You Had Time

You like to think that the decisions you’ve made today will not manifest as regrets tomorrow. You hope, for the most part, that these numerous decisions made everyday – some big, some small, some momentous, and some painfully mundane- will not appear ridiculous in hindsight, ten days down the lane, or ten years. More often than not, sooner or later, you can always tell- and if you’re not the kind of moron who thinks she has no regrets like every celebrity ever interviewed- you can determine if that decision, all those months or years ago, was the right way to have gone. And if you try just hard enough, you can learn to surrender to the complete helplessness that is regret.

Sometimes, however, with some decisions- you can never tell. You hope, of course, that you did the right thing or you said the right lines- but like that idea that you thought was your best yet but slipped away from memory, you will never know. And while you try to go through life not pondering at length over these decisions- the ones shrouded in ambiguity, the ones on which the verdict is still out- this continuing illusion comes to a grinding halt sometimes and you feel the need to pause, and look back, and ask yourself if you’d made the right decision, if that was, indeed, the right thing to do.  And after you’ve asked yourself these difficult questions and groped for answers which simply do not exist, even as you’ve wondered how life would have turned out otherwise, and imagined all those alternative universes, you’ll come back, defeated, to the present, hoping that you’re not doing it wrong all over again.

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#8 Remember

Do you remember, how it was

when you first moved to the city?

Do you remember,

how shocked you’d been

 by their sheer numbers?

You made the slow progress, however,

from surprise

 to pity and then,

 to studied avoidance.

You learned the unspoken rules-

make no eye contact, you told visitors-

 you admonished the weak-hearted,

the ones who’d surrender

to hungry eyes and

desperate nudges.

You spoke of teaching men to fish,

unsevered limbs and lazy dole-outs,

and yet, sometimes, in moments of frailty,

your fingers jangled, looking

for loose change,

and you reached out

to gingerly drop your quota

of karmic goodness,

making sure, of course,

that nothing touches.

Still, you approved of industry,

helping those who help themselves,

you bought plastic bubble-makers

and flashy ear-rings you wouldn’t wear.

You sympathized with the limbless,

the homeless, the helpless,

you read the news,

and you remembered

the bright block-buster movies,

when you saw the blinded children.

When you first came to the city,

you watched and observed,

and learnt, like them

the tricks of the trade,

the giving and the taking,

the begging, the beseeching,

the reluctant surrendering.

And slowly, the years went by,

and slowly,

but naturally,

you stopped noticing

and wondering

or caring;

but they

are still around,

in the city,

begging and besieging,

taunting and teaching,

others,

just like they did you.

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