Did you sit through a summer night, the wind trailing its pallu with the string of lights hung above your bent head, under a sky dusty and starless as the unpaved ground, on which restless weary feet rest while the highway traffic- close as the beginning of the ancient mountain range - rushes, unseeing, by? while the night in the city splits into stealthy tributaries, that enter the top floor room in a high rise to join the lonely hum of an a.c. vent a tent amid sparse trees, flaps open to let in warm summer air a truck, whose driver has a long way to go before the night leaves him, having spent itself entwined in some pillows as comfortably as lovers - and some restless as an insomniac upon its shore, waiting to be swept away to a lake of dawn that taps your shoulder now, while your tributary of night, without touching, passed you through as Madhushala held you in her jewelled arms, shelterer from time who lets you go knowing you will return like the night that has for now dissolved
