Subhayu Mishra
Afghan Church, Bombay
The spires have since forgotten
what they were pointing at.
Pigeon noises hold themselves
sighting us at the edge of the crumbling compound.
In the midst of juvenile shrubbery,
the porch ceiling, furrowed in thought.
We enter.
All around,
the building once of uncompromising stone,
softens with moss.
Windows grow bleary with the breeze.
The verandah keeps borrowing time.
Stained glass breaks sunlight
into maddening shapes
in one inner room
of the senile building.
"I come from the eastern seaboard of India. A place called Puri. I
live in Bombay on the western coast of the peninsula."
"I have this distance between my small town by the sea, ossified
with an eleventh century temple, and this huge city of Bombay.
This distance isolates my experiences in this city for which I
will remain an outsider. This distance also carries a lot of
severed wounds from the sea on the other side where Puri,
mercifully, has stopped growing."
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