I Won't Let You Go (22 page)

Glimmering in evening’s colours, Jhelum’s curved stream

   faded in the dark, like a sheathed

        curved sword.

   The day ebbed. Night, in full flood,

rushed in, star-flowers afloat in its black waters.

        In the darkened valley

            deodars stood in rows.

Creation, it seemed, had something to say in its sleep,

        but couldn’t speak clearly:

clumps of inarticulate sound moaned in the dark.

       Suddenly that instant I heard

           a sound’s lightning-flash in the evening sky:

    it darted across that tract of empty space,

then receded – further, further – till it died.

            Wild birds,

        how your wings drunk on the wine

            of violent gales raised billows of surprise

and merriment’s loud laughter in the sky!

         That sumptuous whoosh – it was

     a sonorous nymph of the heavens swishing across,

disturbing stillness seated in meditation.

      They quivered with excitement –

the mountains sunk in darkness,

the deodar-glen.

         What those wings had to say

             seemed to conduct

         just for an instant

            velocity’s passion

    into the very heart of thrilled stillness.

The mountain wished to be Baishakh’s vagrant cloud.

    The trees – they wanted to untie themselves from the earth,

            to spread wings

     and follow the line of that sound,

to lose themselves in the quest for the sky’s limit.

     The dream of that evening burst and ripples rose,

         waves of yearning for what was far, far away.

             Vagabond wings!

     How the universe cried with longing –

     ‘Not here, no, not here, somewhere else!’

             Wild birds,

you’ve lifted the lid of stillness for me tonight.

    Under the dome of silence

           in land, water, air

    I can hear the noise of wings – mad, unquiet.

            The grass

beat their wings on their own sky – the earth.

    Millions of seed-birds

        spread their sprouting wings

from unknown depths of subterranean darkness.

            Yes, I can see

         these mountains, these forests

     travelling with outspread pinions

from island to island, from one unknown to another.

         Darkness is troubled by light’s anguished cries

     as the wings of the very stars vibrate.

         Many are the human speeches I’ve heard migrating

             in flocks, flying on invisible tracks 

from obscure pasts to distant inchoate futures.

        And within myself I’ve heard

               day and night

        in the company of countless birds

a homeless bird speeding through light and dark

     from one unknown shore to yet another.

On cosmic wings a refrain echoes through space:

‘Not here, no, but somewhere, somewhere else!’

The day you rose, world poet, above a far shore,

England’s horizon found you close to her breast

and reckoned you were her treasure, hers alone.

She kissed your radiant forehead and for a while

held you tight in the clasp of her sylvan boughs,

hid you for a while behind her stole of mists

on a playground of fairies, dewy, dense with grass,

where wild flowers blow. As yet the island’s groves

hadn’t woken up to hymn the poet-sun.

Thereafter, slowly, to the infinite’s silent signals

you left the horizon’s lap, and hour by hour

climbed, through the centuries, brilliant, to the zenith,

taking your place in the centre of all directions,

lighting all minds. Hear how, in another age,

on the shore of the Indian Ocean the quivering fronds

of massed coconut-groves ring with your triumph.

         My little girl,

    having heard the call of her mates,

stopping and starting nervously in the dark,

    was making her way down the stairs.

         She had a lamp in her hand,

which she carefully guarded with her sari’s end.

          I was on the roof-terrace

      on that night of Chaitra, full of stars.

      Suddenly hearing my daughter’s cry, I rushed

         to see what the matter was.

         It seemed that as she’d been going down the stairs,

      the wind had blown out her lamp.

         ‘What’s up, Bami?’ – I asked.

She cried from below, ‘I’m lost!’

         On that night of Chaitra, full of stars,

            back on the roof-terrace, looking up at the sky,

a girl just like my Bami I thought I saw –

            slowly, without companions, walking by,

         lamp-flame shielded by dark-blue sari’s end.

     Should her light have gone out, making her suddenly stop,

she would have filled the sky with her cry – ‘I am lost!’

They always say: ‘Has gone’, ‘Has gone away’.

             Yet let me add this:

        don’t say he or she is not.

    That’s a lie.

        Therefore I cannot endure it.

            It hurts my soul.

         Coming and going

     to men are so clearly partitioned

         that their language

             bears but half a hope.

     But I would unite myself to that ocean

where
is
and
is-not,
in their fullness, are equipoised.

A family rich for generations has become poor;        it’s to them that the house
over there belongs.

    Each day the bad times dent it a bit more.

    Walls crumble into sand;        sparrows dig into broken floors

with their claws, flapping their wings in the dust;        in Chandi’s

chapel pigeons congregate like flocks of torn rain-clouds.

