The jingle of the jalras and the quiet hum of the shruthi box gravitate
Across the street, carrying joy and devotion through the winds of fate
From the house at the end of the street, enraptured and unafraid,
Until you let the sun set on our empire's gate.

You wouldn't be the first renegade
To flee before the bomb could detonate,
You fired the grenade and left the neighbourhood aflame,
While the house at the end of the street sat abandoned and betrayed.

The street is stunned with silence, and you're to blame,
For the slowly souring memories our minds have captured and framed.
Saturdays passed by uneventful and mundane,
Even though the house at the end of the street stayed the same.

The paint began to chip off in disdain
At the house at end of the street, as if to complain.
It was no longer abandoned, but no longer alive.
And the banisters we once slid down watch us from afar, now austere and restrained.

The house at the end of the street could never be revived,
But every time a shruthi box sounds, the whispering winds contrive
To reinstate a sliver of the passion that would once radiate
Through the streets of the neighbourhood, because even after the years passed, the memories survived.

The jingle of the jalras and the quiet hum of the shruthi box did once gravitate
Across the street, carrying joy and devotion through the winds of fate
From the house at the end of the street, enraptured and unafraid,
Until the sun finally set on our empire's gate.

- To my neighbourhood music teacher who left the city 

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