Do I have to fall asleep with roses in my hands?

Then suddenly,

you wake up from your dream 

as the 3:30 winter-light steals in through your

apartment windows and into your waning slumber.

You spring off that messy-since-last-week bed and

put on your dad's old sweater and do not

stop to lace your sneakers or explain it

to your mother.

You speed down the stairs of your building and past the

drum-room and out through the gali onto

the road where a yellow taxi finds you.

You exchange a word with the cabbie and your

taxi tears through the city like a comet through

a June night

past the red-tin minis and the chattering school buses.

Past the warm-rug pet stores and the jingle-bell cake shops.

Past the map-lost tram line and the verse-etched cemetery,

your taxi shoots,

hurling past the brooding greens of a lush evening and the browns

of some grazing ponies. Past the whites of the Memorial marbles and

the scent of the childhood stadium.

Past the starry restaurants and the hippie foreigners,

past the universe of silence that dents the rest of your

dull-leather seat and suddenly

you arrive.

You walk past the balloon-and-rifle man, the

pav-bhaji wallah, the odd begger, the haggling

boatmen. The river has already swallowed the sun but 

the metal necks of the bobbing buoys bear orange

burn marks. You look out at the ferry-dotted waters and

start descending the weed-water stone steps of the ghat. 

You are this close to finding the magic winter afternoon that got

lost on these steps, down this

water. You are sure it is still there somewhere in the trembling belly

of this river, wrapped up in a soggy flipkart cardboard.

At least that is how your dream went.

You close your eyes and argue your limbs for

a cold

plunge -

Then suddenly, 

I wake up from my dream.