Books, Places and People

Books are great roads
Great teachers
Great Planes..
That take you places..
Give your imagination..
Something to work on..
The Paris of my thoughts..
Having an imaginary croissant
With an imaginary cup of coffee.
It is all well and good.
But books turn us into books.

Places are better..
They come with a smell
And a reluctant History
That makes more books.
Places can talk too
The chaotic ones have a stronger voice.
The quite ones talk with silences.
Some have picturesque lakes
And others have picturesque filth.
But all of them write pages in our minds..

Then some ambiguous evening comes
With pictures and verses
From the book that is being written
Between your eyes..

But all of this is still not enough
The luxuries of a "spoilt" cultured kid
Or of an ambitious intrepid traveler
Or of a nonchalant, eccentric hermit..

The true void can be filled
And brimmed over
When two souls talk
And teach each other..
The honesty of an eyelid
Trying to contain a tear
Or of a back-slapping cackle..
The comfort of reaching out
And of being reached out to..
The pauses between words
And the words picked between pauses
The similarities between confident smiles
All over, across the oceans

They teach us sans the snobbishness
Sans the hefty History
And they do well because they
Don't really think they have anything to teach..

When souls teach each other,
They become kindred souls.