No. 36
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!’
[Srinagar, between 27 and 31 October 1915, at night]
No. 39
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.
[Shilaidaha, 29 November 1915]
Getting Lost
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!’
The Last Establishment
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.
FROM Lipika (1922)
The Old House
1
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.
2
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.
3
One afternoon one heard the noise of children in that h
ouse.
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.
4
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.
[1919?]
One Day
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.
[1919?]
Grief’s Ingratitude
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?’
[1919?]
The Question
1
The father returned from the crematory.
The boy of seven – his body bare, a gold amulet round his
neck – was alone by the window above the lane.
He was unaware of his own thoughts.
The morning sun had just touched the tip of the neem tree in
front of the house opposite. A man selling green mangoes came
to the lane, called several times, then went away.
The father came and took his little boy in his arms. The little
boy asked: ‘Where’s Mummy?’
The father lifted his head upwards and said: ‘In heaven.’
2
That night the father, weary with grief, sobbed intermittently
in his sleep.
A lantern glimmered by the door. A pair of lizards kept
watch on the wall.
The room faced an open terrace. At some point the little boy
went outside and stood there.
All around him the houses with their extinguished lights looked
like guards at a giant’s palace, sleeping in a standing position.
The naked child stood staring at the sky.
His bewildered mind was asking a question of someone: ‘Where’s
the road to heaven?’
The sky didn’t answer; only the stars trembled with the dumb
darkness’s tears.
[1919?]
FROM Shishu Bholanath (1922)
Sunday
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and others –
they come so fast, so fast.
I suppose their fathers must be owners
of vast motor cars.
But Sunday, but Sunday –
why does she delay?
Slowly, slowly she walks
after all the other days.
Her home beyond the skies –
is it further than the homes of the others?
Like you, Mum, she must be
the daughter of a poor family.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and others –
all hell-bent to stay.
They won’t go home. Amazing
how they simply won’t go away!
But Sunday, but Sunday –
someone treads on her heels.
Every half-hour they ring the hour!
What a flurry! She keels!
In her home beyond the skies
has she more chores than the others?
Like you, Mum, she must be
the daughter of a poor family.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and others –
grim-faced old stewpots!
They don’t like little boys. With us
they are always cross!
But as I get up in the morning
at the end of Saturday night,
who should I spy but Sunday,
her face lit up by a smile!
How she cries when she says goodbye
and gazes with yearning at us!
Like you, Mum, she must be
the daughter of a poor family.
[21 September 1921]
Remembering
I don’t remember my mother.
Only this: sometimes when I’m at play,
suddenly, for no reason at all,
a tune begins to buzz
and ring in my ears,
and my mother comes
and merges with my play.
Maybe she used to sing,
rocking me.
She has gone
and left her song behind.
I don’t remember my mother.
Only this: when in Ashwin
at dawn among shiuli trees
the scent of their flowers
is borne by the dewy breeze,
somehow then she comes back to my mind –
my mother.
Long ago perhaps she gathered shiulis,
filling her basket.
So the scent of Puja
returns as her scent.
I don’t remember my mother.
Only this: when I sit by the window
of my bedroom
and look at the far blue sky,
it seems to me my mother’s looking at me
with steady eyes.
Long ago she used to hold me on her lap
and look at my face.
That’s the look she has left
in all the sky.
[25 September 1921]
FROM Purabi (1925)
Gratitude
‘I won’t forget,’ I had said, when your moist eyes
had silently gazed at my face. Forgive me if I did forget.
Ah, that was such a long time ago! On that day’s kiss
so many madhabi petals of early spring
fell in layers and withered, so many times
noon’s dove-cooings pressed weary sleep,
going and returning. Your black eyes’ gaze
had written on my spirit that letter of first love,
so shy, so nervous! On that autograph of your heart
restless lights and shadows have through the hours
waved their brush-strokes, so many evenings have splashed
golden oblivion, so many nights have left
their own dream-writings in crisscrosses of faint lines,