This past year, in Bangalore, I have tried to wear my heart on my sleeve. For instance: I wrote the following poem after a lovely, windy night spent with friends and lovers on the city’s edge – so to say, of course – because their house overlooked an airport runway. As a late dinner turned into an after-dinner coffee and a post-dinner-post-coffee smoke sesh, I kept looking at the time – worryingly. It must have not been a weekend. But a friend kept nudging me to stick around. And I did because, in this city, I try to wear my heart on my sleeve.


Yesterday, a friend told me,

“Dhruv, it seems,

your heart is still in Dilli.”


I told her, “Friend!

Who knows what,

Of the matters of the heart?!


But it seems highly unlikely!”


“Every morning before,

I leave for work,

I wear my father’s old watch,

And pin it, my heart,

That silly old thing,

To my sleeve.”