It happened at the station in Patna

It had been a hard day

Maybe it was the villagers

Maybe it was the police getting restless

There was an altercation

Someone had threatened a landlord

Someone had threatened the village

Someone had thrown a stone at the van

Passepartout bit the arm that held her

Our visit was wrecked

Aouda was cross at the station

Something snapped

I have seen fields of yellow, red

Purple and green speeding up

Through history

To the limitless horizon

And I have seen people and hues

That do not yield an image of the miserly

I have bargained over Madubani paintings

And raw silk

I have felt Passepartout's pain –

She wanted to touch, be hugged

and hug alarmed the impurities of order

Cried at the Taj

From the sheer sense of perfection of craft

Not of the love – she thought of that as strange

And left for necromancers and voodoo priests

Frightened that the music was beyond her range

discordant tones, voices, psalms and instruments, droning songs,

the sound of tablas, of cymbals

I saw how the ragas stretched her

Like a cat about to pounce

Petrified that she could hear the Maoist call

For retribution

I have felt my own: I trade in dreams

And self-deception

The melancholy hue is not

Possible from where I’ve come

It happened in Bihar

At Patna Station

Where she said:

At Kolkata, I am turning back

What of: she had a hard life

Read too many books

husbands leaving her

for Princesses in Dubai?

What of the Iriwadi dolphins

Dancing in the Bay of Bengal?

What of the dreams of transit

and eternal love?