Journey of the Journeyman

I was cleaning out my room when an old, slender, leather-bound diary made its appearance.  Way back from 1997. Flickering through the pages, I found a lot of names and phone numbers from the past, people I once knew, who once knew me. A bunch of todo lists, mostly related to winning votes in the college elections, some notes on H-polaroid materials embedded with Iodine atoms, some code for a recursive Fibonacci series in assembly language and a pencil-drawn map of some place near Panchsheel Flyover in Delhi. I do not even remember now who stays there and why I would have it in my diary.

The first page of the diary is typical me circa 1997. Three quotes. A gem by Voltaire, sandwiched on both sides by two of mine. My diary. I ruled.

A few pages down memory lane, I found a poem I had scribbled. It’s dated 6/8/97 and there is an annotation which proclaims “5:00 pm Central (Station) Metro”. There is no title to the poem.

At the end of the day
You’re all alone
Alone on the last train
You look around and wonder
Where all the shadows
Went
But maybe you forgot that
Shadows are where the
Light is
The cardboard moon
She screams at you
And the mighty winds
they moan
You whisper loud but
No one cares
You are all alone !