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The sun flirted with the autumn evening,

Disappearing behind scattered clouds,

As the hills rolled darkly

And lights warmed distant homes.

In the far reaching horizon,

The sky swirled from orange

To the wonderous, heavenly shades

Of twilight.

The half moon brightened up,

And hung by invisible bonds

From the opening stars,

Exaggerated twilight.

The crickets started their monotony,

The pines and bushes grew dark

Radiating jungle fears

And flickering firefly lights.

Two birds, worm weary,

Sailed the darkening expanse

Overhead, leaving the day

And its finds behind.

Leaving only the burning Ravana,

His cannonade of bursting crackers

Raging inferno and cumulus smoke,

Lonely in that autumn twilight.

~Aniket Alam~

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I wrote this poem exactly 20 years ago. Well almost. Dussehra fell on 2 October in 1987. I was in class 11 at that time, studying in Central School in Shimla. We lived in the Himachal Pradesh University campus where my father taught political science. Next to our block of flats was a large playing field, the far end of which hosted the colourful effigies of Ravan and his brothers on Dussehra each year.

This is not a great poem and I have refrained from dumping my teenage exeburance on this site. Till now. But recently, in a crass display of nepotism and self-advertisement, I have lowered the poetic benchmarks for my own verses and decided to publish them here. Most of the two hundred odd poems I wrote are very embarrassing and you will be spared them. Some are not that bad. This being one of them. The reason I still like this poem is for the sense of loss it has at the burning of the demon king. Plus that it reminds me of a particularly fond personal memory…

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