The Headway
the headway was not too difficult,
which is to say,
it was easy,
because it being easy
is so much more easier
a psychotic activity
than it being not difficult:
having dropped our bike behind,
which would only be reclaimed after
everything was said and done,
having waited for a 11 0' clock bus
which would only be half an hour late
letting us drench in anticipatory
drops of perspiration,
having seated in that same bus
switching between observing
the outside bending of space to accommodate time
and the inside marvels of human capacity
to make beds out of bus floors,
our bags all packed and all,
a flute and a uke along,
we had stepped inside the
early hours of the Chennai airport,
the giant glass door shutting
behind us in automation
as if it had heard our footsteps
walk away:
large parts of the
journey that lay ahead,
we hadn't even bother to serve
as much as a bat of the eye,
except where we would first arrive;
tirthan wanted to be the first born
and tirthan wouldn't have it
any other way:
back at the airport,
our impatient postures
lay waste to all the
stillness that we'd like
to have held before the
big bird took off,
giving the air
an opportunity to
showcase its versatility
as a fluid and its strength
to carry large scale human wizardry;
but we did manage to savour
some of the stillness in us
just enough to get us to
the other side of the sky tunnel;
but little did we know that
claustrophobia had its young cousins
waiting for us to get wrapped up
in its veils: