AHEAD OR BACK

Churning Time's eternal wheels

Its deafening cacophony chilling my heart;

A gust of dry wind and apuff of black smoke

Emerging from my nostril beneath.

The glimmering penumbra's might,

Comes like a blessing in disguise, thought I,

But the rugged mountain slope and the dead black river

speaks volume,

Redifing the chiaroscuro.

I am,

Caught in the labyrinths of civilization,

Oblivious to the nectar-sucking bees,

A child clinging to the father's bosom.

The soil beckoning the rain-

Am I going ahead or back in time?

"WOULD YOU KNOW MY NAME IF I SAW U IN HEAVEN?

WOULD YOU BE THE SAME IF I SAW U IN HEAVEN?"

A faint smell of chlorine mingled with the smell of left-over chicken curry hovered in the air. We kicked off our shoes and collapsed into the huge couch as the slanting ray of the bulb lighted up the messy coffee table and the dusty telephone. It did not need an excuse to come here. It has as if been our place right from the first day of our life and will remain a place for us to crash whenever a little cloud gathered in the monsoon sky or we purposefully missed the last bus. The glass door hidden permanently behind the huge python-like creepers seemed to open a room packed with mysteries and possibilities then unknown to the child mind. The blurry hangover of a drunken night. The clinking of the chandeliers overhead seemed to be a far-cry from the almost non-existent ceiling giving us shudders in the dark. There was a piano, i remember and a rocking chair, rocking us back and forth from reality to unreality and back again into reality. But the voices inside were real and so were their laughter and tears. The huge luncheon and the snuggling of five heads in front of a laptop watching "Pirates of the Carribean " was also real, natural and eternal. "Thing were different back then" you say to guard the pain. Yes it was different indeed because back then we had read stories together, climbed guava trees and painted destiny in a grain of sand. But you have long gone ahead my friend leaving me to stare at the gravel path and search for the few pebble of our camarederie which are still lying untouched under the layers of neglect and forgetfulness. A weary path glares in front of me....