Rishikesh to Delhi
World in flight
Through a bus window
At 80 kph
A flurry of images
In unknown tongues
Gone too quickly to understand
Collected in 1/680th time
A moment stopped for further consideration
On a later date, today
Bold art, like old propaganda…
To announce a new hydroelectric dam?
Drag the photo into translate
“Great Compressive Strength”
Ah, just an ad for concrete
I wonder again
At how unfathomable
The wide world could be
Before Google
…and yet, remains still
A night market lull
Politics and jewelry
Impatient vendor
She ran through the frame
Dressed in all the right bright colours
A child’s exuberance
Equal to the vibrance
Of the setting
Click click click
Went the shutter
All good
But one click
Is perfect
Ephemeral moment
Eternally captured
Layers deep
To promising light
From a ledge of darkness
Valleys and passes
Stand between
Despair and possibility
Magic is a child
This unknown girl
Who casts upon
My weary soul
Unfettered glee
The guileless love
Which is delight
In briefest moment
Such sweet respite
From adult cares
Her master class
In living well
I marvel
For a moment
At the saris
Hanging in the shops
A spectacle of
Colour
Texture
Pattern
Each sari unique
Tightly packed
In the confines
Of tiny shops
Not at all unlike
The thrumming humanity
In the narrow streets
Of Chandni Chowk
He was there
Then not
All in the space
Of a few final breaths
Now a ghost
Whose laugh is lost
But to memory
And longing
Gone twenty five years
In this time of cheer
And on this day
Am I reminded
A twinkle in the eye
Said more
Than words, sometimes said
Had ever said
I love you, son
It was the last full day in India. The smoke had been chokingly thick for the entire month I’d spent in the north, and Delhi hadn’t even been the worst of it. Still, I’d found a decent rate at a decent hotel (some small comfort in exchange for the respiratory distress) on the edge of Old Delhi’s fantastical Chandni Chowk markets for the final days before my flight home.
Would you return my
Gaze were it not for the lens
Friends for an instant
Pix to Words 