II 
Homebound 

Woke up and watered the plants as Mohammed Rafi played in the background. The leaves careen in variegated jubilance. Do the crows think us extinct now? What we deem empty is a state of grace, a split-second of somewheres arranged like a cinema reel. When Ansel Adams sunk into a depressive breakdown, he escaped to Yosemite and wrote to Cedric Wright—Friendship is another form of love— more passive perhaps, but full of transmitting and acceptance of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality. On Twitter, word-of-the-day is ‘matutolypea’ (ma-toot-oh-leh-pee-a): a state of extreme funk/irritability after waking up. We no longer have days but a window garden of hours. I am discovering newer ways to say thank you to strangers. I am trying to make my anger useful. Did you know that an apple called api etoile resembles a starfish? In the night’s blind cave, you’d reach for any voice without asking if it is God or a ghost. 

III 
Dépaysement (Bombay) 

It is a lockdown ritual now—
to map hours from the wire-net
draping of my kitchen window 
as the tea-leaves steep in
their delayed hiss. The crows
peak in their raucous haggle
for a stray chicken bone or
khichdi. Always the same willowy
sangfroid, weathered hands neat
-ening the white kurta. The hand
-kerchief has graduated to a mask
curtaining his face. His hair, a tarn
of silver sand. A flawless emptiness,
the cynosure of his stare. His body, 
a paused wave; sheaves of lightning.
Does he hear well? In some
episodic hallway of flashbacks
does a light bulb still shiver 
with a half-erased song? What
underlies the architecture 
of his vulnerability? In what
arc does he pave his prayers?
Are there old coat pockets hiding
the scent of a valentine on a ticket
stub? What is the depth of his 
displacement? How does he measure
distances—a scale summarised by
rain, the rabbity lineament of yellow
buttercups. Somewhere, a granddaughter, 
maybe. Does he hoard the history of a 
toothless smile on his cracked-screen
phone? Did he ever consider leaving?
Does his melancholic serenity cave in to 
a blue-bordered insomnia?
Is his silence comfort or collapse?