Old Age

On an evening walk
the mind opened its wings,
while dormant existences lingered
waiting for some ambush
along forgotten paths.
 
If there were words to tell,
they could not be fabricated.
On a lakeside bench
Subodh Babu asked—
“How are you?”
 
How to answer truth with more truth?
Too much of it becomes unbearable.
I said—“I’m fine,”
though eavesdroppers multiply like shadows.
No oil, no salt—
doctor’s orders.
This burning inside the body
has no other reason.
 
Time drifts away in hunger,
a single plate of rice at noon—
not insufficient,
yet not abundance either.
This is life.
 
From years of struggle
so much was earned,
yet nothing essential.
Perhaps life could have been lived
without all this—
the medicine, the clinging
to survival.
 
Labor consumed the body,
but never became the reason to live.
The household stayed orderly,
each member in their own delight.
A “successful life”—
they call it.
Anyone might have rejoiced in it,
dreaming their sky in colors.
 
Those who long for peace,
who want only safe hours—
I understand them.
Late at night,
I even search for them.
 
At last, in the park,
this luminous evening—
a third eye opens
to glimpse the shadow
of a day’s last bird.
 
A stray traveler
along the sky’s corridor—
will it call me too?
 
I tire of rules and routines,
of conversation with myself.
If these few days
were simply absent—
would it truly matter?