Next to the bakery was Shivan’s barber-shop and nearby an
old rickety wooden staircase we loved to climb led to the
kind tailor's shop we loved to go to
Fascinated by the many sewing machines in there, the zips,
the differently-colored buttons, and his measuring tape
O junction with your one mangy brown stray of a street dog
and many stray cats
O junction, you are my Malgudi
My Wessex, you are my Tbilisi!
My junction, yet never mine only!
Junction of my mornings, sunshine-noons, evenings,
twilights and my nights
I immortalize you in this poem and in my story
Titled aptly “The Junction”
Not as you are now
But as you were then!
In my mind, you have not aged!
Babu's vegetable shop that came later is not a part of you
By this crazy logic
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