I went to see a friend today and ended up noticing the lit windows of the buildings on my way. The thought that behind every window is probably a person with a life as complex as my own moved me and I had to write it down, so I did. The word for this realisation is ‘sonder’.

I am driving across the city
just as it’s settling in evening slumber.
A glimpse at its skyline is making my heart
curiously seek and wander.

The tiny, lit windows of the beautiful horizon
that make up all city lights
are spinning tales all their own
as they tower from their great heights.

Behind the bright window at the top
is a grandma looking for her glasses.
Behind the window twice below
is an artist looking at his canvasses.

Behind the top window of the next building
is a prayer’s diya, flickering.
Behind the dim-lit one a storey above
has a lover on phone, bickering.

While here, let’s also see a lamp
in the window on the right.
It has a writer trying to finish
her half-written poem on ‘Plight’.

This isn’t just an array of lights;
every window has a story behind
with its own characters and calamities,
some crude and some refined.

And just as I am looking up there,
a person got bored of stars
and is now looking down below instead,
wondering of people in passing cars.

Creative Commons Licence
© City lights by Neha Sharma is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.