Moon at Half Past Noon

Part I: The Promise (Teen Garmi)

The alarm clock loses its morning fight
Against a sun already sharp and white.
The chaiwallah’s kettle sings through the smog,
An auto-rickshaw coughs, a tired dog Dreams of water.
Fan blades slowly carve
The heavy air, as if the walls could starve
For just one breath that doesn’t taste of dust.
The steel and glass hold a reluctant trust
In clouds that are not there.

Your Excel sheet, a neon paddy field,
Parched and waiting for the sky to yield
A single drop.
Your coffee steam still writes
Escape routes on the glass in morning light,
Fading as soon as they are born.
The scaffolding holds the sun, a hostage sworn
To burn one brick a brighter shade of grief,
A silent prayer for relief, for relief.

Part II: The First Signs (The Waiting)

But then a change.
A mynah’s sudden vow
From a high wire.
The banyan tree, somehow,
Stops its slow breathing.
Your tired eyes, the hawk’s high stare—
Both know that waiting is a form of prayer.
Your WhatsApp “typing…” a flickering diya,
A fragile promise in the cubicle’s gray,
Three dots… two… then they disappear.
The fan above whispers— “Phir kabhi, my dear.”

For subway tiles and river stones
Hold the same cracks.
The city owns
A deeper knowledge, a hidden lore—
It’s heard this promise whispered long before.
The metro card beeps in the turnstile’s crush,
As high in the hills, rhododendrons blush.
Both bow their heads to an unseen tide,
Where hurry and stillness must coincide.

Part III: The Arrival (Pehli Barish)

It starts.
A single, suicidal drop
On sun-bleached asphalt makes the whole world stop.
Then two, then ten.
A sudden, earthy fume
Rises from soil, a long-forgotten perfume.
The first fat drops tattoo the dusty leaves,
And every soul in the city believes.

OHHH— wait like vada pav steams in the street!
OHHH— wait like the local dreams of an empty seat!
Between “chalo yaar” and “bas abhi,”
The whole sky breathes… “Ajeeb.”

The weight of waiting finally takes wing,
The silence breaks as gutters start to sing.
The world dissolves in a percussive sheet,
Washing the memory of the heat
From every rooftop, every tired face,
Granting the city a moment of grace.

Part IV: The Embrace (The City Submerged)

The gridlock is a river, deep and slow,
See constellations in the wet street’s glow.
Our shared umbrella’s broken spine,
Your wet shirt clinging to a truth that’s mine.
The cutting chai burns slow, so slow—
You whisper “Barish…” I whisper “I know.”

Your perfume on my scarf survives
Three washes and two Borivali crowds.
The paanwalla winks at our linked hands,
He understands. He understands.

This is the wisdom not to “hold on tight,”
But “loosen your grip” in the fading light.
To watch the storm cloud birth the lightning slip,
And taste the rain upon your upper lip.
The city’s just nature in tighter jeans—
Same heartbeat under different seams.

Part V: The Wisdom (The Settled Heart)

Ohhh—wait like the milk boils over,
Ohhh—wait like a hangover’s shiver.
No “kal,” no “parso,” just this forever
Unfinished… “Haan na?”

The rain has taught what the sun could not teach:
The quiet collapse is not a breach,
But the very crack where starlight can touch.
Nothing stays broken for very much.
The chai ring fading on your office file
Mirrors the Indus’s patient style;
The scars on the pavement make their maps,
A pothole blossoms with buttercup scraps.

Your Uber idles in Connaught Place,
As distant snowmelt carves a mountain’s face.
The taxi’s horn, the thunder’s final roll,
One slow breath shaping the canyon and payroll.
The mountain’s patience, the street’s tough stuff—
It all comes clear, it all makes sense, it all becomes enough…
if you wait long enough.