Saturday 23 January 2016

"Severus, please?"

"Severus..." mumbled a pensive Dumbledore, his eyes transfixed on the bravest sepoy he'd raised, as Draco Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange looked on.

Severus didn't move. He didn't even blink an eye. He just watched and watched the old man, under whose commands, he'd lived much of his life for the past seventeen years.

"Please," the headmaster sounded more helpless this time, like the autumn leaf about to get detached from the tree it had survived on, ready to hit the ground, ready to let go.

Severus stared for a second more, perhaps to bait his heart into the delusion of sanity, to pip his tears with remorse, his love with hatred.

The last he'd cried was seventeen years back, holding a dead woman in his arms, with her baby wailing at a loss it couldn't even comprehend.

A sepoy isn't supposed to have any feelings, and he'd fooled everyone except a beating piece of flesh that had survived on a Patronus more than blood.

"Avada Kedavra!"

He didn't take a second longer to flash his wand than he'd taken to rip apart his conscience, and the bravest man Hogwarts ever had was now a Death Eater.

Death had failed to surprise him any longer, for he'd seen many. It was his life that did.

For seventeen years he had lived for a reason he couldn't quite understand. He was the man who died every day for the boy who lived.

The day he died for the umpteenth time, albeit never to rise again, it was the boy who looked on, not wailing this time, but yet again unable to comprehend the loss he was staring at.

Severus cried for the first time in seventeen years, but it wasn't for death. It was for a pair of eyes he was leaving behind.

The eyes he couldn't look into and protect any longer. The eyes he'd already lost once, and would do anything to save that from recurring. 

The eyes of a Lily.

Like in his life, he was cheated in his death too. Why did he live on then? Why did he wait for so long?

It was to answer a rhetoric he was asked every day, "Severus, please?"




This is a tribute to the departed soul of Alan Rickman, who portrayed the role of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series.
It is a character I hold very dear and seek closure from.

Rest in peace, Severus. You'd live on, in here. 

Always!

Sunday 3 January 2016

I lost my heart in Connaught Place

I lost my heart in Connaught Place
It lost itself in the din
It swirled around through my broody face
And got hungover at N-81.

At every nook, at every alley,
It saw a silhouette recede,
It fluttered over helter-skelter,
Only to confirm its imagery.

The pillars- all white
The roads- all dark
The skies spilled Goldust
And the silhouette was lost.

It looked beyond the faces,
It looked beyond the walls
It looked inside the coffee shop
But the silhouette was lost.

It searched the subway
Hoards of souls
Looked for the taller ones
But found it no more.

The onlookers gazed
With contempt and dismay
My poor heart though resembled the dog
Who just refused to sway.

Long strands of hair were everywhere
But the smell was not to be found
The nectar it had drunk first
In the summer of 2009.

Strands gave way to scarfs
Purple ones with white stars
Necks were scanned, so were backs
But none as colossal were found.

Moles on the faces were plenty
Twins though were scanty
Hardly did it ever miss
Didn't find the ones it'd longed to kiss.

My heart was frantic
Tired and erratic
For it had swept the circus
Through summers and winters.

Through autumns and springs
Through souls- living and dead
Through concrete- erect and broken
Through local markets
Through confectionery stalls

Through the earth and the heavens
It searched and searched
To have glimpse of the hurricane
It had seen before it breathed last.

On a fidgety winter morning
My heart was like a phoenix
It burnt itself through the day
But didn't rise ever since.

Its ghost runs through the realms
Hidden behind my broody face
It was a cold November evening
When I lost my heart in Connaught Place.


Photo courtesy- shades-n-hues