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.

When i stroke my pen
to write this,
I wonder if you imagined
that i'm a poet
As i wake from another
disbanded sunrise,
I wonder if you screamed
me out of this pessimistic vision
Everytime i would pedal
my bike during the hot summer,
I still think if i ever breathed
the air that evaded your lips
and while i do that,
Each time you make coffee
for the weekends,
I wonder if you guessed that someday you will have to share it
with a familiar person
of the future
Whenever the eyes cry salty tears,
have you sailed your deepest
thoughts on a paperboat?
Like finding me in the ends
of the world after the
midst of calamities
I guessed both of us may wonder,
in a sea of strangers
at a broken
streetlight,
Will we recognize
each other?

Love is like a paperboat...once you set it to sail...you no longer have any control over it...it has to chart it's own course and find it's way through the vastness of the sea.

Can you still recall
the days that passed when you were young..
playing pirates with wooden swords,
the adventure of a six years old
Hide and seek and climbing trees
those days when we're free..
Be smart inside the class,
or just a shy nobody
where you find friends
whom you thought that will last..
Life in slow motion
vivid color of days..
world on high speed,
every moments we chase
they're long gone..
Running on the streets all day
on summer days and month of May,
or sitting by the window
watching the rainfall
paperboat, coffe cups and matchstick flags
walking  on tiptoe
feeling the earth's warmth..
cheap marbles on sight
watch the kite takes its flight..
as it flew away, so high
it will be ok if we try..

sitting in the sun,
with double-shot latte,
cooling in my hand.

i watch, a gangling youth, barely yet, a man.
fold his heart,
into a paperboat
and set it sail,
on the sea of  love.

destined for a young
maiden's land.....

he sails forth,
on the winds of hope
and mooning, soulful  looks.

she oblivious,
to his approach.
engrossed, in the book
at hand....

will they meet...
their hearts entwine,
will fates allow...
this sea of love is large...
will they love...
this, i will not, ever know.
...they, are not students of mine..

just two,
of  several thousand,
...that sit in the sun and dream...

but that moment,
when he...launched
his ship of hope
and lust...of the wanting,
youthful kind...
....o, my lord... that look....
love caught...in the,
totality, of it's prime.

I once sat on a paperboat and travelled back to my childhood
Along the way i saw so many memories playing out on big screens
I also met myself there
And to be honest i couldn't recognize him...
...shy,timid and innocent
This person seemed like a complete stranger to me
I was completely taken aback
He greeted me by saying hello
I greeted him back
He then asked me as to how i was doing
I replied that i was doing just fine
Then he just stared at me and said-"look at you...all grown up and not naive no more.You've lost your innocence...haven't you?..You've been corrupted."
I then asked him if he ever felt like visiting me
And he replied strongly-"hell no...i'm havin' the best time of my life...why would i wanna visit you?"
I then asked him-"but don't you wanna see how your future looks like?"
"Nope" he replied
"I just take care of the present so that i can create a memorable past"
I returned back
His words stuck like glue to my brain
I realized that if i handle with care the present the future will sort itself out

Fingers shake clasping a camera between them,
there's no film in it,
just an urge to capture fragments of time
before they decompose
into a grave of forgotten moments

Inadvertently,
I speak of my own funeral
in the present tense.
My frame resembles a cadaver
in the summer months,
limp from depression
but encouraged by mania

Fingers shake,
causing an earthquake between the fault lines of my palms
close my eyes and I've become a paperboat
floating on a pond,
cattails brush my edges
where incisions were made
they dazzle with coats of glitter
and star stickers

Like madness pirouettes through flames,
the wet edges of pages
are destroyed and what I was made of
could not remain.

such a gentle color,
maroon is under the starlit night
I am fragile,
but not enough to crumple in your grasp.

There was nothing to hide
in house of fire.

In a singed ocean
a dew drop wants to live in peace.
I welcome the pouring bliss
from the gale.

In the raw, tormented
questions a paperboat sinks.
You float the earthen lamps
on glacier.

Why do you respect the
dazzle of mirrors? They don't
accept the gratitude. Give
you back your fakes.

Can your think sane and
beautiful? It has stirred a hornet's nest
which was not ugly?

Everyone wants to wear
a full face mask.