Chembur

I

These crooked weathered streets

On which time hangs like a drape

Upon padlocked doors;

It’s here I grew my first sprout

Of facial hair;

Styled Elvis hairdos, high collars.

Childhood vanished in a flash,

In these lanes smelling of senility;

Innocence fled; tears were shed;

Look close

You can see memories linger

In the dark crevices;

Cricket matches, dropped catches,

Embarrass me still.

II

These mean streets I walk again,

Many a bend and a turn,

I have seen

In life’s incessant churning

In the froth of unrepentant fate.

Those dreamy bungalows

In which I wanted to laze in

Wearing slippers and boxer shorts

Now naked, bare, and torn apart

For upcoming shopping malls

And haute couture plazas.

III

Where once there were shrubs

Laden with the scent of bela flowers

There’s now the smell of fluorocarbons.

The littered streets are

Dug up to lay jelly-filled cables,

They don’t know they once were,

The majestic streets, on which,

The Kapoors strode like kings,

Worshipped, adored,

Their studios,

A favourite hangout

Of those starry-eyed adolescent days.

IV

A boy I knew in dirty knickers

Is now a mafia don;

The world is afraid;

I am not

Really I am not:

I have seen his unwashed underwears.

V

The girls were beautiful,

They still are,

Their walk is indeed fluent

As a smoothly flowing river,

And tongues holding lethal fires,

They can kill with treacherous looks,

Oh! How I miss them, those sylphs,

Who inhabited my wet adolescent dreams!

VI

Chembur,

You bejewelled suburb of the east,

You nestle amidst sewers and marshes,

And fumes as black as hell,

Yet in your stained yellow bosom,

Where the sun rises and sets in a haze,

Smelling of death and decay,

Was born the unfulfilled dreams,

Of this, your unfortunate son.