St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

By evening seven, we are sitting opposite each other, at Café Coffee Day,

in the less crowded Ispahani Centre by St.Teresa’s Church,

on the Thousand Lights Road of Nungambakkam bearing witness to our meeting.

St.Teresa’s Church, where you said the choir was always lively - not a word on the sermon.

And Ispahani, a fading landmark, in the maps of closely-packed constellations of other malls.

Like us, opposite each other, they have always stood, cut open by a busy highway;

St.Teresa’s for the lop-sided altar boy and Ispahani for the socially-awkward-writer-girl;

One by faith went and the other for the memory, the view of the barbaric yawp came.

It’s quiet there -

like in the library, like in the chapel of St.Teresa’s and in the elevated grounds of Isphahani,

a divine quietness shrouding, as we take those sips of cappuccino.



While I try remembering the color of your eyes today,

all I could recall is the roasted beans in the showcase;

with a tint darker than that – incandescent - hanging above us.

The warm cup of cappuccino between us and the busy road.

Your voice three months later on phone, telling me, how desperately you need the road,

a two way road, barricaded in between, so that St.Teresa’s and Ispahani

could stand opposite to each other, never meeting, in no universe,

confiding an entire cosmos between.



Coffee tastes great there in Ispahani, red velvets too

It’s an old mall in the great city of Chennai and she carries memories of love all kind.

She stands there, withstanding the great floods, hurricanes and earthquakes

like the best antique property of the city, priced, incomparable.

And I write this poem,

not because you asked me to.

I can’t contain the ‘you’ in me, anymore -

https://www.peachstreetmagazine.com/home/two-poems