The Shady Bar

Tables, small and congested, populated by,

black, brown and colourless drinks,

that are reached by narrow lanes and secret doors,

seat a conglomeration of people.

Hazy eyes. Haywire tongues. Husky voices.

Zonked faces release unintentional glances.

Some go on a rampant monologue;

the others in uncanny trances.

A man talks of his lost love,

another throws a diatribe at the world.

A group in its mid-forties contemplates

over superfluous alcohol.

A lone drinker breaks down at the wooden table,

staring at the neglected indicator of time that hangs here

while a group of youths live the thrill,

of the new-found euphoria it has begun to wear.

Any woman is a seductress here, for

there are almost none of them around,

they are all asleep in other corners of the city,

sleeping someone else's sleep,

having robbed of their own by one man or more.

The waiters are swift and skilled, and

are continuously called out to,

with a third-world politeness, or

a pseudo-sophisticated arrogance.

And both prevail with their own flavours,

dissolved, as everything else, in alcohol.

It's 3 A.M and it's a bar, which is

drunk-enough to be cut out from the outside, and

rich-enough to buy the law.

And it is Bombay.

It is Bombay escaping -

from its own ruthless reality,

to an underground arena,

one of its secretly treasured avenues,

at a place where all enjoy a surreal equality,

in being intoxicated.

It is Bombay compensating -

for the million struggles hiding behind the glasses,

from one break of dawn to the next one.

And it is Bombay accepting -

what it is.

And trying to free itself, for

at least a matter of minutes.