Monochrome

 

Monochrome

There was a time
when the world sang in dialects—
each bird with its own grammar of dawn,
each river whispering a taste
its stones had learned to remember.

Villages smelled of what they made—
earth breathing through clay,
jaggery melting in brass,
threads steeped in dyes
and in the hum of a grandmother’s song.

Dharwad had its sweetness,
Banaras its silk that shimmered like prayer,
Bidar its craft of shadowed silver—
the map of India was not drawn by borders,
but by the fragrance of its earth,
by textures, accents, and the slow music of hands.

Now the shelves gleam—
everything available everywhere,
everywhere tasting the same.
The world wears one fabric—
immaculate, efficient,
stitched by a machine
that has forgotten the warmth of touch.

We call it progress—
a symmetry that shines,
yet leaves the heart unstirred.
I miss the uneven,
the crooked, the imperfectly real—
where surprise bloomed
in the crack of difference.

The monochrome is gentle;
it never offends,
but it never astonishes either.
And sometimes,
in the silence between screens and shelves,
I watch the birds still sing in many tongues,
the rivers still taste of themselves—
and I know we are missing
the very sound of life
we were never meant to copy.