From the city I love

Oh Kolkata, how torturously beautiful can you be?

I will be leaving you in a few days,

My home, everyone that I have known for the last couple decades

But it is not them I fear missing

It is you, my love

The city that taught me to write

To roam around North, stare at the stained buildings, sometimes with protruding bricks

What sounds scary and obsolete to others

It is the stubborn nostalgia for me

And us,

The Kolkata dwellers

Us, we are Romantics

Sometimes too cryptic

Eliot's Prufrock may suffocate from the yellow fog

But our cigarette puffs give us the wind

Counter me, Ray

Satyajit or Sukumar

The cat turning into a handkerchief

We laugh and go hullabaloo

Amidst the heated argument over a cup of tea

Debating over Chomsky

Marx screams with red

But when the green and maroon get together,

We chant in unison

One ball, a match

and a life

When I talk about you, my love

It never stays with me alone,

I share you with all of us

Us, the Kolkata dwellers

For we have the same soul

And the heart that wants it slow in the world of pace and race

The eyes that moisten with Tagore's songs

The limbs that sweat under the terrible heat

And the lips that smile at every mention of you

You are always a part of me,

Of us, the Kolkata dwellers