Hindustani Lyric

Hindustani Lyric is flash fiction, and it is about the way in which decades pass in the blink of an eye.

The Emergency gripped India, but no-one rushed in our little town, where we bunked school and let the juice of mangoes carve rivers between our greedy knuckles. You were class topper, so Amma encouraged our friendship and Appa resented our comparison.

Dust could not settle in the air by that lake, its surface raw like jute, so it felt like the right place to tell you secrets. I spun them carefully with my tongue until they were woven into the bones of the gnarled banyan we hid in.

Liberalisation for India, and for you, too. Why not? England meant a better life, and you were still unwed. I cried, and told you I was happy. You cried, and said it was because you would miss me. I felt stupid for not saying I would miss you, too.

Facebook found India, only you were never rediscovered. At that reunion, my eyes ricocheted between half-remembered faces, until Bhaarati conspiratorially whispered she was glad you hadn’t come, and she had heard rumours about you from a London cousin.

Section 377 excised from India, but it had already tattooed itself into me. I told my wife I was glad because our future children could be happy, no matter who they loved. Indians abroad crowed about the country they abandoned, and I imagined you in their callow gloats. I did not know who you lived with, so I could devise only glimpses of my own face in the window of your life.

When Amma died, I waited alone at the airport. Once, we trod mischievous paths together. Now we no longer moved in tandem, but in yawning strides. Still, even the longest step must bring the feet together again, and so my heart beat three hundred and seventy-seven times before I took breath.