Another day of work and mundane affairs,
Wasted in sorting issues
On this hot summer of dry winds
As I walk back home
I wonder,
I look around,
And ask myself,
Where is it coming from,
The pleasant fragrance,
That seemed so familiar, so distinct
Yet so distant
As my mind drifted
Oblivious of the heavy traffic
And noise honking everywhere.
Wasn’t it the year 1984
Of the month of May
When I, as lost as I am always,
Wandering in gay abandon
Hanging around with my chums,
Bunking classes,
Disgusted with conventional teaching
In search of meaning of life.
And you with your male friends
In that corridor of Maths block
Probably going to the Physics lab
Saw me and I saw you
And our eyes met for rather too long
Till they separated.
Oh! But now I can see,
The neural highway alive again,
In the corner,
The office peon crushing his teeth
Into soft Cantalope, the Indian muskmelon,
His face as lightened up as mine
As I remember, and smell
In my mind’s eye,
The air permeated with the rich fragrance
After you shifted your glance
And drifted away
For three decades.
