I rubbed a bit of sunlight softly against
one of the dusty old structures at Fort.
I spilled a bit of it and the breeze swiftly
tossed it towards a tree whose leaves
played hide and seek with it gleefully,
sending rippling shadows along the sidewalk.
People walked by, unaware of my magic -
too busy trying to keep all the bubbles
of oxygen within the fishbowls in their heads.
I poured a bit of colour into a grimy nook
in Colaba - very careful not to spill this time.
The colour mixed with the grime the rains had
left behind as a way to pay for her journey
and ran in rivulets over quirky little shops
and busy little cars making the sky laugh out loud.
The cars never stopped or slowed to give the
colour time to seep in so it also flowed up
against buildings and trees and finally people.
I sprinkled a bit of monsoon breeze over the
Queen’s Necklace but completely misjudged.
And so the rains danced with the waves – giddily
but ardently - assaulting the senses in their
courtship, aided by a Bombay breeze which
wove between scurrying people and swaying trees.
And a result of their love and merry making was
a large jungle cat which softly stalked and
lovingly hunted and haunted the mind and senses.
But perhaps the most magical of all was when
I tenderly carved out little puzzle pieces of light
from the sullen darkness beyond the humming waters.
And out of each twinkling window a dream sang
a line or a note out of a memory song which ran
all the way over to my flickering window and laid
my weary heart, my misshaped mind, my sullen
soul and battered and fettered frame down to rest.
They caught every broken image, every fractured sound
every numbing flashback which my memory had bled
and deftly, neatly packed it into a brave little fishing boat
and sent it off and away across the humming waters,
away from me and the city I dared to call my home.