There are choking rivulets that wander into dried napkin shreds, crumpled notes to self and dead rats, carefully avoiding muddy silts and choosing the narrow lanes of sorrow instead. They prefer the loneliness that comes with gloom of age and let-down agonies, the infrequent west wind and those ordinary blue raincoats. And just like fortunes escaping the clutches of that blind wanderer travelling in a mist of ice and drizzle, they too shall forget their itinerary, just to wander into some unseen colonies of flowers and garbage. If you smell of such rivulets, you know you have stepped in The City.
And on those rounded-off corners of the pavement where Shop with Huge Cobwebs share its space with the Store with Yellow Lights, brown-skinned boys and their sickly fathers with dark rings on forearms and souls could be found squatting, staring silently at how their reflections on the puddles change with every falling raindrop. Two sluggish citizens would reprimand them in the shade of the day for obscuring the images of elegant mannequins in red-painted boxes that run up and down the City. Few impatient jugglers, whose houses are just plastic sheets of nothingness and who feed themselves at cold, cold sweetmeats that turn their teeth into yellow stones, would make a mess while catching something from the skies, believing them to be diamonds. Soon more people join in, bringing with them their tickets of circus, peanuts and oily nostalgia. Grief too, maybe. Mothers would soon call out for their daughters in hoarse tones from the kitchen windows, as trailing scent of night's dinner would waft through the entire City, bringing forth lizards and lovers, making all watchmakers envious, putting loners to shame.
You cannot judge The City by its damp bricks which house perennial tears of failure. Surely, failure flows through the drains and waterpipes even when there is no rain, no sun. And if one is so determined to turn The City upside down and check its entrails, you would find slight pores and buds through which centuries pour its fluids. Slimy and acrid if you are wearing those softest linens with threads of golden hue, thick and heady if you still love The City's wet greenery.
On such days when fireflies doze on peeled-off paints of diminutive structures spread in a pattern across The City, people rush out of their wooden doors and activities just to stare at how beautifully the suicidal raindrops form a pattern at the luminescence of the tall streetlights. Children still draw imaginary boars and newts, mountains and princesses on transparent sheets which float on The City's heavy air. However the rain loves the drunkards who dedicate alternate couplets to The City and cry for Her decaying grace, just to frantically run into some weird bylanes and broad thoroughfares for cognizance.
And She will give love a pat on the back and show them the alley they always wanted to go but never had a chance before.
And on those rounded-off corners of the pavement where Shop with Huge Cobwebs share its space with the Store with Yellow Lights, brown-skinned boys and their sickly fathers with dark rings on forearms and souls could be found squatting, staring silently at how their reflections on the puddles change with every falling raindrop. Two sluggish citizens would reprimand them in the shade of the day for obscuring the images of elegant mannequins in red-painted boxes that run up and down the City. Few impatient jugglers, whose houses are just plastic sheets of nothingness and who feed themselves at cold, cold sweetmeats that turn their teeth into yellow stones, would make a mess while catching something from the skies, believing them to be diamonds. Soon more people join in, bringing with them their tickets of circus, peanuts and oily nostalgia. Grief too, maybe. Mothers would soon call out for their daughters in hoarse tones from the kitchen windows, as trailing scent of night's dinner would waft through the entire City, bringing forth lizards and lovers, making all watchmakers envious, putting loners to shame.
You cannot judge The City by its damp bricks which house perennial tears of failure. Surely, failure flows through the drains and waterpipes even when there is no rain, no sun. And if one is so determined to turn The City upside down and check its entrails, you would find slight pores and buds through which centuries pour its fluids. Slimy and acrid if you are wearing those softest linens with threads of golden hue, thick and heady if you still love The City's wet greenery.
On such days when fireflies doze on peeled-off paints of diminutive structures spread in a pattern across The City, people rush out of their wooden doors and activities just to stare at how beautifully the suicidal raindrops form a pattern at the luminescence of the tall streetlights. Children still draw imaginary boars and newts, mountains and princesses on transparent sheets which float on The City's heavy air. However the rain loves the drunkards who dedicate alternate couplets to The City and cry for Her decaying grace, just to frantically run into some weird bylanes and broad thoroughfares for cognizance.
And She will give love a pat on the back and show them the alley they always wanted to go but never had a chance before.
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