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After all this time, after your deadline has passed, after a mindless nomenclature is made permanent and a promised permanence has evaporated into air, I look at your pictures captured in flawless poise, lamenting the fact that I was once so close to that perfection. I don't often blatantly admire your physical beauty. Your beaming cupid bow; your bracelet tinged with “story” resting effortlessly on the wrist; the way your eyes squint with omniscience amidst the shield of smoke. Oh, and your smile can instantly disinfect a decaying, porous heart. 

Why is it that more pronounced these recognitions become, the more distant I feel, as if I were far-sighted? 

Perhaps now that all I can trace is the exterior, an empty shell, I realize it’s what’s inside of you that quenched me and anchored me. 

Yesterday for the first time since I came here I could finally share a smoke with someone with my guard down. Feelings started to come back - first homesickness and then the feeling of home. It was contradicting - a loss of a home that can never feel welcoming again, and a discovery of a new home that hands me an envelope full of second chances and deja vu's; stamps marked with old mistakes and new forgivenesses. Sometimes I sit beside marine drive thinking about Kennedy town, feeling as if I was tossed by one hand and conveniently caught by another. The temporal and spacial stretch captured by one single swish. On the train today and it became clear to me that Bombay is slowly becoming home. I even found people I could call family.  

Hawa, did you know that the doors on Bombay trains don’t close? I remember how eyeopening it was at first - that you can see the other trains across the rails, with people standing by the door. You and them try to catch glimpses of each other even just for a thousandth of a second. This scene never fails to captivate me, except now less than before - now that I can jump on and off a train comfortably, wriggle my way through the crowd as if Bombay is home. Everyday here is a practice, and with days after days of practice, “home” finally settles in. I begin to feel natural, like there’s no reason why any city’s train shouldn’t have open doors. Every train ride is a lesson, it teaches me transience, it teaches me to keep capturing with open eyes even if I have but a thousandth of a second. 

So then why is it that I still couldn’t live every moment without thoughts escaping back to you? Like a pani puri shell waiting to be filled, the hollow refuses to heal. By the way, I learned today that puri means completion, what i wouldn’t give to go back to myself a month ago sitting at the Nepali snack store and whisper “completion” in my own ear. That was what you and I were, right there. (Un)fortunately when I’m nestled in happy moments like that I always struggle to find the right words. You’d ask me what’s on my mind, and I’d be overwhelmed yet speechless. The gap between consciousness and utterance waiting to be filled … pani that came too late to puri. Pani takes to the sidewalk, like words spoken to a vacuum.

Did i tell you I haven’t cried? Like a dry shell. No pani. No puri.

Perhaps it takes leaving home to learn to make my own home. The first home teaches me love, and the second teaches me forgiveness. Yet no matter how well I navigate the train, how much rain I've soaked up, the parts that are set out to drift as you went missing can't be gathered back. That doesn't stop me though, from manically grasping any possible smudgeness and the afterimages that may be left behind. I put your song on repeat, as if they spoke answers. My tattoo says coming to terms with the past, perhaps what tops that on the agenda, is to come to terms with the missing parts, with the missing you, with missing you.

I wonder if the bagpipe guy keeps going back. 

Dear Sir. S.A.:

Walk up the stairs, to your right is the Goddess of money. Walk to the side, buy some flowers, yes, you can smell them. Walk to the top, take off your shoes, if you have to touch your shoes to take them off, walk to the basin, wash your hands. The floor is a little wet, come inside, sit like this, yes, cross your legs.

Now pray.

Pray? Okay... shift posture, open spine, 双手合十，close eyes... Grace, posture, grace, posture... Now what is pray, pray for what, what pray, pray, feels unfamiliar on my lips, pray, the weird shape the mouth makes saying it... pray... is what? I'm the ultimate atheist, determined by birth. Pray... "S.A., I hope you fulfill all of your dreams, be happy and make people happy. K, I hope you have a beautiful baby one day. Mom, don't frown, I hope that dreadful weight on your shoulder puffs away soon. Dad, I hope next time you puff a smoke you feel an innocent joy for the first time in your life."

Every minor ritual makes you feel warmer, as if the smile of approval has stretched a little more as you obeyed without doubts, amenably repeating each naive act--a rare occurrence that you did just for the sake of doing. On a physical level, worship is but a series of rituals, slowly and gently maims reason and desire.

Love has its own rituals. Fall, rise, fall, rise. The last ritual to seal it all is to listening to Pink Floyd high. 

