rum toddy and a nine-chambered heart

I read a book last night, after a couple of rum-and-toddies
And I woke up with this beautiful image in my mind
That I was with the characters of that book
I believe things seep in much more intrinsically into one's mind at some points of the day over others
Perhaps when I read those pages, it was one of those moments in my day

The night was stirring, clear all the same
The hail had altered the edifice a bit
Scattered leaves covered the roads and the car tops
Neighborhoods robbed off the footprints of dogs
Cats roaming around with an acquired elegance

I borrowed from the lightness in the air
A slight cadence acquiesced with me when I turned the pages of the paperback
Fresh as though from press, the book felt strangely new in my grip
As I sat on the pot, reading page per page of that part of the book

It helped, I think, that the characters in the book were also drinking
and were enjoying themselves in a city that could've been mine.
The roads and gates and rides seemed familiar
Only the two-wheeler ride parsed through as uncanny
My city is more capable of car rides and night drives.

Strangely enough it also occurs to me
that I call this city 'mine'.
An absolute aberration, a pointed anomaly, an absurd oddity
This city has punctuated my summer vacations,
My winter internships, Christmas getaways perforated with trips to and from here.
It's been the city where my loved cousin lives
and where the breakup with my longest standing boyfriend took shape.

It's while gleaning through the pages of that book last night
that I came to realize that deep down I have always considered this city as 'mine'.
Thumbing down the pages
it dawned on me that I was in fact quite actively looking for my city in those pages
a tiny semblance,
a remote similarity—and I would latch on to it.

The authors face came in my dream too.
Similarly,
On a morning last year I had woken up
Somnolent to the face of this writer right outside my bedroom.

Life is a compost of all things strange, unusual
She was house-hunting,
I would later read her column on the barsaati that she was to leave
My house was shown as a sample to her.

She must have judged the space for
It’s lack of direct sunlight and air passage,
on the other hand though
the terrace must have delighted her.

I remember being giddy with joy
and sharing with friends on WhatsApp that I woke up to her smiling face.
Her eyes had a peculiar curiosity to them,
like those of an agile cat—swift in motion.

That morning my faith in my calling as a writer had been reaffirmed.
I had taken it as a sign to pursue it in ways myriad and colourful
For I had woken to the pleasant visage of a writer of her calibre.

Gifted in the gab
this book by the writer was in the good books of my film critic friends,
both of whom had asked me personally to read her book.

On the 36th page of the book last night
Two straws came unstrung
My connection with the city and this author acutely ingrained
An unnoticed osmosis
On a gut, an instinct that drove me to these books,
to these ways of reading, these ways of preparing the toddy,
to this city, its lanes, that house and that precise hour of waking up.
These relationships, codependent of one another,
shaping my perception or
the other way round.