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I stood shivering, teeth chattering
In the bitter winter cold
Before the monstrous mall
That sucked men, women and kids in
Like Medusa with her tentacles fanning
It was my maiden visit to the city
Of my teenage dreams
Famed for its gardens
Spacious parks and spots of fun
My old flame once lived here
Her parents had ripped her
Off from me and my village
At a time we had thought
Nothing could ever make us part
Leaving me bleeding like a shrub
From which a red-rose had just been plucked
It was a December eve
Crowds braved the chill
To welcome New Year
My wife just went into the mall
Leaving me, her bodyguard,
On sentry’s job
Outside on the road
It would be eons
Before she returned
Lots of time to stand and yawn
It was then that I read
To the left where I stood
The name of the road
“Clinic Road” in bold
On a worn-out rust-eaten blue board
It took me on time-travel
Forty-five years into the past on a glider
To my village post office
Where I waited impatient
For the postman to sort the mail
And hand me precious letters from out of his heap
Arriving from this distant town
To be exact
House 61 on Clinic Road
The missives of passion
Always smelt of her sweat
Aroma of her breath
Carried her anxious sobs
Silken fabric of her dreams
Often soaked in tears
They mingled with my village winds
Summer rains and paddy fields
Waxing moon and starry skies
Drunken of her words then I walked
As though on the Milky Way
With the sweetest ache ever in my heart
Curious I moved towards the mall
To ask a vendor where 61 stood
I told him it was a house
Where a dear one of mine once homed
He looked at me in disbelief
“House!?” he exclaimed
“Uncle, look, this mall here
Is number 61 since the day I came
And that was thirty years into the past”
“Oh, yea, I had heard when I was a child
Some small houses had stood this side
Surrounded by shrubs and trees
They had roofs made of asbestos
On which crazy rains played crescendo”
“A group from Mumbai razed the place
To build here this magnificent arcade
The pride of the city the like of which
There are hardly two or three
Across the breadth and width of the country”
At some point coordinated by space and time
A girl here sat deep into the night
To pour her heart on paper
And that ‘here’ is not anymore
Forever it has disappeared
My heart sank at the news
As I realized with a shudder
All that remained was non-real
Which fools christen “here and there”.
Yet, in vain, my yearning heart
Longed again for the long-lost past
To feel at close the warmth of her breath
Starry eyes and deep-drawn sighs
As she paused and wrote her words
Filled with the passion of autumn nights
Perhaps a smiling waxing moon
Slanted over her little house
Imparting the scene the charm of a dream
Perhaps she saw a lonely star
Outside her window on a swaying palm
Smiled and prayed in supplication
To express in right words her emotions
That scene has vanished without a trace
Vandalized by space and time
Which have conspired in cahoots
To raise a mall in its place
Absurd, monstrous, out of place
Inert, wanton, concretized
The girl has disappeared into the folds of time
Yet, why are her old words and dreams
Left behind in endless streams
For a shivering heart to receive and ache
In a cold windless December night?
Tell me, please, wise bearded souls:
Why this ache and who aches?
What is it that aches?
And who is it that is ached?
And why doesn’t wisdom undo the ache?
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