The train stops at Varanasi.

Behind each silk a suicide

Behind the cracks abandoned handlooms

Spiritualism lurks, in each nostril burning tyre

Rickshaw-men tout and hassle

to pay back loans in Ayurvedic banks.

And yet, something lives on

In the caking mud, in Ganga's sulphur

In-between decay and obstinance

and barter

The officer, more plump than muscle

Who spoke of terror all this way

Turned soft and breezy on the platform

Heading for Sarnath for a deep mystical chore,

Bade us a mournful farewell

She took a pearl right from her eyes

and placed it in his palm

And he was gone

Untiring crowds

Officious holy priests

So many bodies

Burnt, the lines are long in heaven

On the short-cut to some eternal bliss

And Hori's Cow lost between incessant horns

And chants

The sun dyes the river red

Raising a pink sliver of a moon

There is still hope

Symmetry, desire

On the shelf of a makeshift shop

In between, the Vishnus and the Shivas

A Buddha is smiling.