In high tide or low tide

In the monsoon
The city dweller wrapped himself in a blue tarpaulin
Walking bare-foot
All the way to the Haji Ali Dargah

With every drop of rain
He rendered a qawwali
For Sayyed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari
Whose coffin
With his body
Floated all the way back
From Mecca
Till it rested on the rocks off the coast of Worli

For five hundred years,
The city dweller never entered the Central Shrine
But his qawwalli did
Reaching out to the tomb
Beneath the red and green chaddar