    No one has bothered to find out when a door-leaf on the north

side broke off.        The other leaf – left on its own like a grieving

widow – bangs again and again in the wind; nobody looks at it.

    A house in three parts.        Only five rooms are inhabited, the

rest being locked up.        Like an old man of eighty-five, most of

whose life is occupied by memories in ancient padlocks, –        with

only one area available for the movement of modern times.

    Dribbling sand and baring its bricks, the house stands on the

edge of the street like an apathetic tramp dressed in a patched

kantha,        as unmindful of himself as of others.

In the early hours of one morning a wailing of women rose from

the direction of the house.        The last son of the family, who used

to scrape a living by playing Radhika in amateur open-air theatricals,

had just died at the age of eighteen.

    The women wailed for a few days,        then one heard no more

about them. 

    After that
all
the doors in the house were padlocked.

    Only that
one
widowed door on the north side, which neither

broke off nor could stay shut,        kept slamming in the wind crash

crash like the beating of an agonised heart.

One afternoon one heard the noise of children in that house.

    A red-bordered sari was hanging from the balcony.

    After so many days a portion of the house has been let.

The tenant has modest wages and numerous children.        The

exhausted mother gets fed up and spanks them,        and they roll

on the floor and howl.

    A middle-aged maid toils all day and has rows with the mistress;        she says ‘I’m leaving!’ but never does.

This part of the house is seeing a little bit of maintenance every day.

    Cracked panes have been papered over;        gaps in the balcony

railing have had bamboo slats over them;        a broken bedroom

window is propped up by a brick;        the walls have had a coat of

whitewash, though the black patches haven’t altogether disappeared.

    On the cornice of the roof-top terrace the sudden apparition of

an impoverished pot-plant of variegated leaves feels ashamed of

itself before the sky.        Right next to it the foundation-cracking

peepul tree stands erect,        its leaves appearing to laugh cheekily

at the other leaves.

    A great decline of a great prosperity.        Trying to conceal it with

the little tricks of little hands has only laid it bare.

    No one, though, has ever bothered to look at the empty room

on the north side.        Its mateless door still keeps thrashing in the

wind –        like a wretch beating his breast.

I remember that afternoon.        From time to time the rain would

slacken, then a gust of wind would madden it again.

    It was dark inside the room, and I couldn’t concentrate on 

work.        I took my instrument in my hand and began a monsoon

song in the mode of Mallar.

    She came out of the next room and came just up to the door.

Then she went back.        Once more she came and stood outside

the door.        After that she slowly came in and sat down. She had

some sewing in her hand;        with her head lowered, she kept

working at it.        Later she stopped sewing and sat looking at the

blurred trees outside the window.

    The rain slowed, my song came to an end.        She got up and

went to braid her hair.

    Nothing but this.        Just that one afternoon twined with rain

and song and idling and darkness.

    Stories of kings and wars are cheaply scattered in history.        But

a tiny fragment of an afternoon story stays hidden in time’s box

like a rare jewel.        Only two people know of it.

It was at daybreak that she took her leave.

    ‘Everything’s unreal,’ said my mind, attempting an explanation.

    ‘Why?’ – I asked in a cross mood –        ‘Aren’t these all real –

the sewing-box on the table,        the flower-pot on the roof-terrace,

the name-inscribed hand-fan on the bed?’

    My mind replied, ‘But still you have to consider that –’

    ‘Stop it,’ I interrupted.        ‘Look at that book of stories with a

hair-pin stuck half-way through the pages.        Clearly, she hadn’t

finished reading it.        Is that unreal as well?        If so, why should

she be even more unreal than that?’

    My mind fell silent.        A friend came and said, ‘What’s good is

real and never perishes.        The whole world cherishes it, keeping

it on its breast like a jewel in a chain.’

    ‘How do you know?’ – I asked angrily –        ‘Isn’t the body

good? Where’s that body gone?’

    As a little boy in an angry mood vents his violence on his

mother, I began to lash out against whatever was my refuge in

this universe.        ‘This world’s a traitor,’ I said.

    Suddenly something startled me.        It seemed to me that someone

whispered, ‘Ungrateful!’ 

    Looking out of the window, I saw the moon, the third of the

waning phase, rising behind a casuarina tree.        It was like the

hide-and-seek of the laughter of her who had gone.        A rebuke

came to me from the star-sprinkled darkness, ‘That I had let

myself be caught – was
that
illusory?        And why this fanatical

faith in the screen that’s come between us?’