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हमसे बिछड़ गए थे। '
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I returned that evening
to Bade Naal Sahab Mohalla,
when the sun
was leaving its last saffron veins
inside the walls of old houses,
and the call to prayer rising from the minaret
was descending not into the air,
but into some forgotten cellar of my chest.
It felt
as though I had not returned to a neighbourhood at all,
but had set out, exiled from my own body,
in search of an old season.
As if my soul,
years ago,
had buried an entire city within itself,
and now that city,
inside its silent grave,
was slowly turning in its sleep.
People say
that time passes.
But time is not a river.
Time is a termite.
It does not flow;
it eats from within.
It does not change houses;
it devours the voices stored inside them.
The lane was the same.
The bend was the same.
Even the sunlight was nearly the same.
But the souls that once inhabited them
had long since migrated.
And perhaps
so had I.
As a child,
these lanes seemed to me
the arteries of the earth,
through which all the blood of the world was running.
Behind every turn
another continent lay hidden.
Today they seemed so small
they could fit inside my pocket.
And then I understood—
it is not distances that shrink;
it is wonder.
And as that thought
settled inside me,
Ansari Ward
opened like a rose pressed between the pages of an old book,
with a fragrance
that neither time
nor poverty can kill.
In that fragrance
was woven the clatter of Salam Tailor's sewing machine.
Salam—
bent over his machine—
returns to me now
not as a tailor,
but as a dervish.
His fingers did not move across cloth;
they mended the broken bones of days.
His needle
was not a needle of steel.
It was time's delicate beak,
stitching each torn day
to the day that followed.
Even now,
whenever an old breeze
knocks upon the window of memory,
I feel
that Salam is still sitting somewhere,
darning the frayed edges of my childhood,
hemming them too,
so that I may not fall completely apart.
And the same clatter of his machine
leads me into the Bada Bazaar.
The Bada Bazaar—
less a marketplace
than the beating heart of my memory.
The aromas of spices
did not live in shops there;
they flew through the air
like brightly colored birds.
The steam from Turaskar Hotel
was a warm palm
resting upon the forehead of cold mornings.
In Ganesh Kirana's jars,
coriander lentils crackled,
and in the sacks
all seasons slept.
In Gabhane's stationery store,
there was not ink,
but destinies yet unwritten.
Bhongade's tall shop
was the neighbourhood's watchtower,
from where a child
could dream dreams larger than his height.
The fragrance of attar
was an amulet
hanging around the neck of the wind.
And Gauri's vegetables
looked as though
the earth had gathered
all its greenness
into a single basket.
The old men sitting before those shops
return to me now,
and it seems
they were not merely men—
they were the collective wisdom of the neighbourhood.
Today the bazaar is brighter.
So bright
that the darkness in people's faces can no longer be seen.
No voice calls out,
"Whose son are you?"
And for the first time I understood
that homelessness
is not always the loss of a house.
Sometimes
it is simply the loss of being recognized.
Beyond the bazaar
stood the shrine.
White.
Still.
As though
a dervish had placed his hand
upon the forehead of time itself.
As a child,
I feared its silence.
Today,
I seek refuge within it.
For as one grows older,
one searches not for answers,
but for silences
capable of holding all one's questions.
Beside the shrine
stood the tamarind tree—
the greatest accomplice of my childhood.
Its branches
spread across half the sky
like an old mother
saving a hiding place
for her children.
We stole tamarinds.
Filled our pockets.
Ran away.
And believed
we had looted the greatest treasure on earth.
Now I understand—
we were not stealing tamarinds.
We were trying to save
a little tartness
from passing time.
The fruit is gone now.
Yet upon my tongue
an old afternoon
is still dissolving.
Some flavours
ripen not in fruit,
but in distance.
And that same tartness
leads me to the mulberry tree
in Yasmeen's lane.
June sunlight.
Dust-covered feet.
Purple fingers.
Purple lips.
Purple laughter.
As though all of childhood
had been dipped into a single colour.
We pulled branches downward
as if we wanted
to bend the sky
to our own height.
Back then,
it seemed that growing taller
was freedom.
Life later taught me—
falling, too,
is a form of freedom.
Then came Nasrullah's shop.
Tiny.
Yet within it
an entire universe lived.
Inside glass jars
were not candies,
but little suns.
People bought sugar,
and returned carrying stories.
They bought soap,
and left their loneliness behind.
Some shopkeepers
do not sell goods;
they connect one human being to another.
Then came Dabbu Majid's house.
No palace.
Yet every direction in the neighbourhood
seemed to begin there.
Some houses
are not built of bricks,
but of people's tongues and memories.
And such houses
outlive those made of earth.
Then the Hatthikhana.
Where childhood firmly believed
that somewhere,
in some unseen corner,
an elephant was still breathing.
But now
a vast creature of glass stood there.
A mall.
It fed upon light
and digested memories.
And in that glass
I saw my own face.
Behind that face
stood Dhola School.
Gandhi Vidyalaya.
Clouds of flying chalk dust.
Broken benches.
Half-erased words upon blackboards.
Incomplete notebooks.
Complete dreams.
There,
for the first time,
we sketched the face of the future,
without knowing
that the future always collects its price
with interest.
And perhaps for that reason,
my feet
turned toward the Dusra ghar.
But when I arrived,
I could not recognize it.
Because the Dusra ghar
had never been that building.
It had always been
the hearts of those
who made it a home.
A place
where thirst found water,
sorrow found a chair,
loneliness found tea,
and relationships
required no names.
Only then did I understand
that all evening
I had been searching in the wrong places.
What I was looking for
was neither in buildings,
nor in trees,
nor in shops.
They had all
changed their address
long ago.
Ansari Ward
had settled into my heartbeat.
The Bada Bazaar
into my breath.
The shrine
into my silence.
The tamarind
onto my tongue.
The mulberries
into my eyes.
Nasrullah
into my stories.
And the Dusra ghar
into that part of my soul
where kindness still survives.
The evening deepened.
The call to prayer rose again.
This time
not from the minaret,
but from within me.
And then I understood—
a person never truly loses a neighbourhood.
Neighbourhood migrate,
slowly,
into the soul.
And one day,
when everything has changed,
they sit there within us
and whisper gently:
We never went anywhere.
It was you
who got lost
in the crowd of time.
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