I Won't Let You Go (31 page)

              Unsummoned, I came,

                 planning to play a trick,

                     meaning to take by surprise

       the busy housewife with her sari-end tucked into her waist.

              No sooner had I stepped on the threshold than I saw

                     her form stretched out on the floor

                        and the beauty of her nap.

In a far neighbourhood in a house of wedding a shanai

       played to the tune of Sarang. The day’s first part

   had gone in that morning drooping in Jyaishtha’s heat.

           Her two hands in layers under a cheek,

              she slept, her body relaxed,

                 fatigued by a festive night,

              beside her unfinished housework.

         The current of work was waveless in her limbs,

              like River Ajay’s last waters, exhausted,

         lying in the margins in a season of no-rain.

     In her slightly open lips hovered

              the sweet unconcern of a closing flower.

     The dark lashes of the sleeping eyes had cast

                shadows on the pale cheeks.

                In front of her window the weary world

                    trod softly, going about its business

                         to the rhythm of her tranquil breathing.

                                    The clock’s hints

                    ticked on a corner table in the deaf room.

                A calendar swung in the wind against the wall.

The mobile instants, stalled in her resting awareness,

      had converged into one steadfast moment,

              opening its bodiless wings

                  over her deep sleep.

Her weary body’s sad sweetness was spread on the ground

    like a lazy full moon that hadn’t slept all night

       and now in the morning was at an empty field’s last limits.

              Her pet cat miaowed by her ear,

                  reminding her of its need for milk.

                 Startled, she woke up, saw me, quickly pulled

                           her sari over her breast and said with pique,

                     ‘Shame! Why didn’t you wake me before?’

       Why? I couldn’t give an adequate answer to that.

Even someone we know very well we don’t know entirely –

        this is something that is suddenly revealed to us.

             When laughter and conversation have come to a halt,

                  when the vital wind is stilled within our minds,

                      what is it then that appears

                           in the depths of that unexpressed?

                       Is it that sadness of existence

                              that can’t be fathomed,

                       or that mute’s question to which the answer plays

                           hide-and-seek in the bloodstream?

        Is it that ache

                of separation which has no history? Is it a dream-walk

along an unknown path to the call of an unfamiliar flute?

                Before which silent mystery did I pose

that unspoken question, ‘Who are you? In which world

         will your final identity unfold itself?’

That morning, across the lane in a primary school

        children were shouting their tables in a chorus;

   a jute-laden buffalo cart was wringing the wind

        with its wheels’ groans; somewhere near by

            builders were banging into place a new house-roof;

               below the window in the garden

                  under a chalta tree

                      a crow was dragging and pecking

                         at a discarded mango stone.

Over all that scene time’s distance has now cast

               its rays of enchantment.

In the indolent sunshine of a perfectly commonplace

        midday lost in history those details

                ring the picture of a nap, giving it a halo

                        of beauty never seen before.

You came with the soft beauty

       of the green years,

    brought me my heart’s first amazement,

       the first spring-tide to my blood.

    The sweetness of that love, born of half-knowing,

       was like the first fine golden needlework

    on dawn’s black veil, the sheath

       of furtive unions of gazes.

           As yet birdsong was

       inchoate within the mind; the forest’s murmur

           would swell and then fade away.

In a family of many members

    in secrecy we began to build

        a private world for the two of us. As birds

    gather straws and twigs, a few every day, to build,

        so the things we gathered for that world of ours were

            simple, collections of bits

                 fallen or blown from moments that passed by.

            The value of that world lay

        not in its material, but in the way

                 we created it.

Then one day from that dual management of the boat

            you went ashore at some point, by yourself;

        I kept drifting in the current, while you sat

    on the further bank. In work or play

            our hands never joined again. The twosome split,

        the structure of our life together was cracked.

    As a green islet, newly painted upon

        the canvas of the sea’s dalliance-restless waves,

            can be wiped off by one tumultuous flooding,

    so did it vanish – our young world

            with its green beauty of new sprouts

                    of joys and sorrows.

Since then many days have passed.

    When, of an Ashadh evening pregnant with rain,

        I look at you in my mind, I see you still

ringed by the magic of that emerging youth.

        Your age has not advanced.

In the mango buds of your springtime the aromas

        still assert themselves; your middays live,

               just as separation-pained, even today,

        with the call of doves, as before.

               To me your memory’s remained

        amongst all these ageless identities of nature.

