Tell Me

‘What would you like to know,’ she chuckles and asks

He smiles, reaches out to hold her hand

‘Tell me everything,’ he says

‘Tell me of the things that mattered

Things that brought joy and sorrow and despair and hope

And smiles and tears and nausea and nostalgia

Tell me of love and loss and birth and death

 

Tell me of the embers that still burn in your heart

and ones that you’ve learnt to dowse down

Of unfulfilled hopes and dreams that never took flight

and accomplishments you look back at and fill you with pride

 

Tell me of the love that was never meant to be

and the one that got away before the story was complete

Of the songs that you can never yet return to

and ones you think of in quiet lonely nights

 

Tell me of all the places you found yourself at home

and all the crowds where you felt alone

Of days when surrounded by friends, your heart found joy

and nights when a you were so lonely, you couldn’t even cry

 

Tell me of the despair that lurches on to your soul like a demon

and no matter how much you try, you can’t get it off your back

Of days when it’s simply impossible to find a reason to leave the bed

I will bring you answers you need as best, and an ear of empathy at least

 

Tell me your story, and listen to mine

for when all is said and done, that’s all that shall remain with us

A story of yours, a story of mine

a perhaps a story, that we may call ours

 

Vishal Gupta

20^th March, 2022

City Lights

I’ve always felt uncomfortable in a new city. Not only do I not recognize the buildings, the buildings do not recognize me as well. This is not helped by the fact that I’ve never lived in any city for more than 5 years, which was only once. But Mumbai is a city that does tend to hold you. Men had to resort to eating bats for Mumbai to be able to send me away.

 

And that brought me to Kolkata. A city I grew up in, I am told. But Kolkata smells like a city I knew only in the distant past and never in the present. I suspect even the residents feel the same way about the city. But I know that it takes a few years to feel the city as your own. I never understood why. I just thought that it was an inexplicable process that you had to go through. And so I endured the vagaries of ‘the city of joy’ and the ‘art capital’ of the country while it offered me neither joy nor art.

 

That changed recently, when I finally found a friend in the city. A lunch over drinks turned into a sunset and a sunset turned into a walk admiring the city lights as street vendors created their own carnival on dirty footpaths. A tall abominable tower stared at us from a distance like a phallus of a sick beast. Parks spread out for acres without end in the dark provided lovers required respite. And my own inability to find a place without loud thumping music blaring into my ears told me what this city lacked in terms of natural needs of a human being. I did not recognize it then, but the city was finally revealing itself to me.

 

As I drove down the same streets the next day, the views were no longer alien to me. I recognized the phallus in the daytime, marking its presence across the skyline giving the city recognition. The dome standing on lush green parks laid out was no longer a stranger, but a monument to be proud of. And every cultural disparity the city failed me in was another opportunity to explore and look for what must be possible in this museum of civilization. Layer by layer, the city bared its secrets slowly embracing me into itself.

 

I realized it’s never the buildings, the roads, or the architecture we identify ourselves with, no matter how extraordinary they might be. It’s the stories we associate with them. It’s the friendship that they have enabled us to share. Those shared stories are the fuel of memory. And any city is merely bricks and mortar lest they be robbed of the stories we share with them. We never return to the buildings. We return to the people we shared them with. The rooftops, the lights, the waves, and the wind. Are nothing but memories we have shared. That’s what makes the skyline of incomplete buildings of Mumbai more close to my heart than the towering heights of New York. And that’s what makes a dead city with no hope of redemption beautiful to the people who happen to walk across it on a moonless night with a newfound friend.

Archer

Arched back, steady hands, eyes that never waver

Stands upright as a tree he does, yet graceful like a flower

His eyes stay focused on the singular aim, watching everything that transpires

A drop of sweat itches his brow, his fingers feel him perspire

 

He stretches the string taut feeling terse pulls and strains

He stretches it more with all his strength unmoved by the pain

Pain that emanates from fingertips and stings his collar

And brings the edge right to unmoving eyes fixated on the aim

 

‘The string may snap,’ he knows, anytime in his hands

Leaving him bruises, underserved and crass

Yet he cannot but stretch it the best he can

For he trusts the string, and the tying hands

 

He knows his bow will not disappoint him

And his intents the arrow will obey

The only unruly part being the string,

Subdued by nothing, apart from faith

 

He trusts the bow, the arrow, and the string

And knows they believe in him in every way they can

Yet he cannot help but wonder

The day when the contraption may strain his hand

 

Some day before he realizes, the string will grow too strong for him

Or rather, he will grow too weak for it

And it shall snap uncontrollably retracting against him

Touching every fiber of his being

 

His eyes will feel the first sting,

But his hands will be the first to react

Followed by a numbness in his brain

A scar on his soul that another dear one has snapped

 

The string, would suffer gravely for this offence

It will lose all its strength

Its essence being stripped away from in an instant

Only to be discarded and forgotten, as it was never of any consequence

 

He knows that it’s the eventual fate of every string

And has scars to tell the tale

Yet the only way he knows is to believe

That there’s one more shot within his range

 

And so he stands tall, unmoving unafraid

Aware of all the pitfalls, but uncaring all the same

The mark is all that is, the shot is all that matters

For as long as it lasts, he and the string are one and the same

 

Vishal Gupta

31 Jan 2022

Stopping by the Hills on a Cold Evening

Continued from Peace

Whose hills these are I think I know

He watches atop the highest though

He won’t mind me stopping here

To watch his peaks laden with snow

 

My simple cabbie must think it queer

To stop without a dhaba near

Between the valley the flowing river

The coldest evening of the year

 

He gives the car’s horn a press

To ask if there is some gaffe

The only other sound that sweeps

Of flowing water and rustling leaves

 

The hills are massive, white and steep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep

Bhavya