Changing Winters

The heart is strange. Sorrow reduces the burden of the past. Or perhaps enforces it. But the quality of sorrow is deeper than just memory. It is rooted in the sensations of the present. It is a pall of smoke which hovers over the humid evenings. The tropical conundrum forever unfolds in the pit of my soul. Why don’t I find closure in the hum of dusk?

My tears scatter meaninglessly. This is the Black Dog stage. I have been assailed by periods of gloom.  The suburbs of my home treated me with compassionate scorn. The dust of this changing city performs a theater of indifference. There is no greater sorrow than in the mundane. The roots of love lie in the repetitions of days. Time mocks my being; silent disdain.

I crave a cataclysm. I crave an explosion which will deliver me to bliss. There will be none. I will end as I am. Reserved and dominating.

Those few moments, when the indecent clutter of houses give way to a brush of green, behind the metal of the train, my soul lifts, ever so briefly. There is this city, this mass of life, and here I have a temporary home.

In Calcutta, there is winter. Not like Delhi’s numbing cold. But a terrible tropical mutation. The artwork of fresh smog over the ruins of indecision.

In the mornings, mist covers the half-built suburbs. An old tree looms over men washing cars. The sun is indifferent to the beginning of day, mournful and callous. Winter’s adage.

I sit now, in a small room, in a corner of Madras.

I think I left some of my soul hovering over the windows of the train.

The heat of the city strangles my half-baked intentions.