Saturday, December 8, 2012

Echoes of the lotus stalk flute

How many times had we met like this? At airports, train stations, bus stops. Yet, how different was this? This anomaly of separation of time and hearts in the midst of lost suitcases! This severance of bond that you insisted on. That dissatisfaction, of desolate miles between us, that I reiterated. 

Spirits whispered about us once. In my glee I could not keep it in, and you laughed that laugh of a disbeliever. A different time, you say. "That was when we stared at the flickering light-bulb in a mountain-shack and dreamed of a house by the lake." "No, that was when my Tuesday market whims came to you clad in Hindi letters, and beyond-your-years-wisdom arrived to me on the airwaves." That story of ours was woven in songs read by lasers. It cooked on slow heat of your mallet fingers and thawed my perpetually frozen extremities. The indecipherable was spoiled and the decipherable not challenged. 

I banished that whisper, after a while, to a world of "has-beens". You forfeited that nightly banter and beggary of "just two more minutes" to me long ago. I got your voice lullabying me through my insolent sleep for alms, and I kept it. The days were spent in wanderlust and fervent seeking of a purpose. You and I, "we" had become.

The spirits spoke again. You didn't hear it because this time around, they whispered through you and I became your bad penny. I saw again the almost forgotten apricity of your face, the dance of our midnight strolls through streets of your city in your eyes. I saw the slight smile of relief for a moment at the sight of me. And that half minute metamorphosed into the cornucopia of our bond, a belonging we had been longing for, a lifetime worth of peace. Deconstructed was the syntax of the universe and of my being. In that moment I dissolved in your mirth. In that moment I was safe. I was, finally, home.