Page 14 - Poems

Bandra-Khar Road, at six-twenty-four, where you were running
into the stone wall of your unliftable silence.
It was loud, there was no scalp, just the lower jaw that looked
like him.

You said: I will not move till the situation is under control.
You said: God bless the soul.

Meanwhile at six-thirty, between Matunga Road-Mahim Junction
you would never live to rue the day you caught the five-fifty-seven fast
from Churchgate to Virar, if only you’d waited for the next one,
you might even have got a seat, if only you’d joined your cousin
in the second-class coach, if only you’d not been promoted last month
and had a first-class pass to show for it, if only the wind had been
a warning, if only the sea had been unsalty, if only yesterday came after
tomorrow, if only the sirens were not myths, if only six million people
weren’t real, if only the lamp had been unlit, if only the rain had fallen
upwards.

You only reached Jogeshwari.

Jogeshwari
of the link road where cars were jammed as usual and all the buses heaving.
On platform one you saw people moan,
you saw people dead, you saw your life before and after, you saw people
with no clothes on, you saw faces with no people on, you saw the rip
in the universe and you went blind.

Meanwhile, at six-twenty-nine at Mira Road-Bhayander,
the bhayanker had happened.
You were going north from Churchgate, you were going north
where the polestar lay, true north where your true love sang those songs
about windows and pieces of moon, about dupattas and bangles,
there, where you danced to the tune of ruk ruk ruk arre baba ruk,
ohmydarling give me a look, all the silly-sweetness of the past
and the present and the unimaginable future.

You said: I cannot stop travelling by train.
You said: It’s not a question of resilience, it’s a lack of options.
You said: I have no choice. I am fearless.
You said: I can’t wait to travel on the same seat of the same coach in which I was
travelling on that fateful day.

And I?
Where was I?

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