Calcutta I should've floundered. The slights, the cuts you gave me For not having rubbed your groins. I should've faded into the vainglory of your last three decades of borrowed ideals. Thirty-five years, I've smelled the scent of your tea and troika. Thirty-five years, Your mornings had given knees to the semen of colour red, Your larceny, in snatching the coins of poets, The rapidity with which you drove them out To foreign shores and sanatoriums. Say Calcutta, you were tired, Tired of your yesterday's drums, Tired of the boots of your everyday gulags, Tired of your evenings to part the hands of lovers. You've seen nothing. I too robbed. The part-broken flute you had hid from my eyes, The worn out shoes you never looked at, The petals you had squandered. I stole them all, and had walked faster. There was no way you could make me embroider your name. The desire that I was- Standing near the four am sun, I was a purple cloud, carrying water in my face. wearing ghazals in my hairs. You see nothing. This day-break that covers The crippled body, belongs to both You and me. © June Nandy