Snapshots from EDINBURGH

Piyush Roy

It’s often said that places make people. The context has often been argued as a major influence towards the shaping of our worldviews. But if human beings are indeed a product of their context, then a lot has to do with who they are ‘being’ with, irrespective of where they are… Here’s sharing a poem and a tribute to one such place that has been my home for the last few years, a city that has changed and influenced me, as much for its being a truly ‘global city’ in every aspect of that term of belongingness, as also being home to citizens who have made many an outsider like me,feel forever at home. Needless to add, one of the world’s premiere destinations for literature and arts, Edinburgh, also is a cinematic city that never ceases being a photographer’s delight – come autumn, sun in the rain or winter!

You came to me like a secret reopened

Unveiling yourself like a diary’s whisper

You made me fall like an autumn leaf

To gather again like a winter’s sleep

You will remain forever an unfinished chapter

An open verse, a role well played

Some finite relations, few loves, a teacher

A boy, a student, a brother, many mentors

You told me I have beautiful eyes

Draped my being in styles carefree

You touched the skin that I didn’t want to live in once…

Found and lost me in a kiss before flight

Dreams over drinks, many hats, long walks

Lazy Mondays, busy Sundays

Drives with friends, fond fights, no end

Tinkered memoirs with wandered souls

Films off the fringe, faith in a choir’s song

You made the man in me a boy again

To argue freely, believe passionately

Make friendships like a dare

Hug relations without a care

Enriched, excited, calm and collected

Gothic, cinematic, lonely and a bit vain

Edinburgh…

I will miss you again!