"A Brief History of Two Killings" by Vikram Grewal

I have time to kill

Feel guilty but can’t help it

Checking the bill again

‘Café Frappe’ did I pronounce it rightly

This time?

The best I could do

Also asked for a cocoa topping

Not sure what it tastes like

I am not hungry

That streetside pav bhaaji was heavy

The waiter’s getting my order

It looks like ordinary cold coffee

Sips

It tastes like one too

Frappé

Hmm

Sighs

I am not hungry

Frappé

My official permission to kill time inside

That expensive coffeehouse

I’d heard time is money

How does it feel to kill both simultaneously

In cold blood?

‘Feel guilty but can’t help it’

I rest my case your honour

The menu seemed to have life in it

Its numbers mocked me

The cheapest item suited me

(With cocoa topping to avoid the attendant’s judging)

The television’s working in here

But the people around seem more watchable

Glasses full

Eyes empty

Furnished tables

Tarnished smiles

Real money

From fake pockets

Slipping out

Like sand in the hourglass

Time and money withering

Feel guilty but can’t help it

I don’t belong here

These brittle beings behind fiber-glass doors

They’ll all break once I leave

‘Sab thaath pada reh jaayega jab laad chalega banjara’

Nazir was a genius

The cocoa topping is precipitating

At the bottom of the frappe

Settling

Just like the hourglass sand

Have to drink as slowly as possible

Have to take my time

Have to kill my time

That prodigal son there

That filthy rich magnate

That callous young lover

That affluent geek hippie

That kurta-laden neta

They tell me

I don’t belong here

For I am none among them

But that frappe tells me

I must stay

I must stir that cocoa topping

Slowly

To make up for the money

To recover it even though I have

Killed it

Not to recover it perhaps

But to compensate for

Its demise with that of its

Counterpart.