1. A MEMORY slips through the crevice,
a ray finding its feet 
through the closed doors,
no traces left behind,
no finger prints, no weapon,
yet sleep bleeds,
sprawled on the cold floor,
every time, every night.


2. How could the memories,

escape the horrors of partition

to find a home near a river

that only cleaved his childhood?

Memories of a nation he was born,

against one he found his home.

Wrapped in a saree,

against his mother's chest,

under sacks full of red chillies,

he had escaped one frightening night.

Resonating screams from the shores,
piercing the night sky, his early lullabies.

All stories of blood,
rests at the bottom of the river bed now,
Like shadows lost in a moonless night,
into the hazy rainy forest land.

Yet a kaleidoscope brings reflections of past,
time hallucinates, weaves yellow images,
of a drunk afternoon of death,
and a boat that escaped its shore in 1947.