The Lost Ball

By Pragya Bajpai

The day I graduated, I thought I left a playground, a library and a college behind

An old playground with chaos all around

A bosom that cradled victory, defeat, cry,

laughter, bonding, fight

Two decades down the line

I see it differently now,

I hear a different sound

a playground or a heritage site

with lots of relics scattered in bits

That hard punch across my friend's face

had left a trace

of suppressed smile with regret

that arrived late, late by two decades

and my eyes search for him like

a lost cricket ball that crossed the school boundary wall

and got stuck in the bushes once and for all

I see myself crossing the wall and cutting the bushes now

I know exactly where to find that sacred cow

the college I left behind became a dumping ground of all the things lost and found

I didn't realise

I left so many things here and there

Completely erased from my mind

for quite some time

An old library where young minds were intellectually fed

and the banality of youth was sincerely spent

that was nothing more than

a place full of scary silence,

terrifying whispers, unrhymed soft tapping of foot,

talking eyes and secret dancing of the lips

Now looks different, a new sense of bliss

a library or a mending site

or a beach for healing turbulent tides

I didn't realise

I left so many things there

My hut of memories and tales

Tales that were written and forgotten have also turned pale

I understood so late, the quirk of fate

The eye sight weakens with time but vision improves

After travelling far and wide, you come back in old shoes

searching for the lost broken roots

The age turns limbs brittle but cannot defeat the will

Will to find and fix everything

and make it whole again!

By Pragya Bajpai