I Won't Let You Go (32 page)

Time for the bird to go. Soon its nest,

stripped, dislodged, song-silenced, will slip to the dust

in the forest’s tumult. With dry leaves and withered flowers 

at dawn I’ll fly to the trackless emptiness

beyond the sunset-sea. For long has this earth

been host to me. Heady with mango blossoms,

greetings have come to me, sweet with Phalgun’s gifts;

ashok-buds have sign-solicited my tunes

and I’ve given them, love-juice-filled; while at times

Baishakh’s storms have gagged me with hot dust,

maimed my wings. Yet with all that I’m blest

with the honour of being alive. And when this shore’s

tiring journey ends, back-glancing for a moment,

I’ll honour, before I go, in humble salutation

the divinity that inhabited this incarnation.

She-serpents hiss everywhere, exhaling poison-breaths.

Soft words of peace will sound like hollow jests.

        Before I take my leave

        let me invoke

    those who, in human homes, are preparing themselves

        to wage war against the monsters.

Her colour a luminous dark, a coral necklace round her neck.

    In amazement I had gaped.

She’d been staring too, without a trace of embarrassment,

         her big eyes lampblack-stained, –

            a girl approaching adolescence,

                close to my age.

Clearly I recall the scene. The room’s south door

    open to the morning sun. The nut tree’s crown

with its fine thick foliage against the sky’s pale blue.

    Her young tender body draped in white,

the black border encircling her limbs,

       then falling at her feet.

    Two gold bangles ringed her shapely wrists.

        Such was the reflection that fell on the stories I read

in vacation noontides. At times she beckoned me to lands

    where the creator’s whims in many guises weave

unattainable mirages skirting a boy’s dreams.

        A bodied enchantment

        cast its invisible shade

on my body and mind, subtle yet tactile.

    I dared not speak to her. My heart ached

        with the softest tune that hummed –

            ‘She’s far, far away,

    as far as the shirish tree’s furthest branches from where

        slowly the faint scent drips to our inner depths.’

             One day she left me a card inviting me

                 to her dolls’ wedding.

          Boisterously merry were her guests, whilst I, a shy lad,

      dreadfully embarrassed, kept to a corner. The evening passed

        in vain, and I can’t even recall

what I had to eat at the party, but I observed

     how her nimble feet went busily back and forth

         with the black border dancing round their movements.

     From the corner of my eyes I noticed how her bangles

        seemed to have tied the solid sun to her hands.

             Her gentle, coaxing voice I also heard,

     which, when I came home, echoed in my head

                  for half the night.

         Then one day

     I got to know her without impediments. One day

I called her by her pet name. My awe went

        and even banter was exchanged.

Sometimes we made up charges against each other 

        and made angry scenes – all in pretence.

Sometimes cruel jokes in cutting words

        hurled real hurt.

    Sometimes she gave me a bad name,

        calling me careless.

Sometimes I saw her in casual disarray,

    busy with cooking, quite unembarrassed.

How many of my male follies she would deride

        with her sharp, female pride!

     One day she said, ‘I know how to read palms.’

My hand in hers, her head lowered, she read the lines,

        then said, ‘Your temperament

     shows a poverty in love.’ I gave no rejoinder at all.

False calumny it was, but the sting was anaesthetised

        by her touch, my true prize.

                     Yet the pain

                of incomplete knowing still remained.

            Beauty’s distance never seems to wane –

     so near, and yet so far, without end.

On the western horizon the days fade,

      mixed with gladness and with sadness’s shade.

The essence of blue was distilled by Chaitra skies,

            and now this Ashwin light

     plays its holiday shanai in the gold rice-fields.

Slowly drifts the boat, to no port, weighed with dreams.

Three green mangoes were lying under the tree

        in the mild sunshine of the Chaitra morning.

    When I saw them, my hands didn’t itch to get them

        with a restless impatience.

    Then I knew, sipping my tea,

        how the wind had changed on my sails,

    how the ferry-ghat in the east had dimmed.

Once upon a time, the chance getting of a green mango or two

        was my golden key, unlocking the secret cell

            of a whole day’s gladness. Now

        there’s no such padlock, nor is a key required.

