The Man
Dear wife. Come,
Let’s go for a walk in this beautiful twilight of our life,
holding hands — lest we trip over the rubbles of memory, now disintegrating -
and marvel at the splendour of this monument we created — this monument called life.
My heart is rife with feelings meek and bold. But I am falling short of words,
for I am a mere ignorant; and old.
But I am determined to tell you, anyway, to the limits of my ability,
for I am late in doing so, and dark it will be soon.
Your hand feels coarse and uneven.
The imprints of intravenous needles, year after year,
have corroded it of its texture.
No, don’t frown you silly. Don’t pull away.
I need to feel its warmth. It’s getting chilly.
Why do the most intense realizations come to us too late? Be it of passion, be it of purpose,
of regrets, opportunities, the passage of time,
of loss or Love?
When you entered my life, you were nothing to me, except -
a utility; and sometimes a distraction.
But then you grew onto me, like those stubborn roots of Peepul
that kept shooting through our cemented backyard.
No amount of cutting, jarring, or uprooting stopped that tree to grow;
It sprawled in our backyard for years; its rustling leaves now fill the morbid silence
when the summer winds blow.
I thought of you, when, I had the time,
when the job was not pushing or the children were not pulling;
when friends were busy earning a living.
I loved you when a pocket of vacuum surfaced in my heart’s cluttered room.
You lived your life in those disconnected, abrupt pockets,
never complaining about the space or the often uninvited guests.
And now I have this mansion of a heart for you;
I buy movie tickets, jewellery and makeup too,
knowing very well that you don’t have the eyes for them anymore,
knowing too well the forced laughters,
when in a movie scene the hero farts or falters.
Will you ever believe me, if I said that it was your approving look I secretly willed?
That I was petrified of being any lesser A Man — in your eyes alone?
That I felt most content when it was your tiny, rare wishes that I fulfilled?
When I wouldn’t take you to my boss’s party, it was so you did not yet see,
what I could not be.
Although it may have seemed to you, for no fault of yours,
that I did not hold you up with pride.
And look at my folly, for when the moment arrived — for my pride in you to twinkle in my eyes ;
when boys and girls, and my boss’s sons, took the dust of your feet before the exams begun,
I turned my gaze away — towards a new hilltop, uprooted you,
took you along, thinking, that you are a Peepul anyway.
And come you did. Like a shadow,
like a parasol you stood by me and over me; when the days were harsh.
And when evenings floated by, you carried the fumes of incense and sounds of temple bells.
I wish I had, on those evenings, confessed my devotion to you, or in the least to myself.
What world was I in to presume that Time would wait on me — to choose the best of it — to
shower the treasures on you and see you dance with joy?
Before I could say it to you, the Doctor told you how strong you are.
Before you could tell it to me, the Doctor told me what your needs are.
Trips to clinics outnumbered the trips to beaches or hills.
I remember each day spent with you then, set in my memory like an album of stills.
I knew it then that Time is giving up on me,
it has visitations pending — to a new Groom somewhere,
and a new Bride to be.
Irony has the last laugh as I grapple your hand now,
which is slipping away slowly in sweat.
I have clasped it too tight for too long.
We soak in the beauty of the westword sky, so crimson
I am numb and anxious when I see the wave of darkness
at the eastern horizon.
