For someone who'll read this

500 years from now

How are you?
I am sure a lot has changed

between my time and yours,
but we're not very different,

you have only one thing on me -
hindsight.

I have all these questions for you:
Do cars fly now?

Is Mumbai still standing by the sea?
How do you folks manage without ozone?

Have the aliens come yet?
Who from my century is still remembered?

How long did India and Pakistan last?
When did Kashmir become free?

It must be surprising for you
looking at our time,

our things must seem so strange to you,
our wars so little,

our toilets for 'men' and 'women'
must make you laugh

our cutting down of trees
would be listed in your 'Early Causes'

our poetry in which the moon is still
a thing far away

must make you wonder, both for that moon
and for the poetry.

You must be baffled,
that we couldn't even imagine

the things you now take for granted.
But let that be,

would you do me a favour,
for 'old time's sake'?

Would you go to the Humayun's Tomb
in what used to be Delhi

and just as you're climbing the front staircase,
near the fourth rung, I have cut into

the stone wall to your left -
'Akhil loves Rohit'

Will you go and see it?
Just that, go see it.