GROWING OLD....

You burn incense-sticks before Me...every single day...with frightful earnestness.

You scavange stealthily among the neighbours' rose-bushes, throw open your shameless blue umbrella to the deluge of their insults, and finally, place that single white rose at My frozen lips...And, I still smile.

Then you cry a little, wipe the redwood frame girdling my face vigourously, in a childish attempt to prevent nature and its cobwebby creatures from gnawing at Me....I am yours...You still hold that true.

At the end, you shuffle your feet free of the slippers, take off your glasses, rub your forehead slowly...uncertainly....

And then, you throw up your hands in defeat...The dialogues of your character, forgotten, you now scurry behind the comforting balck wings of the stage, breathing in wisps and sighs....

Slowly softly your head touches the pillow....My lap.

Even as you cringe and cry in your sleep, as that four seconds of horrific Life blasts through your dreams yet again, like a sheet lightening- the screech of tyres, the thud of flesh against steel, the dull bump, the suffocated screams of hellish pain muted all too suddenly, I rub my palm comfortingly over your prespiring brow.

You feel Me not.

You never will.

And yet will I stay...in the unruly folds of your handkerchief, in the dark tunnel-like spines of your wordy books, in the very centre of the palm of your hand, couched contentedly behind the petals of the white rose.

Yet will I stay, with you....

Even as you choke gallantly on your tears when garlanding me with fresh white wreaths on my birthdays, evan as your hands shake uncontrollably as you strike matchstick after matchstick to burn the incense-sticks before Me, even as you avoid the mirror for fear of painful Lonliness blinking back at you, I would surprise you now and then, when counting the proliferating grey hairs on my skull, I would wink slyly at you and say- "So my old man, are we not growing old together?!"