Rajnish Mishra

I wonder sometimes how my old friends talk of me! Do they talk of me as I talk of them? They would too, if they were me. They aren’t. Are they? How’d I know?

One smiles and calls me an unconscious, apolitical, right wing Hindu. The mirror never told me that, nor could I see or know by self. You need outsiders, analysts, specialists, critics, friends whose words outweigh your words, who outsmart, out-say you any day, or night?

The other smiles and calls me a minor god. He’s an atheist. I’m not sure what he means by it.

I think of the one who showed me oyster shells buried under layers of dry Ganga alluvium. That old friend of mine is no more my friend, though I meet him

sometimes and we smile no doubt, but we have grown into two persons who can’t be friends anymore.

We were the best of friends, and we meet sometimes even now. How does he talk of me? Does he talk of me? Even when we meet, we know that past is no more, and times have changed; so have we.

Rajnish Mishra: She is a poet, writer, translator and blogger born and brought up in Varanasi, India. He is the editor of PPP Ezine, a poetry ezine. He has a blog on poetry, poetics and aesthetic pleasure: https:/poetrypoeticspleasure.wordpress.com.