Mirage.

salt.

I don't walk in meadows nowadays,
Not that my old cities had any, anyway
It had beautiful fields,
Of rice grains, muddy paw prints and old trees that shelter old forms of communication.
I don't walk under the gulmohar of this new city either,
I read in the news, that
These huge fire breathing trees are dying,
The garden city is running on empty,
And i wonder what Lucifer has to say about another dying garden.
I don't stop to listen to
Flowers,
They might moan your name.
I feel ashamed of the
Time when I had let you kiss me and you had left bruises on my wrists,
So violently star-crossed
That all the sea shells and
lurking starfishes under the
salt water of the sea
could spell your face.
The conch from the beach,
That I had kept.
The one which was your compensation for losing my spectacles,
As you clouded my sight more than ever,
I still hear the rush of cold
dull waves mimicking the pants of the nights,
Of the love that we had made.
I remember the sand castle we had built on the shore,
But have you seen how the shore expands?
The waves come and ruin
All our efforts of making impermanence last.
But, i had heard about the
Generosity of the sea.
Whimsically, it returns
What it takes, otherwise
Our sand castles, washed away spectacles all become a part of Atlantis.
A forgotten city.
I wonder if someday, they will find tramlines buried in the sand bank of Ganga,
And time will drown my voice,
When I claim that I witnessed history.
History is the story retold by the victor,
But here I am listening to a conch retelling a love we had shared under a moonless night, in a station where it smelled of all things decaying and forgotten.
I keep on traveling in trains,
not in the first class comfortable compartments where families get up to sleep a little so that they have the strength to sleep more after reaching their destination.
I like the wet and lukewarm air, of the open compartments, where vendors sell cucumber with salt.
It reminds me of tears, and
Ocean waves.
Salt had played such a part of our country's liberation,
Salt still plays a part when we claim to be economically independent to earn a living.
I don't have fond memories of salt however,
I had added one spoon too many in your tea,
The powdered sugar, lay unnoticed.
I am not the one to notice details,
Or else, I wouldn't have to trace your body so regularly to remember how your face looks like,
How you smell,
Your sweat and cigarettes and cologne remind me of ocean water, but I have always lived in land locked states.
Perhaps, that is why I keep getting on unknown trains,
With no destination in mind.
No matter the terrain of the land, I tread.
A river has to be nearby,
If not this state then the next one.
I have heard,
All the rivers one day,
bury themselves in an ocean.