        Let me begin at the beginning.

For the first time in my life a bride was coming

        from another family to ours.

My mind, which was then like a boat at anchor,

            was suddenly tossed by a flood-tide.

    Overflowing the bounds of what I’d been allotted

                came fate’s bounty to me,

    shaking off all those old, torn, mundane days

            and nights from the whole house.

    Three times a day for some days

        the wedding music played, changing the daily language

    around us, and in all the rooms

        the lights made a fuss in lanterns and chandeliers.

    The marvellous opened

           in the midst of the too familiar.

    Decked in colours, feet dyed in lac,

        someone came, hinting she wasn’t a person

of limited value, belonging to this world,

           but was unique, past compare.

    For the first time to the boy’s eyes was revealed

something that could be seen, but couldn’t be known.

         The flutes stopped playing,

             but not what they implied:

                our bride remained,

             girded by marvel’s invisible rays.

Her treaties, quarrels, sports were all with her groom’s sister.

    Conquering shyness, I would try to get a little close,

        my mind in a whirl because of her sari’s stripes,

    but her frowns would soon let me know I was just a kid,

        nor was I female, but of a different tribe.

    She was just a month or two older

        or perhaps younger than I was.

           Yet I had to concede

              we were made with different ingredients.

    How I yearned to build a bridge towards her

             with something, no matter what!

    One day this unfortunate fellow acquired from somewhere

             some gaudy handwritten books.

        He thought they would stun her,

             but she laughed, and said,

                  ‘What shall I do with these?’

    Such tragedies, ignored by history, cannot draw

            sympathy from any source.

    This one crushed the boy, heaping on him humiliation

           for whole days and nights.

Who was the judge who could assess and declare

                the value of those handwritten books?

    Despite all that, I found that the lady of rank

        was quite interested in claiming petty dues:

    there her wooden seat was at floor-level.

            She loved to eat green mangoes

         mixed with shulpo greens and chillies.

There was a tiny door through which such treats could be shared

         even by a boy and a mere kid like me.

    Climbing trees was strictly forbidden.

        Whenever the wind blew, I would rush into the garden

    and if, by a stroke of luck, found even one fruit

              snatched from its minor rarity, I would see

    how green, how shapely, how beautiful,

         what a wonderful gift of nature it was.

    The glutton who splits and eats it hasn’t seen

           its incomparable beauty.

One day I gathered mangoes in the middle of a hailstorm.

    She said, ‘And who asked you to fetch these?’

        I said, ‘Nobody,’

    left the whole basket on the floor and went off.

        Another time I got stung by bees.

She said, ‘There’s no need to take so much trouble to get fruit.’

           I kept quiet.

           I grew in years.

Once I got a gold ring from her;

    there was something memorable inscribed on it too.

I lost it, bathing in the Ganges, 

        couldn’t recover it.

Even now the green mangoes fall

    under the trees, year after year.

        There’s no way I can find her again.

    No, I don’t know

                   the figure you folks have fashioned

    with so many decorations,

        nor does He who dwells within me know

that effigy of my name inscribed with your signatures.

    The bounds of His creation

           are beyond the range of your vision.

    On time’s ocean’s shore

        the Maker of forms

    shapes that image, by Himself, in secrecy

        behind a screen of varied mysteries.

                  From the outside

        through mingled dark and light

some see it in one way, some in another.

        Fragments of forms and shadows,

            tricks of the imagination,

gaps in between: even so is an identity fashioned

                        against the backdrop of the unknown.

           In His temporal playroom

    the Sculptor shaped me as a toy,

worked with clay and light,

                black and white.

    Who doesn’t know its brittleness,

how time’s wheel will crush it to smithereens?

    The gift it bears

professes, for a brief while, to be deathless,

    then in a trice eludes us,

        leaving behind a few handfuls of dust

and that death-night that washes all traces away.

    Sportive crowds,

       do you suppose the puppet you have made

    will escape the grasp of great and greedy dust

        and abide for ever in light?

     I wonder today

              if my own secret Maker

          smiles in a corner of His eye

    when you imagine

           such an event.