And think about that person you performed those rituals with, without knowing, feel a bit more complete, more substantial, like those warm dumplings finally settled in the stomach, making you feel one with all the magic that is the world. The line between the two puzzle pieces smooth out.

Of course, I missed my puzzle piece forever already. 

Dear Hawa

Sometimes I can hardly tell if this is Bombay or New York. After 11 the lights shine just as blatantly as the dreams that believe there is a space here for them to take off.

Instead, instead of "yes" here you say "ha", instead of okay here you say "tikke". Otherwise similar. The best dancer at the bar always have poofed hair. The state-of-the-art highway cradles a timid sea, which for the city people is enough sea. Sometimes brokenhearted people feel more brokenhearted riding along this highway, after some time on the same highway they feel not so brokenhearted anymore. Bravery just means flipping your boss and dancing alone.

We all have trouble chatting the taxi driver, we all destroy our polished wallets. Euphoria means finding your glasses after a bar night, and greeting your neighbor who also arrived home late.

I won't apologize for coming home late unless you're the one behind the door.

Music on both lands refer to california as if it were a toasty home.

Speak hindi here with a Chinese accent, speak english there like "chutney" and "picante" and make them wonder, with inenuncible bewilderment, what it's like to be illiterate in both tongues. I won't be able to learn your unmapped territories between Bengali English Cantonese, but I feel I'm a key that can fit right into you, turn you and sedate you.

I learn about the city from hearsay, and I learn about you by collecting ashes hoping someday I can glue them into a pot. What's so wrong with that? 

Dear Hawa:

the minimal flying particles in the atmosphere dance in utterly unpredictable patterns 

like images of you glowing and vanishing, glowing and vanishing. 

The sharp outline of your hair, the dull hue of your pupils 

The loud stubborness of your brows, the silence of your talking mouth 

The bright presence of your shirt at midnight, the dark void of your cheeks filled with joy 

The high pitch of your dreams, the low groan of your inside

I take a swift heap, dive down from the balcony, and the air! 

Frozen. Still. 

I am stranded in mid air. stripped of the ability to choose the way out. 

You: You choose! 

Me: But I can’t 

You: Choose! 

Me: … 

You: This is how you hurt me 

Me: …

You: I will leave you lonely, then 

We appear disappear together alone

Act I: 

you blow dry my reflection, 

you cook breakfast for my ego,

you cushion my anthrophobia, 

Act II 

Go child, fly flamingo you say, when the rain comes, listen, 

when the girl screams, cup her cheeks and whisper
the painless poems that you wrote one serene evening 

Go my love, 

eat each salad with grace, handle each situation with a fork but, 

Fly autumn, 

Until next time but, 

Go, bye, arey go! 

Act III

I become a tiny flying particle in this unfamiliar city. 

One day I will realize

Wether I glow or vanish is up to me, 

whether I hear the baritone or the guitar in a song is up to me,  

whether I grip on to you or spread my fingers is up to me 

one day, 

one day is not now. 

Dear Hawa:

The pungent alley smells   

The chai glass clinks 

foggy with remnants of condensed milk  

orange wind, the point to which vision clouds  

Should traffic dissipate like crows 

Should crows be harassed by stray dogs 

barking away their homeless shadows

orange wind should exhale the answers 

Where tides swallow roads to pilgrimage 

Where smoke return to  

lungs that cradle a dampened heart 

orange wind, where the questions start 

with an answer 

Inhaling letters and writing leaves

Dear Hawa: 

The white woman strides across the Bombay street like some lost beast in the jostling jungle. The unified honking almost saturated with communist flavor. And you with mouthful of dust and mud, gently nibbling my forehead. 

You can't trust any reality. The consciousness of seven apertures is the only truth. 

I don't know myself anymore. My consciousness has no connection to what physically constructs the self. My limbs are just parts that are auto-receptive. The exterior is felt in isolated facets. Absent - the internal knowledge and effort to tie it all together, to react. Self - feeling everything yet nothing is felt. 

You won't be reading this. 

The yolk yellow rectangular light muffed by a mosaic curtain behind which the I was and the you were twined together into one. The I am becomes stranger to that "one". It's as if you're the one turning the chili toast orange, you're the one adding drumbeat to the pop-songed earphones, you're the one slowing the fan down, turning it off. Through you I live everything. You are ubiquitous, you are amorphous, you are cool wind. 

Otherwise, in our respective solitude, in the firm embrace of the hairy monster, in the rotting piles of finished remains and unfinished businesses, you return to your anger, I return to my shame.