Friday, June 18, 2010

Of destiny, excuses and a broken heart

If only,
I had been born an year earlier,
Or had liked maths just a little bit more,
Or had got cinema tickets for the noon show,
And had not interjected in the debate at Stephen's instead,
Or had it not rained that day in July,
If only.

If only,
You had been born a year later,
Or had not loved History quite so much,
Or had not been such a good debater,
Or had carried an umbrella that fateful day in July,
If only.

If only,
The Babri masjid had not been demolished,
The gulf war had occured some years later,
Soviet Russia had not crumbled apart,
The Berlin wall had stood intact still,
Safdar Hashmi had still been alive,
We both had hated old songs and mushy movies,
If only.

We would then have not been at DU together,
You would not have responded to my interjection,
We would not have taken shelter at the bus stop outside Hindu,
We would have had nothing to say to each other,
We would have remained strangers always,
The webs of fate leading us along separate paths,
Never intersecting, unaware and oblivious,
Of each other.

And yet you said,
One dusky evening some years after that day in July,
That we were not destined to be together.
Poor destiny,
To be made a scapegoat,
After all it had done.

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