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My eyes devoured
the exotic blackness on the
pink stone loaded with history
lying in the dark corner of
the Professor’s
semi-circular room
the room with a silver Samovar
boiling and trembling with
Indian tea.

I need not
decipher the Persian alphabets
engraved on the darkening little minuscule
pieces of masjids, some centuries old.

The Professor in Persian gently moved
in his room
touching his antiques with his magical
wand–the tales of his research.

Shah Jehan sipped his tea from his
china-cup, and I from mine,
saluting the Professor with
moghul etiquette,

“Allah! Allah!

Om! Om!� � it was that broken
pink and blue tile
echoing and reverberating those sounds
in that semi-cirular, low-roofed room,
that tile,

so oppressively silent in the fakir’s hut
so loudly eloquent here.
fixed in a masjid first
and later, in a temple,
it was soaked in history.

Never will the Professor be able to
squeeze all its tales–the wonderful tales
of Allah and Om
multiplying in number and
building contemporary monuments
in the minds of the visitors sipping
tea in the Professor’s dark room.