Guwahati, be good.

For a few of us, you know who you are.

Guwahati, in your filth and bad breath I rest
Your clogged drains and roads bring me forth
Don’t build those dividers with funds siphoned off
and cut yourself apart with the silver I saved for my lover

Don’t linger around in those weddings
Make yourself last, don’t wear down in their presence
See yourself to the last blade of grass
Before it is covered
with the sorry dreams of the young

Don’t forget the colour of newspapers
stained with the blood of flies
My grandmother’s morning eyes

Guwahati, your face is shapely enough
You insist you make love but there lies Eros, alone
You have been painted once more and your eyes shine

I mirror you in ways I would not admit
Past my hypocrisy, I ache for days you’ve taken into yourself

How can I ask you to not move, when I am too?
Will you remain like this, Guwahati?
Will you be as physical as my lover’s physicality when she walks on you?

Guwahati, rest your eyes upon yourself
Let the flyovers not blind you
Expel me if you must
But don’t live in the skies
They are blue; they are nothing more
Run through your roads, scale its ends
Enter the last conversation
Obscure yourself into lips
Do not miss the silences you allow

Guwahati, be entire in your asthma
Don’t cough into this appearance
Kill the Queen, kill your writers and your takers

Guwahati, leave Assam, you will be well

Guwahati, strike a match upon me
Like Navagraha, where evening fires are lit
Guwahati, you have warmed my father’s ashes as he burnt into air
Guwahati, when will you become the air I breathe?
The Brahmaputra will outlive your epiphanies

Guwahati, you are my ageing parent
When will you let me be, amidst death’s thirsty stare?
When will those men you have sent, finally arrive — and tell me God is an amnesiac?
Where will my truths find a place in His small room?

Guwahati, be good. Whore around, don’t let them whore you around.