Alibaug

I owe you a prawn-shaped poem,
Alibaug, and I will serve it to you
on a sand-sprinkled plate – sticky
and smelly and at best reflecting
the mild light of the retiring evening
that rambles over ice cream candies -
melting quickly like a teenaged heart - and
over the beach where breath is damp and
towards footprints that are structureless
like rain drops on windowpanes, fondles with
the bare legs of the woman who is unfolding
herself like a short story, and scrambles
for the night through the sudden and
unusual density of pine trees like that
of one-room houses in central Bombay, to arrive
injured and humid at the back of the hotel room
where whiskey has just begun to flow like a river
to some long-lost love via rare verses
of fifteen-year old songs that
have faded from our memory,
only gradually, like the skyline
of Bombay from the Mandawa ferry, 
sketching us a portrait, painted
in colours that the clouds throw up
as they clash with celestial sorrows.