I Won't Let You Go (16 page)

                                 A hundred years from today

who are you, sitting, reading a poem of mine,

                                                 under curiosity’s sway –

                                 a hundred years from today?

                                                 Not the least portion

of this young spring’s morning bliss,

                                 neither blossom nor birdsong,

                                             nor any of its scarlet splashes

                                 can I drench in passion

                                             and despatch to your hands

                                             a hundred years hence!

Yet do this, please: unlatch your south-faced door,

                                 just sit at your window for once;

basking in fantasy, eyes on the far horizon,

                                               figure out if you can:

                                 how one day a hundred years back

roving delights in a free fall from a heavenly region

                                 had touched all that there was –

the infant Phalgun day, utterly free,

                                               was frenzied, all agog,

while borne on brisk wings, the south wind

                                               pollen-scent-brushed

had suddenly arrived and in a flash dyed the earth

                                               with all youth’s hues

                                 a hundred years before your day.

There lived then a poet, ebullient of spirit,

                                               his heart steeped in song,

who wanted to open his words like so many flowers

                                               with so much passion

                                 one day a hundred years back.

                                 A hundred years from today

                                                          who is the new poet

whose songs flow through your homes?

                                                          To him I convey

                                 this springtime’s gladsome greetings.

May my vernal song find its echo for a moment

                                                           in your spring day

in the throbbing of your hearts, in the buzzing of your bees,

                                               in the rustling of your leaves

                                 a hundred years from today!

[13 February 1896 (2 Phalgun 1302)]

Said a man fed up with the world in the depth of night,

‘I’ll leave home tonight for the sake of the God I adore.

Who’s it that keeps me ensnared within this house?’

‘I,’ said God, but it didn’t enter his ears.

Clasping their sleeping infant to her breast,

his wife lay happily asleep on a side of the bed.

‘Who are you all, maya’s masks?’ he asked.

‘They are myself,’ said God, but no one heard.

‘Lord, where are you?’ said the man, leaving his bed.

‘Right here,’ was the answer, but still the fellow was deaf.

The child cried in his sleep and clung to his mother.

‘Return,’ said God, but the man didn’t hear the order.

Then at last God sighed. ‘Alas,’ said He,

‘where’s my devotee going, leaving me?’

A stick under his arm, a pack on his head,

at dusk a villager goes home along the river.

If after a hundred centuries somehow –

by some magic – from the past’s kingdom of death

this peasant could be resurrected, again made flesh,

with this stick under his arm and surprise in his eyes,

then would crowds besiege him on all sides,

everyone snatching every word from his lips.

His joys and sorrows, attachments and loves,

his neighbours, his own household,

his fields, cattle, methods of farming: all

they would take in greedily and still it wouldn’t be enough.

His life-story, today so ordinary,

will, in those days, seem charged with poetry.

A ferry-boat crosses and re-crosses the river.

Some go home, some go away from home.

Two villages on two banks know each other.

From dawn to dusk the folks go to and fro.

Elsewhere so many strifes, disasters happen;

histories are made, unmade, re-written.

Foaming upon cascades of spilt blood,

crowns of gold like bubbles swell and burst.

Civilisation’s latest hungers, thirsts

throw up so many toxins, honeyed draughts.

Here on two banks two villages stare at each other,

to the big wide world their names quite unknown.

Daily the ferry-boat plies upon the waters,

with some going home, some going away from home.

             Not a sign of my servant in the morning.

The door wide open.        No water for my bath.

             The rascal had absconded last night.

I hadn’t the faintest idea        where my clean clothes were

             or where my breakfast was.

The clock ticked away.        I sat in a bad mood.

             I would tell him off, I would!

At last he appeared,        saluted as usual.

             With his palms together, he stood.

‘Go away!’ I said        in a fit of rage,

             ‘I don’t want to see your face!’

Like an idiot, for a minute,        as if robbed of speech,

             he stared at my face, then said

in a voice choked with emotion,        ‘Sir, at midnight

             last night my little girl died.’

