As soon as I was born, I’d begun to race. Race past brethren, parents, and then,
children. Eat or be eaten. Hah! You could say I’ve been roughed up. My home is the
same as the sky above, adorned with clouds, but in this realm, there is only one Sun,
the one up above. My uncle used to tell me this world could not handle two Suns,
but perhaps, out into the nothingness, there are worlds that could stomach two. I
wouldn’t like to entertain that possibility though. In Dilli, during the warm days, the
sun is scalding. Sometimes I can feel my skin boil without going up for air. I used to
laugh with my uncle, as we would theorise how it used to be when home wasn’t
cloudy. It is a story, you see, passed on, through generations, lifetimes, that there
was a time where home was as azure as the sky. Slowly, something changed. The
people who sailed in from seven seas away. The struggle to be free. Then, everyone
forgot, and they kept on forgetting. Uncle used to look all grim and grave. Then he
would grin at me, and I’d have to run before he’d eat me. I can’t blame him; we were
hungry down there and it was only a matter of time before we would have to sleep
forever. I’ve heard that the hunters have some fondness for us because all the other
families have dwindled. They couldn’t take the clouds, wanted it to be all plain and
good. Good, bad, great, grave, those are just words for me. I can’t say what it used to
be like so many moons ago. I can’t say what it used to be like when we could see the
stars—the little brothers and sisters of the Sun. Uncle says they twinkled, made
shapes across the moonlit sky, told the future. They used to look like us—small,
silver, imperceptible dots. And sure, it all sounds good and everything, but I can’t
say how I feel. I can’t place it, the words fail me every time, every second, so I
continue to race. After all, how can one miss something they’ve never seen, and miss
someone they’ve never met?

We’re floating over the skyline,
the sky is vermillion, brushstrokes of fuchsia.

Child draws us from down below,
an out of shape V, etched in black oil crayon.

At lunch, brother glides down
and knocks a roti out of a paper plate.

In the evening, dad gets this gleam in his
eye, and scares a buff man smoking a
cigarette.

The shriek reverberates till sea,
we flap our wings in applause. 

The cigarette lands at the foot of the ghat
and, he puts it out with his leg,

doesn’t pick it up, so mom tells
Yamuna that this one’s on us. 

I look down, then, at the obsidian
pool look for mrigal, look for home,
tell him

I’m ready to play again, but I know full
well that we’ll never meet once more.