I Won't Let You Go (30 page)

They brought me this wild plant, its leaves

            a yellowish green, its flowers

    like crafted cups of a violet hue

       for drinking the light.

    I ask, ‘What’s it called?’

       No one knows.

It belongs to the universe’s infinite unfamiliar wing,

       where the sky’s nameless stars also belong.

    So I’ve made it captive in a pet-name

       to get to know it by myself in private.

           I call it ‘Peyali’, Miss Cup.

Invited by the garden, they’ve all come –

       dahlia, fuchsia, marigold.

    But this one enjoys the unspotted freedom that comes

       from not being cared for, not being bound by caste.

       It’s a Baul, living on society’s edge.

In no time at all its flowers have fallen off.

    The sound that the falls made

                   couldn’t be caught by ears. 

The conjunction of moments that make up this plant’s horoscope

       is infinitesimal.

The honey stored in its bosom

       is a minute drop.

Its journey’s complete in a tiny spot of time,

    even as the fire-petalled sun completes its flowering

       in an eon’s span.

This plant’s little history’s written by the cosmic scribe

    with a very small pen in the corner of a very small page.

Yet at the same time is that vast history unfolded,

    where sight cannot climb from one page to the next.

    The currents of centuries that flow without intermission

        like slow-motion waves, carrying in their course

            the rises and falls of so many mountain-chains,

        in seas and deserts so many costume-changes –

the same endless time’s long flow has advanced

        through creation’s conflicts

            this floweret’s primeval purpose.

For millions of years in the path of its flowering and falling

    that ancient purpose has stayed new, alive, mobile.

        Its finished, finalised picture’s not appeared yet.

This purpose without body, that picture without lines –

    in which invisible’s vision do they live without end?

In the infinite imagination of the same invisible

    which holds me and the history of all men

             of the past and of the future.

As day by day the woodlands slowly cause

                    Phalgun’s colourful mood to fade away

                        into dry Baishakh’s bareness, so have you,

enchantress, in wanton neglect,

                        withdrawn your witching arts.

Once with your own hands you had spread magic on my eyes,

            set my blood swinging, filled me with drunkenness –

                        my cup-bearer!

Now you’ve emptied the cup,

   dashing the magical juices against the dust.

       You’ve ignored my compliments,

           neglected to summon the surprise of my eyes.

              There’s no accent now in the way you dress yourself,

                  nor, in my name, any of that hushed vibration

                      which had once made it musical.

They say that once winds whirled

                        round the moon’s body.

    Then had it the craft of colours,

           the witchery of music.

                        Then was it ever-new.

    Indifferent to all that, why did it, over the days,

                        block the flow of its own play?

Why did it grow weary of its own sweetness?

    Today all it has

           is the unfriendly duality of light and shade:

                   flowers don’t bloom there,

                        nor do murmuring streams glide.

That silent moon you are to me today.

    And this is my sadness – that you are not sad about it.

Once, sorceress, you were wont to renew yourself

    with my own delight’s dyes.

Today you’ve drawn over that scene

    the black curtain of an epoch’s end,

        colourless, tongue-tied.

You’ve forgotten that the more you gave yourself,

        the more you found yourself in diverse ways.

    Today, by depriving me,

        of your own triumph you’ve deprived yourself.

    The ruins of the era of your sweetness remain

        in the strata of my mind:

    the crumbled gates of those days,

        foundations of palaces,

    garden paths choked with weeds.

           Among the scattered fragments

               of your fallen grandeur I live,

                   groping for the darkness that lies beneath the ground,

                       picking up and saving what my fingers knock against.

        And you dwell

               in the wan desert of your own miserliness,

        which has no water to slake thirst,

            nor even the means

                        to con thirst by mirages.

In the deep dark night

       the rainy wind

             lashes indiscriminately around.

                 Clouds rumble,

                    rattling windows,

                 causing doors to vibrate.

                    I look outside:

             rows of areca and coconut palms

                 are restlessly tossing their heads.

             Lumps of darkness

                 heave in the jack’s thick branches

                    like ghosts conspiring together.

             A ray of light from the street

                    touching a corner of the pond

                 is as sinuous as a snake.

And I remember the old lines –

       ‘Deep the night of Shaon, deep the thunder’s moan…

       at such a time I dreamt…’

             Behind the picture of the Radhika of those days

                 near the poet’s eyes

                     there was a girl,

             a bud of love just sprouting in her mind.

                 Shy she was,

                     her eyes shaded with lamp-black,

             and ‘wringing, wringing’ her blue sari, she went

                         home from the ghat.

This stormy night

    I want to bring her to my mind –

        as she was in her mornings, evenings,

           manner of speech, way of thinking,

               the glance of her eyes –

        that daughter of Bengalis the poet knew

                     three hundred years ago.

        I don’t see her clearly.

She’s in the shadow of others, and these –

        the way they fix their sari-ends on their shoulders,

                    the way they curve their hair into knots

                         sloping slightly on their necks,

        or the way they look you straight in the face, –

                         well, such a picture

        wasn’t in front of the poet three hundred years ago.

Yet – ‘Deep the night of Shaon…

               at such a time I dreamt…’

        That Srabon night the rainy wind did blow

               as it does tonight,

                   and there are likenesses

        between the dreams of yore and the dreams of nowadays.

