Subatomic Tales II

The place visited me the other day.

At the doorstep, under the feeble light of my twenty watt CFL

She told me, rather resentfully,

That I've forgotten her.

Now it's true I don't think about her so much anymore,
I have given most of my time to the dust these days,

that roams the streets around here, and plays an erotic game with my windows,
leaves souvenirs at the windowsills. 

Sometimes when we open real up,

dust and I, it blackens all my Eco friendly dreams with its
dusty pragmatism,
but I still give it my time because it promises things,
so I don't think about her so much anymore. 

But it is not as if I have forgotten her. 

She's a memory chained to some lost melody.

Some hilly minor pentatonic played on a worn out flute.

The kind they do not serve in the stale bars or the official charts,

the kind that I no longer play on my guitar,

(in fact, sometimes I laugh on it.)
Some nights when I wake up with grandmother's voice signing a prayer inside my head,

it is she, it is she, my beautiful little place

that I see in the pitch black of my concrete dwelling.

She sat on the only chair in my tiny closet of a room,
the oppressive heat that perpetually slips in and out through my walls and doors and windows and things
seemed to unsettle her.
She looked at me as if to ask, this urban heat more precious than backward comfort?
I wanted to recite the Libertarian Marxist Menifesto,
but she wouldn't understand,
after all she's a simpleton.

Are you lost, I finally asked.
no reply.
Are you fleeing from something?
nothing.
How's everyone?
fine.
How was Bihu?
they sold it to corporations and dangorias.
And the orchids?
they changed colour, now they're saffron.
What! And the animals?
The cow is fine.
And Bordoisila, the wind?
it comes only as if to dance with the flag.
And the people?
They don't recognise me anymore, something else has taken my place.

We didn't talk after that.
A sorrow slithered in from somewhere.
We ate Maggi in silence.
I found the old photo album at the bottom of the plastic box under the shelf.

She was gone when I woke up the next day.