Last Lines

Walk away now
before the call of the muezzin
leads you away
into the nostalgic depths
of time and tide:

floating
in the stagnant shade
of a sun-dappled stage:
home to the squirrels by day
and lost dreams by night.

Walk away now
before the brickwork crumbles
and lays bare the futility
of plan and method -

rejoicing instead,
in the abandon of the winds
that carry the call to prayer
unto distant lands
over the crests of these distant dreams.

Walk away now
from the malarial haze
and water gone stale;

Walk away now
from these insular clouds
of comfortable lazy days:
the luxury of irresponsible greys .



* These words were written in the NID Amphitheatre on the 15th of Sep, 2006.

The place always held a special significance for me: the shade of those trees was often my secret place when I needed to unravel. I've spent many winter afternoons sitting there after lunch with a piece of Bournville melting in my mouth but the two times I remember it most are on my first day in NID in 1st year and the first time I ever visited the campus in 2001 long before I joined it. It just became my own little sacred space after that.

The call to prayer however, was and still is a part of my daily routine: something that floats in and out of my subconscious when I least expect it to. The day I was leaving NID as a student soon after my final jury, I sat there for about half an hour when these thoughts came to me in the midst of one of these summons.

It was time then to move on to some else.

Here and now, I think - I hope - was that something.