Coming from Your Side :>) <- = -> :o>)
Coming from your side, I wait, I get ready, I wait. I put on the linen clothes, or are they cotton? Wait, let me do my hair again, with my fingernails. Wait, let me go downstairs and speak with Siddhartha (Saha), and smoke a cigarette in the garage. Wait, let me go upstairs lest I spend too much time in the garage. Wait, let me check my watch, to see what time we had arranged for. Wait, let me look at the map for good measure, though I know These roads by heart now. Let me walk to the right and speak to the dobi. Let me speak to his sons and all is now rosy. Let me speak to Ya Ya man, he'll call me a good boy. Let me go half chai with Jai Dev Yadav and we'll twirl our mustaches together. Let me speak to the one who works at the dhaaba, not the one of the Sardarji Gentlemen, but the one closer to the cola-shop. Let me buy another packet of cigarettes, let me walk around the marble house to the corner shop that's not quite on the corner. Let me speak to the Mohammaden's who keep the look out on Shakespeare. Let me ponder whether to go around Hungerford or through, take a right or left, leave Wood street in the blue. Let me go around the other way, the way I came. I'm just remembering there's a meet I have coming up, let me blaze away.
Wait, I’m coming back around the corner, past the daab vala, the shoebox barber, and the shoe shiner’s I never needed, for I have my own anklets. Let me walk by Nature Study Park past the times of my Xaverian college students smoking up the Bengalis. Smoking up for the Marwaris, the Punjabis, the Haryanvis. Have you forgotten where you’ve arrived? We’re far from the family feeling of Gujurati.
This is Kolkata I see, I could walk through nature study and end up at another park with my Samne Wale making education for all the future hubbies. Bharat, Rohit, Shrenik were a fine trio of cousins and brothers. Aditya, Harsh Vardhan, Kanishka, and Siddhartha Gautama are my sentries watching Subroto watching us bare. Through binoculars and Tagore-stringed glares. ‘Ah, ahem, stock exchange is child’s play. Yes, yes,’ “We toh are philanthropists.” You’re going to go seeing live music, what a rambunctious twist, to the story of Franz Lizst and Ferdinand Majello. I’ll eat the mac’n’cheese as a midnight snack but first let me investigate my fellows.
But wait, I have a meet or is it a date, or just the second time. We’ll be seeing each other, not with water, tea, or wine. No treats are being promised, but the first time you bought me 'fried' chicken.
At an arm and a leg and it wasn’t even “fried chicken.” But that’ll do for now I said, I ate it most delectably. Because really I was paying for the seat and the merci company. But wait, I have another meet, and now you’re coming your side.
From Howrah, I don’t know the way back, though you showed me our first time. This time you’re struggling with being thrown out your family’s gold mine. The mine you inhabit where all is golden, for you’re an only daughter. An only son and only child and all the glory goes to dust, when a father cannot even reprimand a daughter rightly nor could trust.
Let her go and let her free, to chose the fate she wants. Let her freely orthodoxly be, the one she’s always wanted. Let her be and let her see the song in circular upward cloudy haze. Let her know the songbirds will return with every fleeting gaze.
Let her see the puja of the Punjabi’s on the way. Let her miss her train for once, she’ll never do it again. For she never has in years she said, and now she’s actually late.
Let her stop at Esplanade and New Market processions, too. Let her out the city walls and bring her back to you. You, are my mother’s mother’s mother, my beloved’s mother, too. You are the one out of my sight but I know you ring so true. You are a mother like all good mothers, who heard it first and knew it first, and shouted out he’s not the worst, and whispered to you he might be the best, but first you’ll have to pass his tests.
See, It’s not only you that suffers, I’m waiting up and down the corridors. I’m waiting in hospital beds and jails, I’m waiting behind locked corridoors. I’m so door and you’re my doori, not a poem but sweet reality. I wouldn’t have it any other way because a love so thimble won't be contained.
A love so melodious, so Thelonious, could make me Finneas Newborn, too. Or Finneas Gage with lesions in his brain, and a whole new personality tried on to try on the taste of a whole new shame.
Let her out the Howrah walls, and I’ll meet her at the station. Let her fly at Shubhas Chandra Bose, and I’ll gallop Bengali voiced to the gates.
Let her come to Park street, and even within the Halls of Outram Street. For there was once Prem Verma on the other side, and now he’s dead and gone and all I do is wait. For Priya cinema halls were the ones where we left to see the Sundarbans. And the Sundar one is my Priya hallway that connected M to Prem. I was once pyaar, don’t know mohobbat, and know I speak of sundarwands. Your Harry Potter, your Prince, your Miles Davis, your Veena Vishwa Mohan. Your drumma boy, your Zaytoven, your Amjad Ali with two sons. Your Shri Shree Ravi Shankar, acharya of the business woes.
Garments are your trade, and I wear yours well. I walked past Linen club on my way, waiting for you to tell. Where will you meet me, will we get lost, my service isn’t all so swell. I’m on an international plan, getting gauged out my eyes to pay for a service you Indians do so well.
The Koreans might have my passwords, and Zuckerberg and Serge and Wozniack my soul. But we invented the internet so they’ll have to lick our souls one day. They will have to bow and blow.
They’ll bow down for all the ruckus of automated erroneous fuck this. Chupa mi penguins and know me whole, I don’t bow down for no man. But for you, I’ll walk a million miles, side by side, perfectly in step.
You know I’ve got rhythm and you had the blues. Now show me red vermillion hues.
For one last line I won't forget to keep the middle sweltering red. To keep the inkwell bleed and bled, to one day have you in my bed. To keep you in my head.