You are standing outside the doorway, screened by the curtain,

    wondering whether to come into my room.

        Just once I heard the faint tinkle of your bangles.

I can see a bit of your sari-end, pale brick-red,

        stirring in the wind

             without the door.

        I can’t see you,

             but I can see that the western sun

        has stolen your shadow

    and cast it on the floor of my room.

Below your sari’s black border I see

    your creamy golden feet hesitating

        on the threshold.

                            But I won’t call you today.

   Today my light-weight awareness has scattered itself

       like stars in the deep sky of the moon’s waning phase,

            like white clouds surrendering themselves

                to the blue of the post-rains.

My love

   is like a field long abandoned by the farmer,

      its boundary-ridges in ruins,

         on which absent-minded primal nature

      has re-asserted her rights

         without giving it so much as a thought.

   Grass has grown over it,

      weeds without names have sprung.

   It has merged with the wilderness around it,

      as at the end of night the morning star

          lets its own light’s pitcher sink

              into the light of the morning.

Today my mind’s not hemmed in by boundaries,

         so you might misunderstand me.

     All the old signs are wiped out.

You won’t be able to hold me together anywhere

             tight in any trussing.

        Many were the riches I didn’t gain in my life,

             for they were beyond my reach,

        but much more I lost because

                    I didn’t open my palms.

             In that familiar world

                 like an unsophisticated village belle

                    lived this flower, its face covered,

        ignoring my neglect without a grudge –

                        this tamarind flower.

A squat tree by the wall,

    stunted by the niggardly soil,

        its bushy branches growing so close to the ground

                        that I hadn’t realised its age.

Over there lime flowers have opened,

  trees have filled with frangipani blossoms,

     kanchons have budded in the corner tree,

        and in its prayerful striving for flowers

          the kurchi branch has become a Mahashweta.

                   Their language is clear:

   they have greeted me and introduced themselves to me.

Suddenly today some whispering from beneath a veil

    seemed to reach my ears.

        I spied a shy bud in a spot of the tamarind branch

              on the wayside,

                 its colour a pale yellow,

                         its scent delicate,

                   a very fine writing on its petals.

In our town house there is

   an aged tamarind tree I’ve known since childhood,

       standing in the north-west corner

              like a guardian-god

        or an old family servant

             as ancient as Great-grandfather.

   Through the many chapters of our family’s births and deaths

         quietly it has stood

              like a courtier of dumb history.

         The names of so many of those

             whose rights to that tree through the ages were undisputed

            are today even more fallen than its fallen leaves.

                The memories of so many of them

                   are more shadowy than that tree’s shadow.

Once upon a time there used to be a stable below it,

                       in a tiled shed

          restless with hooves.

The shouts of excited grooms have long departed.

       On the other bank of history is that age

              of horse-drawn carriages.

The neighing’s silent

       and the canvas has changed its tints.

The head coachman’s well-trimmed beard,

       his proud disdainful steps, whip in hand,

have, with the rest of that glittering paraphernalia,

        gone to the great greenroom for costume-changes.

        In the morning sunshine of ten o’clock

               day after day from under that tamarind tree

                  came a carriage without fail to take me to school,

               dragging a young lad’s load of helpless reluctance

                  through the crowded streets.

               No, you won’t recognise that boy today –

               neither in his body, nor in his mind, nor in his situation.

        But poised and serene, the tamarind tree still stands,

               indifferent to the rises and falls

                    of human fortunes.

I remember one day in particular.

        From the night on the rain had poured in torrents

                till by daybreak the sky was the colour

                    of a madman’s eyeballs.

        Directionless, the storm blew everywhere

                like a huge bird beating its wings

                    in an invisible cosmic cage.

                        The street was water-logged,

                    the yard flooded.

                Standing on the veranda I watched

how that tree lifted its head to the sky, like an angry sage,

            reprimands in all its branches.

      On each side of the lane the houses looked like nitwits:

            they had no language with which they could complain

                 against the sky’s torment.

      Only that tree in the tumult of its leaves

                 could voice rebellion

            and hurl arrogant curses.

      Ringed by the mute insensibility of brick-and-wood,

            it alone was the forest’s delegate,

      and on the rain-pale horizon I saw its commoved greatness.

         But when, spring after spring,

             others got their honours, like ashok and bokul,

      I knew the tamarind as a stern and stoical porter

             at the outer gate of the monarch of all seasons.

      Who knew then how beauty’s softness lurked

             in that harsh giant’s bosom, or how high it ranked

                   in spring’s royal court?

In its floral identity I see that tree today:

     like the Gandharva Chitrarath,

            vanquisher of Arjun, champion charioteer,

     practising singing, lost in his art, alone,

            humming to himself in the shades of Nandan-garden.

     If then, at an appropriate moment, the eyes

            of the adolescent poet of those days had spied

                the furtive youth-drunkenness of the middle-aged tree,

            perhaps in the early hours of some special day,

     made restless by the buzzing wings of bees,

            I might have stolen just one bunch of those flowers

     and placed it, with trembling fingers, above

                someone’s joy-reddened earlobes.

     And if then she’d asked me, ‘What’s its name?’

            I might have said –

            ‘If you can think of a name

for that sliver of sunshine that has fallen across your chin,

             I shall give this flower the same name.’