murmurs – here to stay,
The woman I love wouldn’t have it another way.)

Life from the shores of incredible pain,
Your mother gave birth to shifting sands ,
A woman’s love should make you question;
Did god kiss her bridal hands ?

(Father’s advice – never fades,
Our love will outlast his coming decades.)

Early mornings at red-sacred dawn,
I still remember your un-spectacled eyes,
A mother’s prayers should make you question;
Why does God believe your innocent lies ?

(Mother’s beauty- touches all,
She wants you to sing this coming fall.)

****** on the rice fields of Vietnam,
Where was man when his brothers wanted to sleep
A squandered earth should make you question;
Is her love really too young to keep ?

(Grandmother’s pearls – here to shine,
I am glad I made you forever mine.)

I thought I had run into you when I saw Zoya on the brickroads of Karachi. She was carrying the weight of her uncovered head with Rumi on her lips and rumours in her smile; I couldn’t help but wonder if she too hummed Tagore on lonely nights.

As I approached my past, the unmanned dinghys of the Arabian Sea seemed to have followed me from a different harbour, where the skyscrapers stood like unopened letters stacked to impress your firstborn child. The salty sea breeze might have been your childhood friend, but then these waves were always mine.

Maybe It was time to let go.

We kissed for 12 months while the bullets made love to the crumbling walls of Karachi, a city with the infinite passion of penniless poets and warrior saints. Draped in the lightest of cashmere, Zoya couldnt help but be worried – the curtains of my thoughtful musicals never cared much for bulletproof jackets.

Zoya’s grandfather was a veteran of two wars, the smoke from his imported cigars still fills our balcony like the laughter of your firstborn fills the halls of your new sea-facing mansion – I wonder if Naina even knows my name. My books have begun to sell now – you should make her read ‘Summer Wounds’ one day.

The newspapers tell me I am widely read by the underground leadership because of Asif – my brother in law who has taken up arms against men who want to burn Zoya for walking with her head uncovered – Karachi is no longer the same.

They have banned my books now – apparently God hates the words I use to describe our summer love; do you also feel the same way ?

I dont know, maybe they are right – after all Zoya still flinches every time I mention your name.

Zoya’s grandfather is sick – the years of tobacco have now given way to the gunpowder smoke – I am lucky you stopped me when you could. Do you still make people change their ways ? Maybe. But something tells me even you can’t help Karachi.

Its your birthday today, I know you haven’t gotten a piece from me in the last 10 years but this time it will be different. There is a fading sound of Zoya’s screams as I leave for the post office; i cant let her love wipe my past.

A bullet hits me from nowhere ; I hear a distant cry of an animal celebrating the first **** of the day. The pain is blinding but they shoot 10 more bullets into me, there is no modesty in ****** it seems.

As I lie dying with eleven bullets buried in a heart that has known more wounds than love, I have begun to wonder if I should have chosen a different harbour for my love – the words of Tagore suddenly seem far more familiar than those of Rumi.

Maybe its time to let go.

I hope Dave doesn't mind, but I am used to her holding my hands now, the certainty of death has a curious way of removing barriers of uncertain modesty.

Today she has come in with a basket of my favourite books because unlike the sombre woman in white overalls, she knows I need my  Hemmingway more than I need the dripping blood of another man. After all, it was she who started that stupid ritual of calling me Old Man, after she saw me reading Hemmingway at 16 - the stain of the spilled medical cocktail on her white shirt still makes me wonder whether it was all a mistake.

She has stopped crying these days, the tears make me uncomfortable like they always do - Her 2nd year analysis on patriarchal oppression of men might have helped her understand my plight, but it can't stop her from wiping off the occasional tear when she thinks i am asleep.
Today she can't stop kissing my clean shaven head - i wonder if it feels different from the days when she used to play with my outgrown tufts. The kisses make me a bit more naked than the dressing gown they make me wear, but it's the kind of nakedness that makes you feel feel more thoughtful on winter nights.
As she strokes my face, the edges of her engagement ring are gently rubbing across my cheeks, and reminding me that he will arrive any moment.

