At 4 AM, the City Becomes a Railway Platform

                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                      Dum Dum, North Kolkata

At 4 AM, the city becomes a railway platform

Lately, I’ve traced the fumes of the breaking dawn

over the saucer of train stations

There’s comfort in entrusting an infant morning

to the hands of a train –

to the solitary faces pressed against the blue-green glass,

the fluttering sleeves caressing the cheeks of mist.

I see my neighbourhood become a morning express –

Man with lungi drawn up to his knees walks by lamp-post,

footsteps and flickers, like microphone static

The lonely taxi presses its horn, a tired soliloquy

The cat tiptoes over the cornice,

afraid to lose the silence of her rhythmic paws.

Every being, awake at this hour,

is a bogey of the sunrise train.

Only I don’t hear the actual train sirens –

The ones from the junction across our pond

Perhaps the morning express is silent,

like an elderly, bespectacled music teacher –

shawl drawn up to his shoulders, waiting expectantly,

for the young disciple in the city to finish the sargam.

 

The Geography of Feelings

And when the winds start getting cold, 

orchestrating my plait off my spine, 

loose tresses fall in E major, 

                              F sharp minor on my shoulder,

As I think of train whistles from Hazrat Nizamuddin,

The frost in each inhale 

                             crystallizing, in grey splendour,

over street-signs on Rajpath

A group of school-children walk towards India Gate, 

a pink balloon passing from hand to clapping hand 

And when they study maps – 

                               children in blue cardigans, 

collar-buttons clasped with determination enough 

to overthrow kingdoms and uncertain thoughts – 

They write names upon shaky borders, 

arrowing at a crevice on white paper 

that marks a gulf 

                        separating one state from another,

a country shaped like a broken tooth – 

perhaps the most telling sign 

                         of its love affair with war 

They put names to regions, 

measure distance with their forefingers 

Morning releases its percussion of pigeons 

over the domes of the Jama Masjid

I can hear it on my roof, 

miles away, in a different city 

And I think about the geography of feelings, 

about the memory of music, 

about Delhi being the name of the winds of winter.

Illustration : Suman Mukherjee

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