Tastes

A small city lingers in their mouths:
Her bookmarks and his definitions
Of essential oils; her discovery
Of Boroline in his holdall; his consternation
At her scraping off the flakes from his chin;
Her kalakand recipe; the sweetness of lyangchas
Lacing the rim of the speaker that transports
Her voice into his ears.

Do they form a scene
Like a Hrishikesh-Mukherjee closeup
Of awkward but tender households?
Do they rehearse those roles
Where Farukh Sheikh and Dipti Naval practice
Being very decent lovers
In fleeting instances between the hissing
Of the kettle and the drone of the fridge?

He wonders if she hums a kind but suggestive
Specimen of Rabindrasangeet while chopping onions;
She forgives his old domestic clumsiness
As she learns that he can churn out a stanza or two
On green chillies and boiled potato,
Despite his absentminded chore
Of burning the rice;
While he dreams of the fragrance that lingers
On the pages of her tale,
Long after the bouquet has faded.

Long after they have exhausted all the words
In that shared language, that is brief,
True, and a little bruised,
The tastes of two small people
Coalesce in the meeting of their parched tongues,
In whose shared womb
A secret home is conceived.