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Dear Herman,

It is difficult to do anything these days.  I tried to sit back, close my eyes and write to you.  Hours passed by, thinking about what to write to you and then I gave up. Nothing really happened besides me ending up with a severe headache. Time is cruel. It freezes . While the pain remains that her absence has left. I often see her sitting on a chair near that window that opens to the night sky. Does she still count the numbers?  Yesterday we had a chat over the phone. You spoke of several things; rooms, lines, rhythms and memories. I am reminded of a poem that a friend had written.  I will share it with you. ‘Preserve and contain it in whatever form you can, a line, a drawing, a memory… ‘     

This reticence is devastating, but silences and absences is all that remains for us. Silences that sweep us away into the land of memories, unsought and uncalled, to mourn a time. We used to stroll by the river side, searching  for the hidden shadows among the ruthless waves. Now I open that book she had left and it always opens at the same page where a rose remains sandwiched by a ‘forever’.

 

your body,

like a stale thought

it rottens under the heat of some forsaken room

some dark room

some distant room

in plains.

 

the mountains fall in your memory

we betrayed you but

 

i call myself a poet

i call her too

she calls him too

 

 

we betrayed you but

as you chalked your verses

on prison walls

stale with piss

your piss, theirs too

i did cry for you

in my comfortable bedroom

with an italian attached bathroom

 

i read about you

some days back

that they cut the flesh from your body

and fed you that with salt and pepper

 

i cried on my wood carved dining table

and did not eat non veg that day

 

i saw your photograph

in the newspaper

your brain visible and head torn

and you unrecognisable

i cried and my tears fell on my Hp laptop

like drops of water on stones

 

i heard your slogan

when they fired a bullet in your heart

it made me a poet

like her

like him

 

 

i typed your name

and wrote about you

and i even cried

with my favorite flavour of coffee in my hands

 

i did hear about you

perhaps from some newspaper

or magazine

or some other poet

and believe me

i did cry