The Barakhamba Road/Tolstoy Marg Crossing
An odd, white handkerchief tied on his arm,
he gets onto the metro at Vishwavidyalaya.
With a stuffed back-pack on her shoulder,
she boards the bus at Shahdara.
In his grey track pants,
he hails an Ola from Saket,
With her phone in her back-pocket,
she climbs onto a Haryana Roadways bus.
The red glass bangles he’d bought yesterday
reflect the winter sun; his fingers dance.
She pulls out a crumpled rainbow muffler
and waves it to her from across the road.
He sees a small tear in the stockings as he
pulls down the track pants but doesn’t care.
At that Crossing she knows from the map, she
sees a big crowd – and turns her phone to silent.
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Akhil Katyal, Delhi
(Akhil Katyal’s fourth book of poems A Biography of After is forthcoming from HarperCollins India (2024). He is the author of Like Blood on the Bitten Tongue: Delhi Poems (Westland), the translator of Ravish Kumar’s A City Happens in Love (Speaking Tiger), and the co-editor of The World that Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia (HarperCollins India). Katyal teaches Creative Writing at Ambedkar University, Delhi.)
Every Weekend
Every weekend it is someone new.
Some of them tall, some short, some dark and some fair.
Sometimes it’s pizza, sometimes a cup of tea.
Sometimes a bright and breezy evening by the beach, sometimes a dimly-lit fancy restaurant.
Every time, there’s a less familiar face in front of me and a menu that eventually does become
familiar.
I’ve done this for a while. Even the waiters and the tea vendors are starting to notice now.
Sometimes the pasta is bland, other times, the coffee perfectly brewed.
Sometimes I find the memories of the conversations worthy of being cherished forever.
Sometimes I regret having done it at all.
Some make it to more than one meet. Some remain one-hit wonders. Some make me dream of
one day making a family with them. Some make me feel insecure and insignificant.
It does get tiring sometimes. The same routine, only swapped by the people and the place and the
food.
But I am still hungry. For food, for conversations and for companionship.
And I will continue to keep having, these weekends, in hopes of finding, the perfect combo that I
am craving.
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Mujeebur Rehman, Tamil Nadu
(Mujeebur Rehman, born to an Indian middle-class family in Chennai, kept to himself for most of his young life. He spent the time he saved by avoiding social contact on movies, TV shows, books, poetry, dance, and drama: practically any medium used to tell a story. He tries to make an impact with his own words and evoke a range of emotions among his readers.)