So saying, in a hurry,        with his duster on his shoulder

             alone he went to do his jobs, 

and as on any other day        scrubbed, scoured, polished,

             left not a chore unfinished.

They dig by the river for bricklaying –

labourers from the west country. Their little girl

keeps scampering to the ghat. Such scrubbing and scouring

of pots and pans and dishes! Comes running

a hundred times a day, brass bangles jangling

clang clang against the brass plates she cleans.

So busy all day! Her little brother,

bald, mud-daubed, not a stitch on his limbs,

follows her like a pet, patiently sits

on the high bank, as Big Sister commands.

Plates against her left side, a full pitcher on her head,

the girl goes back, the child’s hand in her right hand.

A surrogate of her mother,

bent under her work-load, such a wee Big Sister!

And one day I saw the same naked boy

sitting on the ground, legs stretched on the dust.

Big Sister at the ghat sat scrubbing a pot

with clay, turning and turning it.

A soft-haired kid was grazing near by,

gently nibbling the grass of the river-bank.

Suddenly the kid drew near, and looking at the lad’s face,

gave a few bleats.

Startled, the boy trembled and burst into tears.

Big Sister left her pot, came running down. 

Her brother on one side, the goat on the other,

she consoled both, giving them equal attention.

Sister to both children, animal and human,

mediatrix, she knit them in mutual knowledge.

The night is black and the forest has no end;

a million people thread it in a million ways.

We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where

or with whom – of that we are unaware.

But we have this faith – that a lifetime’s bliss

will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.

Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs

brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.

Then peradventure there’s a flash of lightning:

whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.

I call that person and cry: ‘This life is blest!

For your sake such miles have I traversed!’

All those others who came close and moved off

in the darkness – I don’t know if they exist or not.

It was a long-drawn Chaitra noon;

the earth was thirsty, burnt by the day.

Suddenly I heard someone calling

somewhere outside, ‘Puturani, come!’

The river-bank’s deserted in the midday,

so the voice of affection made me curious.

Closing my book, I slowly got up,

opened the door a little and looked outside. 

A huge buffalo, covered in mud,

tender-eyed, was standing on the bank.

A young man was in the water, calling her

to give her a bath, ‘Puturani, come!’

When I saw the young man and his Puturani,

gentle tears mingled with my smiles.

And I remember yet another day.

One afternoon I saw a gypsy girl

sitting on the green grass at a meadow’s edge,

just by herself, doing her hair in a plait.

Her pet puppy came behind her, took

the movement of the hair to be some sport,

and jumping high and barking loudly, began

to bite the moving plait again and again.

The girl shook her neck and told him off,

which only increased the puppy’s playful mood.

She gave him a little rap with her forefinger;

he took it for more play, got more excited.

Laughing then, she got up, drew him to her breast

and smothered him with cuddles.

He would be about twenty, with a wasted body

reduced to skin and bones through many years’ illness.

Looking at his vacant face – not a smile on it –

you would think he was wholly incapable

of sucking out the least pleasure from this world

even with all his body and mind and soul. 

His mother carries him like a child –

his long thin withered barely throbbing body –

and without hope, yet patient, with a sad face, without words,

daily she brings him by the side of the road.

Trains come and go; people rush; just in case

the commotion revives the moribund’s interest

in the world, and he looks at it a little –

with such meagre hope does his mother bring him.

Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes,

and meditate to know if the world’s true or lies,

may do so. It’s their choice. But I meanwhile

with hungry eyes that can’t be satisfied

shall take a look at the world in broad daylight.

The more I love you and see you in your greatness,

the more, dearest, I see you in true light.

The more I lower you, the less I seem to know you,

sometimes losing you, sometimes keeping you in sight.

This spring day, with my mind enlightened,

I see a vision I’ve never seen before:

this world’s vanished; there’s nothing at all;

before me only a vast ocean unfolds.

There’s neither day nor night, no minutes or hours;

the cataclysmic waters are controlled;

in the midst of it all, with all your petals unfurled,

you hover, sole lotus, and stay afloat.

The king of the cosmos sits for ever, impassioned,

and beholds in you his own self’s reflection.