61 Clinic Road

I stood shivering, teeth chattering In the bitter winter cold Before the monstrous mall That sucked men, women and kids in Like Medusa with her tentacles fanning It was my maiden visit to the city Of my teenage dreams Famed for its gardens Spacious parks and spots of fun My old flame once lived here Her parents had ripped her Off from me and my village At a time we had thought Nothing could ever make us part Leaving me bleeding like a shrub From which a red-rose had just been plucked It was a December eve Crowds braved the chill To welcome New Year My wife just went into the mall Leaving me, her bodyguard, On sentry's job Outside on the road It would be eons Before she returned Lots of time to stand and yawn It was then that I read To the left where I stood The name of the road "Clinic Road" in bold On a worn-out rust-eaten blue board It took me on time-travel Forty-five years into the past on a glider To my village post office Where I waited impatient For the postman to sort the mail And hand me precious letters from out of his heap Arriving from this distant town To be exact House 61 on Clinic Road The missives of passion Always smelt of her sweat Aroma of her breath Carried her anxious sobs Silken fabric of her dreams Often soaked in tears They mingled with my village winds Summer rains and paddy fields Waxing moon and starry skies Drunken of her words then I walked As though on the Milky Way With the sweetest ache ever in my heart Curious I moved towards the mall To ask a vendor where 61 stood I told him it was a house Where a dear one of mine once homed He looked at me in disbelief "House! ? " he exclaimed "Uncle, look, this mall here Is number 61 since the day I came And that was thirty years into the past" "Oh, yea, I had heard when I was a child Some small houses had stood this side Surrounded by shrubs and trees They had roofs made of asbestos On which crazy rains played crescendo" "A group from Mumbai razed the place To build here this magnificent arcade The pride of the city the like of which There are hardly two or three Across the breadth and width of the country" At some point coordinated by space and time A girl here sat deep into the night To pour her heart on paper And that ‘here' is not anymore Forever it has disappeared My heart sank at the news As I realized with a shudder All that remained was non-real Which fools christen "here and there". Yet, in vain, my yearning heart Longed again for the long-lost past To feel at close the warmth of her breath Starry eyes and deep-drawn sighs As she paused and wrote her words Filled with the passion of autumn nights Perhaps a smiling waxing moon Slanted over her little house Imparting the scene the charm of a dream Perhaps she saw a lonely star Outside her window on a swaying palm Smiled and prayed in supplication To express in right words her emotions That scene has vanished without a trace Vandalized by space and time Which have conspired in cahoots To raise a mall in its place Absurd, monstrous, out of place Inert, wanton, concretized The girl has disappeared into the folds of time Yet, why are her old words and dreams Left behind in endless streams For a shivering heart to receive and ache In a cold windless December night? Tell me, please, wise bearded souls: Why this ache and who aches? What is it that aches? And who is it that is ached? And why doesn't wisdom undo the ache?