The single room
The Single Room
I lied sleeping, cradled by the damp yet chilly winter evening.
Winters in Mumbai are strange, with no stark characteristic of its own, unlike the city.
I too have been busy, trying to make myself ordinary, like the Mumbai winters.
But this single room was my escape into extraordinary.
The music, the paintings, the greasy induction, the paperbacks
the occasional smell of urea and the monotonous mechanical humming of the refrigerator
made me feel alive again.
I have lied naked on the cold floor of this single room,
dampening its solid marble with my sweat, giggling in the darkness
While the glow of the night bulb stirred the air murky with its purple hue.
I have watched the ashes of the cigarette fall gently on my thigh
As my thoughts wandered off to a distant land, as I lay happy in your tight embrace.
"Happiness" was a concept that existed in the tight four walls of that single room.
Where stories, laughter and our cry flooded the small place
Where alcohol was plenty and feelings understood.
Where a packet of candles was lit to fill the heart with a warm glow,
and a couple of glass was bought to sip blood-red wine.
In that room I was extraordinary,
wanted, needed and fixed.
The owners will change, the walls will be repainted and the windows will be fixed.
Will the room remember me then?
Do walls have memories?
Tonight, I lie within a double blanket, on a double-sized bed, in a room with a balcony.
But in this room, I feel ordinary again.
Now published in
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