She has to leave a bit early today- Dave is meeting her parents, so she apologies as if I will die the next day - what *******, I am gonna stick around for no less than 2 weeks the doctors have said.

As i see her leave, I take out the half torn tissue on which i had been secretly scribbling - old habits die hard. The poem was almost done - almost, apart from the last lines. You see, when you are dying, you tend to become obsessed with endings.

"And so although Its been twenty years since you said I would be your last,
You still look beautiful when you wear your past"

I hope Dave doesn't mind.

The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, your wounds were smaller and my heart bigger than it ever would be. I had learnt to love you despite the smell of wild daffodils on your breath, and the look of expensive pride in your eyes - things you were willing to give up when you first hugged me with the surprising confidence of an old world pilgrim hugging the shores of new America and bringing with it the hopes and bitterness of the transatlantic blues.

The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, the neighbours said that if I had arrived a bit earlier, I would have heard the sound of his sandy boots crashing against your rotten hardwood flooring, drowning your cries for constant help. His clenched fists might have broken your apartment window, But you begged me to give him the benefit of the doubt - maybe unlike me, he had never fallen for a wild daffodil before.

The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, I remember confessing how you weren't truly my first love - that honour instead belonged to a monsoon paperboat that hado shown up at my flooded doorstep when I hadnt yet crossed the ripe old age of five.
Looking back - you told me, those were probably my golden years of romantic maturity.

The last time I saw you sipping time on his rooftop, you failed to realize why men kept falling over their swords to win the curled up furball crying in my arms, wearing an unasked crown of broken hearts. I wish you had remembered what i had said.

People loved you not because your face shone the brightest or you looked more beautiful than every damsel dancing in the ghostly courts of a dying town. Instead people kept coming back to you because you were Kolkata, you were literally this city.

The last time I saw you, we were sitting on the edges of a different city i had chosen to call my own. But I wish you had realized what I meant.

It's fall, and I'm falling.
Again.

I can hear you fall into step next to me, our feet crunch the bright blanket of our dreams, susurating the empty outlines of our unsketched pieces.

Everyone seems to be carving jack-o-lanterns, but I can't meet the eyes of the pumpkin patch owner after what we did there last fall. I can't go back to 'our spot' without their carved faces subtly mocking the shadows of the idealist, drunk on the idea of "the one ".

It funny how we manged a smile when the leaves actually fell. The tree's misery masked ours and you carved the rocks on the empty ghats with the same knife you would later use to cut our ties. The leaves grew back you know, and we still never stopped smiling.
How curious.

I'm a little relieved you didn't ask for the coat that still cloaks our past even though it clashes with my wardrobe almost as much as it clashes with my life. Because I like believing the illusion that they still smell of you in a way that your perfume couldn't make up for in our brief dalliance.

I remember speaking to speak at our - no, your wedding. I must have told every ghost floating in black tie or a white gown what a beautiful  person you are. What I didn't tell them was how much I loved you, because regardless of what I said they would refuse to hear the past tense in my voice. Gosh, never have i missed the tragedies of my language classes quite as much.

If memory serves me right, I remember congratulating the groom and telling him how lucky he is. But I don't bother telling him how it would've been me last fall. Some truths are best kept secret.

You even asked me for a dance didnt you ? Was that really needed ?

When it all ended I remember waiting outside, next to the roses littered down the hallway and thinking - what a pity. After all your favourite were always lilies.

Now that I look back I think we swept through, akin to children in a hurry. The haze is still lifting, but the season keeps coming back like a monday morning hangover. So as the clouds part with majesty, you happen to have lost the blur of perfection.

Come next july, you'll open your painted eyes to midsummer rain and think of -
The rain.
And I'll be thinking of how burning marshmallows always makes them taste a little bit better.
Why ? Because not ever tale needs a dramatic ending.

It's fall, and I'm falling.
Again