14th August, '07

How does it feel?
to be on your own,
with no direction home,
like a complete unknown,
like a rolling stone.
— Bob Dylan, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’

“Where is Home?” they ask,
and I have no answer.
Is it Bangalore,
where the roads, heaving
under the weight
of traffic and expectation
criss-cross each other,
fly over and under,
like choked arteries across
its beating heart?
Where I sat, late
one August evening,
soaked in rain
and indifference,
looked through
a stained glass screen
at people blowing smoke rings
and wisps of conversation,
and wondered
at what might have been.

Or Trivandrum,
the mild-mannered city of my birth,
where the smell of rain
always seemed to be in the air,
hovering just above
the rust-brown earth?
Grease and engine oil
are the things I remember,
there in the garage near our Home;
one dark green,
the other like earwax,
running off hands and wheels
to join with puddles,
making mini rainbows in the soil
all along the pock-marked lane.
Bright green jackfruits silently swung
from trees
behind the compound wall,
observing all
that took place;
occasionally plunging
to their deaths,
bursting like supernova
when they met
the ground,
fluorescent innards spraying
in all directions.
In the sun
they would lie,
like baffled anemones;
flies would hover and mourn,
until a cow wandered over
and administered the last rites.

Or indeed,
is it Oxford,
where apple trees
and pumpkin pies
lie scattered like seeds
across the landscape
of memories?
Where my brother's first footsteps
are still etched in the snow,
next to the snowman
which was devoured
slowly,
along with our innocence,
by the sun.