We are getting ready
for something - always.
For a duel, maybe,
or for a truce.
We are not quite sure.
At most we will start
and then get lost in the beginning.
We begin the verse
and then forget even the words.
If we had reached anywhere, any time,
it is only to the wisdom
that we are incapable of reaching ever,
that we are capable of only getting ready -
of only beginning.
All were young and everything so fresh. Now everyone around are growing older in an alarming pace. What brought this change? When did this journey from youth to death begin?
Are we forever young till we die? Or are we forever old since our birth?
I can smell this decay from the grey blankets, from the yellowish pages of Maupassant, from the wooden closets.
I can hear it from the creaking table fan, from the archaic words being used, from the lumbering footsteps.
I can see it in the cracks on the wall, in the dark corner beneath the staircase, in the framed smile of Mahatma’s fading photograph.
We had not kept mirrors in this house (perhaps it was in our minds to stay young forever). But even then, all are getting older; faster than ever.
