Decades Ago

A decade ago

Not long back, one day

She stood at the balcony.

Her brother’s friend had come to meet him

The boy on cycle looked at her blank

As if never seen a girl before

Or never someone so beautiful

Did she match his imagination?

Of fictional characters

In books and movies.

She smiled at him

And kept smiling back each time

When she knew that he came daily

Just to see her, in the evening

From the same balcony-road distance

Properly maintained;

No, the era wasn’t that of the pandemic

When people stood at distance

And wore masks,

Love was always a virus though.

 

She recalls today on the same balcony

When the friends are no more there

Who claimed ‘You deserve better!’

Seeing his curly hair and skeletal body,

And various aspects that were not proper.

He no longer comes to see her

After standing there for hours

Through winters and all summer,

Heavy rain not to forget at all;

She never made any effort.

 

In the twenty-first century,

When parents disown children

If they aren’t born as intended,

He denies to learn it right away

That stories in real don’t resemble

Those they show in books and movies,

Who will want to relate to a tragedy?

Even when the same exists and we all live it.

It would have been different, if decades ago

Had society taken AK Ramanujan seriously.

 

A few decades later again

Now he wanders lonely as a ghost,

She stands still at the balcony; for hours,

Kins of either family are now long gone,

Now they both think in their despondency

If all their lives were a lie, trying to figure out

Why do we glorify hatred with bullets and bombs?

And find love all the more explicit!

Nevertheless, his funeral passed the same road

Where her grey hair flew and landed on him.