My Love was like New Delhi

He smelled like the faint breeze wafting over Old Delhi

Through the putrid waters in the slices of Yamuna

Like the fumes of the vehicles jolted by a beggar’s cry

My love felt divine, like the mystic magic

Wilting within the shrines of Allah, Christ, Gods and Gurus

Why did my heart slip, under the shade of his eyes,

Rustling like the chunris in Chandni Chowk,

Shiny like the moonlit sky,

Looking up at me, the one fated to die?

The ripples over his flesh,

Felt like the very rods of iron

That pleasured Nirbhaya

Then, went ahead to support all the Tricolours

Waving in front of the Parliament

The institutions, and all over the sky

His voice was dark, dark like the old hands in Nithari

Cutting off to fry

Young ones.

I fell in love with him, like I fell in love with New Delhi

With a rage and fervour of its traffic and pollution

And the passion of the rapists and the homophobes

I fell in love with him

And then I died

Exactly like the girls at the hands of men

And the men at the hands of other men

And women

I died in love, like all the hatred

That had boiled for centuries in the capital of the Kingdom

I fell in love with him, with a death wish, a murderous

Revenge, against myself, similar to my first step in this city.