To Summer

It will not be very often when you'll remember a summer. Summers are dull moths. Dusty beige. No wing flapping. Graceless flights. Odor De-odor-ized. In countries like ours, and a city like Calcutta, Summer is the black sheep of the family.

Not loved. Not talked about. Not looked forward to.

And when winter, the sister married in New York, comes calling for her yearly trip (complaining all the while about the rising prices of Business Class fares and troubles of maintaining the Penthouse), summer goes back in to his small study in the attic... and reclines on the old squeaky armchair with a Neruda on his chest. The air fills with gasps and excitement as the gifts come out one by one. Binocular for her nephew and MP3 players(stacked with Ali Akbar) for the baba. The 'I love NY's...


'And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me..'

It will not be very often when you'll remember a Summer. Only this time, I will.