               Lovely you are in immutable lines,

               fixed on a steadfast foundation.

My life’s flow never stopped

    at any one spot.

       Through depths, difficulties,

          conflicts of good and bad,

                  thoughts, labours, aspirations,

    sometimes through errors, sometimes through successes,

        I’ve come far beyond

            the bounds that were known to you.

        There I’d now be a foreigner to you.

    If you could today, this thunder-echoing evening,

        come and sit before me, you would see

            in my eyes the look of a man who’s lost

                    his sense of direction

            on the beach of an unknown sky,

                        in his track through a blue forest.

Would you then, sitting by my side,

    speak in my ears the remnants of bygone whispers?

       But look, listen: how the waves are roaring,

           how the vultures are screaming,

               how the thunders are rumbling in the sky,

           how the dense sal forests are tossing their heads!

       Your speech would be a surfing raft of sport

                   in a vortex of mad waters.

    In the old days my whole mind

        joined with your whole mind in unison.

    That’s why new songs surged

        in the joy of first creation

           and it seemed

    that the yearnings of epochs had fulfilled themselves 

                 in you and me.

            Then did each day bring word

                 of the arrival of a new light,

            like stars opening their eyes in primeval times.

      Hundreds of strings have

            mounted my instrument these days.

                None of them are known to you.

      The tunes you practised in those days

                may be shamed on these strings.

      What was then the natural writing of felt emotions

             would now be copying, tracing a model hand.

              Yet the tears spring to my eyes.

      On this sitar had once descended the grace

                 of your fingers’ first tenderness.

                    That magic is still within it.

      It was you who gave this boat the very first push

          from the green banks of adolescence: it still has

                      the momentum from that.

      So when in midstream today I sing my sailing songs,

                  your name may get caught

                     in some sudden melodic expansion.

    A sudden encounter in a train compartment,

        just what I thought could never happen.

Before, I used to see her most frequently in red,

        the red of pomegranate blossoms.

    Now she was in black silk,

            the end lifted to her head

    and circling her face as fair and comely as the dolonchampa.

       She seemed to have gathered, through that blackness,

              a deep distance round herself,

       the distance that is in a mustard-field’s far edge

               or in a sal forest’s dark kohl.

       My mind paused, seeing someone I knew

    touched with the solemnity of the unknown.

       Suddenly she put her newspaper down

              and greeted me.

       The path for socialising was opened

              and I started a conversation –

       ‘How are you? How’s the family?’ and so forth.

    She kept looking out through the window in a gaze

that seemed to be beyond the contamination of near-by days,

    gave one or two extremely brief replies,

       left some questions unanswered,

    let me understand through her hand’s impatient gestures

       that it was pointless to raise such matters,

           better to keep quiet.

           I was on another seat

               with her companions.

She beckoned me with her fingers to come and sit next to her.

    I thought it was bold of her to do so

                   and did as asked.

    Softly she spoke,

            her voice shielded by the train’s rumble,

                 ‘Please don’t mind.

            We’ve no time to waste time.

        I’ve got to get off at the next station

                and you’ll go further.

            Never again shall we meet.

        I want to hear from your mouth

    the answer to the question that’s been postponed so long.

                Will you speak the truth?’

‘I shall,’ said I. And she,

    still looking out – at the sky – put this question,

        ‘Those days of ours that are gone –

            have they gone entirely?

               Is nothing left?’

    For a minute I held my tongue,

        then replied,

            ‘The stars of night are all within the deep

                 of the light of day.’

I was bothered with my answer. Had I made it up?

    She said, ‘Never mind. Now go back to your seat.’

        They all got off at the next station;

               I continued alone.

Dogged follower at my heels, my unfulfilled past,

shadows of unslaked thirst risen from a ghost-land,

determined to keep me company, zealous in back-beckoning,

soft-playing on a sitar a tune that drugs, obsesses,

like a bee, hive-dislodged, humming in a hushed

deflowered garden: from the back onto the path before me

you cast the sunset-peak’s long shadow, fabricate

a tedious farewell twilight, ashen and pale.

Companion at my back, tear the bindings of dreams;

and those treasures of suffering, tinted futilities of desires,

which you have snatched and guarded from death’s grasp –

give them back to death. Today I’ve heard

in the cloudless post-monsoon’s far-gazing sky

a packless vagabond’s flute, and I’ll follow it.