She Loved The Rain

She loved the rains. The touch
of rain-drops on her bare skin.
My lips drinking them dry. I remember
how she sighed then. The only other
time she sighed like that was when
I whispered some Faiz to her.

She loved the rains. The paper boats
gingerly floating in water. She used
to pluck an eyelash, the longest
she could find. Place it on a boat
and watch it float away. She used
to hold my hand tight then.
She loved to dream. I remember
she once cried when the boat
drowned. That was towards the end
when her eyes so often brimmed
over with tears. I remember.

She loved the rains. She loved singing
over the thundering clouds. Always
a note offkey in that high-pitched
voice of hers. I loved listening
to her songs. They spoke of desires,
dreams and longing. Of destiny and
heartbreak towards the end. I remember
I cried once. She made me promise
I won't cry ever again. She used to say
my smile reminded her of the morning sun.
She hated the shadows thrown by dusk.

Does someone recite Faiz to her still?
Does it rain where she lives?
Do her children make paper boats?
Do her eyelashes still grow long?
Do her songs still sing of splintered dreams?

I will never know. There are so many things
that elude me now. I wonder why the lump
in my throat never dissolves into tears.
Why I hate the slush of rainy days. Why
I never wish to wake up in the morning.
Why nothing makes sense anymore.
Not even writing poetry.

A Broken Heart

If only,
I had been born an year earlier,
Or had liked maths just a little bit more,
Or had got cinema tickets for the noon show,
And had not interjected in the debate at Stephen's instead,
Or had it not rained that day in July,
If only.

If only,
You had been born a year later,
Or had not loved History quite so much,
Or had not been such a good debater,
Or had carried an umbrella that fateful day in July,
If only.

If only,
The Babri masjid had not been demolished,
The gulf war had occured some years later,
Soviet Russia had not crumbled apart,
The Berlin wall had stood intact still,
Safdar Hashmi had still been alive,
We both had hated old songs and mushy movies,
If only.

We would then have not been at DU together,
You would not have responded to my interjection,
We would not have taken shelter at the bus stop outside Hindu,
We would have had nothing to say to each other,
We would have remained strangers always,
The webs of fate leading us along separate paths,
Never intersecting, unaware and oblivious,
Of each other.

And yet you said,
One dusky evening some years after that day in July,
That we were not destined to be together.
Poor destiny,
To be made a scapegoat,
After all it had done.