Yours eyes are a document
registered in the office books of the government
– and yet you say nothing.
When you look at me like this
and a moment passes,
it is a century of burnt desire.
I live in an ash-heap of your looks.
Officers come, and officers go.
Women turn their sari into chewing cud
looking at you look at me.
If looks were evidence,
there would be a compendium
for me to take to the Supreme Court of desire.
And yet you do not breathe a word.
In the word of the law,
you are innocent,
But there is an archive of looks
floating between us
to which I hold a key.

…
Atreyee Majumder is an anthropologist and writer based in Bangalore.