The dawn breaks into a smile on your face no matter the time of the day
At bus stops we have sat side by side on the opposite banks of time, talking
Dusty Madras buses ferrying us to fetes in the summer heat have heard us
mull the wine of thoughts, passing the cup back and forth, mixing our vintages
I take walks alone in the city I’m in now. Woven plaits of jasmine love to call
out greetings and I never fail to give them your love. How to call this home,
this city, when the sea and you are not in it? Most of this month, homed
in by the hellhound of work, I have spent beating my brain into submission day
long. Not yet dog days, and the summer is already raising my hackles. On calls
your voice greets me, balm to the parched everything. Smiling, I let you talk
and fill me to the brim with all that I’m missing. Your city, events, you. Vintage,
the mint of even the gossip we swap. Then launch into pet peeves scratching at us:
men, mothers, middling friends. What a miracle it is that the decade separating us
is only a footnote in our tale, incidental. In the third-floor box-room you call home
and will for another two years – in that building painted brothel-purple-vintage TM –
that is also the favourite haunt of our snarling simian ancestors who ruin your days
and incur your wrath, I imagine the butterfly perched on your nape softly talking
to your cropped hair while you potter about. My heart clenches when I recall
the dips and curves of the tree-lined avenues there, familiar as a lover’s body; calling
out to me from photos and memories now. Arteries to the city’s heart, streets drew us
with their rhythmic hustle and bustle pulsing in welcome. Walking them and talking
the day over after an evening do, we gave time the slip. Long walks have been a home
we have built to the beat we sync and slip into, whatever the background noise, day
or night. At the slightest dimming of conscious lights, memory turns into an ageless
film these days and projects itself on the veined wall of the heart. It has been an age
since we performed the vigorous ritual of getting tea at all the three gates, cooing calls
at curled cats as we walked the length and breadth of a walled garden for a lark. Days
now are a long litany I’m offering, biding my time. It is possible the wily world will get us
in the end. For now, this funny, feathered thing hope still has me in its claws. Not at home
entirely in the tossing gales of fortune and fate, but here is where I would rather be, talking
to trees and taking my chances, hoping to land on my feet than be lured by the rosy talk
buzzing around treading on the ground, down traceable paths. These days, as age
catches up, the peace that steals over at the thought of sea-waves feels like a homecoming
where we’re sitting on the beach by a sleeping dog, an eye out for crab claws. The calls
of the hawkers, the sizzle of the corncob and the muted clang of church bells surround us
on a mild winter evening in Bessy. A dream I knit and hold on to for dear life. Long days
will only get longer this year. But imagining thousand lights trailing home, talking
each other into a last round of kebabs for the day from the age-old lanes of Triplicane,
calms my anxiety down. It will see us through: calling Madras home in our hearts.
Cover image by Ananthan Chithiraikani on Unsplash
