Could be, Maybe, love...? by Kavita S. Sunil

Each day for us was a day of changing birth Do you remember, when you, like cave-woman suddenly wounding adolescence, Had tenderly embraced, very early at dawn, the soft, red winter sun From the kadamba tree on Hari Ghosh Street, at the time, small shards of diamond were slowly falling The day's first blade-sharp tram went by, saying, Awake, Awake As on a revolving stage, all was helter-skelter - now afternoon, now midnight, now evening I was, at the time, shouting out my lungs in a rally, drops of blood dripping from my nose On all sides, hunger was flickering like a serpent-tongue Ah! that enthralling, beggarly, imperious hunger Like the direst circle in hell, that stomach-gnawing hunger At certain moments, I saw, on the verandah, the anxious figure of motherhood, eyes like a bird's I'd dreamed that, one day, the world's mothers would serve steaming rice to all the small, small children Those bullets and explosions on College Street You alighted from the bus, and, at that instant, inside, the festive gunpowder went off With a jump, someone cleared the park railing, and lay down as an ascetic might His face in the grass. Each day for us was a day of changing birth In the light - like pieces of broken glass in the sky - From the horizon before me, like an exile, you advanced with hesitant steps Your body covered with a white swan's feathers, garland of gunja seeds round your neck I was afraid That wasn't a time for sightseeing, it was a time of banishment Then the city was burning with hate, the knife in the human hand was being planted in the human heart Religion fed on corpses burnt in flames in buses and roads Patriotism was being regurgitated like blood-vomit I was imprisoned in the attic, I couldn't recognise you Then, with a small notebook, I rose and leapt into deep blue space You were, then, standing upon Dakshineshwar bridge, The river in your eye's pupil Profound silence of night-time in the town, all the schoolbells going ‘dong dong'.

Could be, Maybe, love...? by Kavita S. Sunil