Rajiv Chowk

Through the lane of a million scents
I followed yours back again
To the same old crowd with new painted faces,
Rushing into diverse darknesses with the unfocused eyes of mobile games.

And I felt lost again, like I always had
Myopia clouding my yawning eyes
Which can see not the names of plausible destinations
Or, as a matter of fact, the supposedly implausible ones.

You were still nowhere to be seen, as the train shuddered in, in the winter of its arrival
Sighing and bellowing
(Various emotions evoked simultaneously at the thought of the Sisyphean journey)
And the crowds rolled in and out like some aberrant raging river at war with itself
The droplets stumbling in, falling out, but merging in with a certain current like every other day.

Like every other day, clock time froze as mechanically as you had frozen in my mind last summer
And the mundane took monstrous shapes of petty surprise (maybe a larger crowd at an unexpected hour?)
Confused and nervous, I stood, counting the handful of defiant pieces of rubbish left behind;
The reluctant wonders of routine maintenance.

Each passing smell evoked a different thought
Of slight seductions sinking in the atmosphere of multitudinous artificial fragrances
Slowly mingling with the fetid stench of sweat
As time stepped into a fairly suffocating evening of home bound aimlessness.

I clothed my naked premonitions with steamy coffee and cold hopes
Chewing on soggy sandwiches of a futility designing my desire
And all the while each yellow line ceaselessly morphed into the blue against a jaundiced sky                
The sky of your undecided absence...

*SIGH*

As usual Rajiv Chowk succeeded in reminding me of you in the most peculiar of ways, in the shadow of my nadir. (Were you ever there?)