This is no place for lovers.

This is no place for lovers.
Especially not lovers
    who refuse
      to end up in all sorts of knots.
      to end up in holy matrimony.
You can’t take your lover home.

Even your progressive friends frown
“Why would you invest in a man
Who won’t even buy you a few dinners?
You are old now, you should be more prudent.”
So they won’t offer you their guest room, the spare bed, a honey pot.

You double-check the auto-lock on your car.
You scout around for quiet roads.
Safe lanes, dense foliage, no traffic,
Not even pedestrians.
And hope that the residents won’t phone the cops
When they see a car parked, steaming,
With a couple locked in each other. Inside.

Hotel rooms have wi-fi cameras
And you’d rather not be in a sexy movie
       Since you won’t even get paid
       Or even get a 10% off on the room fare.
But you smile at the thought
     Really, love, no one does it better than us.
And that friend hooked on desi porn, assures you,
“Try karo, I will let you know if I recognise you.”
And both of you laugh.
But that’s not what you want.

You dream of marriage then.
That rich, cute, Ooper Bharath boy from Bhopal
With 163 acres of land.
Surely, somewhere, in all that land
You and your lover could discover each other?
You and your lover could plant memories?
But India is about honour killings
It would be fun to die for passion
      So grand and revolutionary
      A legend, really.
      Like Juliet. Like Anarkali.
But so boring if they killed you,
      to teach a lesson to
adulterous women
When the men get away with malfunctioning cocks and rude snorts.
When the men get away with everything.
    Even the rapes of minors.
Marriage will never end well, you know.
You would be buried 5 feet by 4
In that 163 acres of land.

You can’t even come together on a Nerudian bicycle
There’s too little space to manoeuvre.
And you want to possess
Every inch of his body.
    With your hands, your mouth,
    indeed all your senses.
You want his mouth to discover
     pathways on
the smooth, buxom curves of yours.
A bicycle will give you both
a bloody crick in the neck.

You sleep every night on a large king size bed
Alone
And in your dreams you finally consummate.
The shudders wake you.
You are satiated and hungry at once.
If sex is mind over matter
Then you have been lovers now for centuries.
Only, this country is no place for lovers.