homecoming

I really wish I could come over with a bottle of wine and a packet of cigs ‘cause you’re not feeling great but I can’t and I hate it because past few years I have managed my own problems and provided practical solutions to friends for theirs but I don’t know rather I don’t remember how to act when someone I love cries or ends up in a bad mood after a fight. I would come over, we’d make a mess in the kitchen making ‘Dalgona’ coffee and laugh about how the first world took a brown concept and turned the brown coffee three shades lighter and gave it an even whiter name. It’s a shame really. But we’d drink it anyway. And pass a cigarette with the coffee in the 5pm sun because there is nothing better than silent understandings and the absence of constant need to fill the silence. It’s comfortable. Then we’d put on something like Friends or B99 and crack the wine bottle open and share it back and forth ‘cause cmon glasses are a lil too much effort especially for a summer hangout at home. One of us would suggest pizza and we’d make another mess near the couch gobbling down two large ones as we finish the wine bottle. A little high and happy after dinner. We’d proceed to talk of all things cosmic and things we both probably won’t say out loud again. Things we don’t say to anyone else because not just ‘anyone’ could understand us the way we do each other. A lil sleepy from the wine and cheese, we’d stumble to open the window because it’s a clear night and that’s a rare one for Bombay. The kind where stars are out and the city continues to buzz with its conundrum. The fading beeps of autos in a distant high-way. The kinda night where you can hear the crickets, the footsteps in the flat upstairs and the howl of stray dogs who’ve made these unwinding streets their home. We’d crack the windows wide open and sit in the balcony. hearing our own breaths as we feel the silent breeze pick up and kiss the classic Mumbai humidity a momentary goodbye. Your mood? Far better than it was this afternoon. A lazy smile on your face from the content high of spirits and company. And as we light another cig, our bad dreams waft up with the smoke.