Thus FarGather all the footprints you’ve left thus faron earth – be it in cafés, in cities, on bridges,farthest continents, across the tidal danceof a fable, beneath the felling gaze of a lover,or within the duplicitous denials of dirt. Gatherthem in a bag of jute, tied with a string of reed,and release them into the ravening sea. Gatherall the footprints you’ve left thus far on earth– they won’t fall, as dust, or be whiskedaway, like mist. They’ll swirl, at first, thentread the contours of a letter, before framingtheir sorrows and their memories and theirtriumphs and their longitudes throughthe creation of a solitary word – Gati –the Buddhist name for Destiny.Literature for the IlliterateI think of half-eaten goodbyes,and how some paintings are best viewedthe other way around. I think of the loversI’ve lost because I’ve woken up lateor missed the train, or chosen the right café,on the wrong day. I think of the loveI’ve made and the beautiful frescoesthat love has left on this earth – beds, soil,the gorgeous anonymity of hotel rooms,the memoirs being written withinthe splashing of such yearning tides.I have addresses in my heart that mymind lacks names for. It’s Thursday, andthis city, the city of my birth, has no namefor the lacuna left behind by old Hindifilm songs. Chalte chalte, mere yeh geetyaad rakhna. As you walk along, rememberthese, my songs. People ought to be more like books – with charm, and flow, withthe integrity of spine. People ought to bemore like songs – with the charismaof cadence, and a briefness of perfectionthat my mind lacks names for.I want to speak to you of the lightnessin rare things. The tremble of a kiss.The whisper within a breath. The gracethat lies in not saying a goddamn wordwhile the discordance only grows louder.That’s how I would like to tread this earth– with that lightness of self, with rescuedmelodies from an old Hindi film song,with those portions from remembranceof things past where the past tiptoes,like the unspoken goodbye of touch,as it walks out of a hotel room.At Dorabjee, Darius flashes me a smileas he marshals his troops. It’s Sunday,and I’ve settled in for the tenderness of goat-flecked dhansak. Just the actof eating here, as it always does, feelslike a migration. Lands, epochs, absorption,and the flavours of migratory voyages.I know I’m too attached to the past,to the musty film of nostalgia. It unspoolslike an orchard of azaleas, leads me intonegatives of photographs and the negativespace where beauty flourishes, likethe arms of a released Amazon.The heart is a sanctuary of liaisonsand erosions. Love is what wanderingone day gets exchanged for…A city, then, is a feeling my mindlacks names for.RememberingRushes, pines,Streams, andBracken. The earthNever forgets.A wild supari lyingCracked in two – oneHalf in bloom; theOther half crushed –Its life spiltIn riversOf ink. Rivers,Dreams, mahua,And tides. The earthNever forgets.A wild supariGracing the banksOf the Andaman Sea.Once it lay cracked,Now it seems whole;Spilt blood and veinsCarefully sewn.Flies, forests,Trunks, and truths.The earthNever forgets. Me,Summer, bonfires,And you. The earthNever forgets.The earthNever forgets…MetronamaA city, deep midsummer,where slow neon hissesat passers-by, and the nightreads from Tagore, Carver,from the tropics of the skin– flush with equatorialwetlands and the prairiesof unspoken love – waitingto be lit. Fazal is speakingto me of ancestralhomes and discardedtongues, and at times,I swear, it’s as though we– each and everyone of us – were unspooledfrom the same history.A city is only truein the lushness of dark,freed from perfumeand the ghastliness of gloss,alive, primal, waitingto kiss its amnesiagoodnight. Not all lonelinessis the same; some of itis the silence of anunseen storm, some of itthe cinematic nonchalanceof Guru Dutt lightinga fag, I mean cigarette,and drifting into thisgoodbye. A few streetnames are so beautiful,all I want is to be swallowedby them, sucked into thedamp sunlight of rosesand fresh loaves of bread,into a day as a day oughtto live – with compassion andanimal spirit and the ardoursof this enchanted flesh.Come swim with me, intothe bookstore at Khanand the Parsi continentsof forgetfulness. Just don’tspeak to me of promisedlands, and their forgotten,beautiful promises. SillageI lay my brown flesh beneath summer sun,allow my erasures to form an entire continent.When I speak of continents – which is to say,when I speak of bodies being drawn, fused,and then broken apart – I speak of an ancientsong, perhaps the oldest one of all – of howthings are born, only to drift.Driftwood isn’tjust form, but also mood – a Joan Baez songfloating in from absolutely nowhere; nostalgiadancing into the opening song at a weddingwhile the young couple drown themselvesin love and other deceptions; an early loverwalking past the window of a café in whichyou sit, drawing sketches of the past froma capricious memory.In memory, Esperanzaand I down G&Ts as though they’re goingout of style, over at the Left Bank, toastingthe predicaments of a lasting friendship,before heading on over to one of the hookerbars on Al Maktoum Street to hear a Filipinoband play bizarre, beautiful covers of Kiss,Metallica, and you aren’t going to believe this,Neil Diamond.In the skies over Damascus,diamonds scattered like bullets across thisriddled myth, staring down upon what a cityonce was, mediating on how things are born,only to drift.So many things drift – words,plans, chimaera, skin.In this given skin, I’veheld faith; I’ve held it close as the world hasburned; I’ve held the scorch; I’ve held eachoctave of touch, whispered and screamed,in the arms of yearning and other suchthings.It’s a deep, delicious thing, listeningto Peter Cat Recording Company in thesoft, fading jazz of light rain and smoke.It isn’t just smoke and mirrors, the Italianpassages of The Godfather – it’s obsession,lavished with a certain Sicilian chiaroscuro– where even a bullet becomes an act ofGod.Sitting at a bar with God, somewherein the old half of the city, and she tells meI should be in love, since I have so muchlove to give.I scrawl love on the table,embrace it with my brown flesh, thinkingof a distant summer sun, consideringhow erasure could ever form an entireburning continent.Excerpted with permission from Cape Elsewhere, Siddharth Dasgupta, Red River Press.