Pritam's Blog
The Servant
If you ask me
To tell you a story tonight,
I would tell you
The one about his past
And present
And what lies in between.
‘Who is he? Who is he?’
You ask.
And I say,
That doesn’t matter.
He has an extinguished past
And his ’today’s have violated privacies.
And what lies in between
Is the debris of his soul
And broken dreams
And a few hollow words
He never dared to utter.
But let me tell you
That they grew up together
And while he was busy with the laundry
And kitchen,
She fell in love…
And he has seen a lot of her love
In those crumpled chocolate wrappers
She collected.
He has seen a lot of her love
In those late night phone calls
And many such things for years
And lastly in those all saying
Eyes of her
While she uttered, “I do…”
As the monsoon found its way
Into his already devastated room,
A photo of her
He had kept all these years
Came flying to me
And I kicked him out.
Standing in our balcony, holding her hand,
As I looked at him leaving,
Wading carefully through the knee deep water
As though any haste on his part would hurt it,
I realized
How madly they were in love all these years;
He, with her
And she,
With the lunatic poet writing this poem.