An Urban Evening

The hour is stretched across the letters

That slide along the restaurant board,

And reduce the titles to mild jitters

Bombarding against the giant door.

Packets smuggled into the outskirts

Of the evening and its formations,

Its quiet iterations, cryptic translations,

Miniscule divisions and infinite revisions

Packets emptied and frisked

By long nail-painted fingers,

Rolled into a stick. Licked. Lit,

Circulated in a gang of mingers.

From the languid parade of time

The youth stages fantastic escapes

The night quickens under its long feet

Trampling the evening’s countless mistakes

At a distance of eight drunken steps,

Across a couple of quarrelling couples,

Beyond a gathering of ex-teammates,

Reached by a pair of Indian chappals,

Among the waiters and waitresses,

Lime slices and fruit juices,

The gossip lingers.

Manchurian’s cooked with a tinge of violin

Tied to the present with its flaccid string

In braceleted hands the evening flashes

And the wind shaves the cigarette ashes.

I am an observer of this urban evening

Like the fluttering of these blackened leaves,

The muttering of a million mes. 

The air is embroidered with tar

Forming the boundaries of this bar

And the slowed wheels of the cars

Have cascaded my circumstances

With

Thinking and its aimless branches

Pushing the world into parallel trances

O the uninvited,

O the unwanted,

O my loved one!

I want to sink you

In the mouth of this hour

Or spit you out like a long-chewed gum

But life without you is a thankless habit

Like smoking weed into an empty drum.


(First published in Muse India: Sep-Oct 2013)