Hillbrow, Poems from Stranger than a Sun

The Pakistani doctor from Faisalabad practices on a busy street at Hillbrow. His surgery is full of people, white, black and coloureds. They all want to live. Like an overshadowing doom with scratches of light now and then he tries to pick and choose. Hillbrow is in his vein too. It runs in virulence, speeding in hopeless strides. His patients too change their gasps before moving on. I think of him. In days bloodied with endless motorcades and streets hanging on desperately to a fast moving train, he sometimes tries stretching himself to people he had left. The Nigerian mafia at times pushes an unwilling customer from the seventh floor. The train doesn’t stops. There is a big hole in the sky here. The sun always forgets to pass by. I live a life somewhat closer to breathing somewhere close by. In evenings when a storm takes familiarity of a lost vengeance, I believe I am still alive. The heart throbs bridging living with those dying and the dying with those who have just survived. In our many lives, we always shared this beating heart, dying is the stream of light, a train running over a slumber unhinged to our other lives. We do wake up finding ourselves cornered by time’s insistent pursuit. Living and loving at Old Delhi was not just an end to a despairingly belief. I still see them through window panes when evenings rush in colouring your whispers again.