Ahmedabad

They met over some hot,
acidic coffee and pungent
garlic bread.

Writers, poets and more poets,
eating, chatting,
reading and talking
texts.

A short story began
germinating
and will grow up
to be a novel
soon.

She spoke of relationships
and alienation,
that co-exist but last a lifetime.
He
spoke of gory impotence
that is part of a bureaucrat’s life
who lords over villages.

Then,
they who think too
of relationships
but
in a different
sort of way,
struck.

We saw it on TV.
And read it in the paper too.

A boy,
just seven,
his long story
cut short.
His skin cut through
with acid hurled
by the aliens,
fighting
scars
and the pungent
hospital smells –
the smell of dead flesh
that the living carry
and of living but
decaying layers
of those,
already dead.

July 28, 2008