The Fifteenth of June

You are
Wine sipped in fine company, laced with conversations
Studded with 'Rushdie' and 'Schumpeter', and
You are
Bombay downed in a violent gol-gappa gulp
Dripping with gulaal-coloured nautch and Bollywood passion and an insatiable will
To be raucously alive.

You are beautiful, and you know it; your
Eyes are the colour of soft milk chocolate
The kind we used to love as children; that we used to lick
From the golden-silver foil of a nostalgic Indian Cadbury's, and 
You worry incessantly about 
Spectacles and rashes and hair density.

You are godless, and
I do not know of anyone more devout.

You are American hope and ambition and the
Desperate need to be known and loved, and
You are the half-urge
To live away your life in a quiet cottage
With books, and someone you love, and pass away
As silently as you came.

You are rational and logical, and
You keep a list of people who called you on your birthday.

You are the strongest girl I know, and
You cry once a day.

You are easy friendship, and instant connections, and Little Tiny Acts
Of love, and
You are Delhi 2012.

You are regret
Of all the shared moments and individual ones shared
That I lost out on, when I went off in my search for
Happiness, and 
If losing you was the price, then if I could go back in time,
I would choose you.

You are anti-nationalist, and pro-Pakistan
and pro-Pakistani boys, and  
you were standing on a plastic chair, framed gloriously in your tri-coloured salwar-kameez-chunni against 
A sky awash with two thousand and twelve tri-coloured balloons, and
Your hair was flying in a sable cloud, and you were looking off into the distance
With a hinting smile on your lips, and 
In that moment frozen permanently and hung on a canvas in the gallery of my mind, I love you like I love Art.

You are now twenty one, and promising,
And beautiful and intelligent and charming and gracious and bursting at the seams with
Potential, and

Most of all,
Noopur Sen,
You are loved.

Happy 21st birthday, Khargu. *trumpet*

…

You are my reflection cast onto a prettier mirror.
You are what I hope to be and I love you.