I Won't Let You Go (17 page)

In olden days, I’ve heard, gods in love

with mortal women used to descend from heaven.

Those days are gone. It’s Baishakh, the dry season,

a day of burnt out fields and shrunken streams.

A peasant’s daughter, piteously suppliant,

begs again and again, ‘Come, rain, come!’

Her eyes grieving, restless, and expectant,

from time to time she casts a look at the sky.

But no rain falls. The wind, deaf to her cries,

rushes past, dispersing all the clouds,

and the sun has licked all moisture from the sky

with its tongue of fire. Alas, these degenerate days

the gods are senile. And women can only appeal

to mortal men.

‘Mother! Mother!’ I call to you in terror

in order that my wretched cries might make you

behave like a mother.

Perchance you will, as tigresses are known to do,

abjure all violence and lick this human child.

Well might you hide your claws and press to my mouth

your swollen teats, allow me to doze and rest,

nestled against your striped-as-a-picture breast.

Such is my hope! Ah, greater than great,

you are above, showing your billions of stars,

your moons, planets! Should you suddenly frown

hideously, and lift your thunder-fist,

where would I be, so puny, such a weakling?

So, she-devil, let me decoy you to be a mother!

Said the wasp to the bee, ‘This is such a tiny hive!

and you are so proud of such a small achievement!’

‘Why, then, brother,’ was the bee’s reply,

‘let’s see you make a smaller hive for a change!’

Said the beggar’s bowl to the rich man’s money-bag,

‘We’re related by marriage; let’s not forget that.’

The bag said, ‘Should what I have be transferred to you,

all relationship you would forget too.’

Said the paraffin lantern to the earthen lamp,

‘Call me brother, and I shall have you flanned.’

Up rose the moon in the sky soon thereafter.

Quickly the lantern said, ‘Hallo, Big Brother!’

Good-Enough said to Even-Better,

‘In which heaven do you show your lustre?’

‘Alas,’ cried Even-Better, ‘I live in the impotent

jealousy of the insolent and incompetent.’

Thunder says, ‘As long as I’m far away,

they refer to my roar as the rumble of clouds,

and my brilliance is attributed to lightning,

but when I fall on heads, they say: thunder indeed!’ 

‘Theft from the royal treasury! Catch the thief!

Or else, Police Chief, you’ll come to grief—

there won’t be a head on your body!’ Terrified

of royal wrath, policemen scoured streets

and houses in search of the thief. Outside the city

in a ruined temple lay Bajrasen,

a foreigner there, a merchant from Taxila,

who had come to Benares to sell horses,

and having been robbed of all, made destitute,

was sadly returning to his native land.

On him they pounced, arresting him as the thief,

binding his hands and feet in iron chains,

dragging him to prison.

                      At that very instant

Shyama, queen of the city beauties, sat

at her window in a mood of indolent fun,

spending her time watching the flow of the street,

the dreamlike procession of people. Suddenly

she shivered and cried, ‘Alas! Who’s this?

So tall, handsomer than great Indra himself,

being dragged to prison like a common thief

in harsh chains! Quick, my friend!

Go to the Police Chief, mention my name

and say I would speak to him. Could he come

just once with the prisoner to my humble home? –

It would be a favour.’ Such was the attraction

of Shyama’s name that the Police Chief, impatient,

thrilled to be invited, quickly came,

behind him, in chains, Bajrasen, head bowed,

cheeks shame-red. Said the Chief with a smile,

‘Untimely comes such an unsolicited favour

toward this undeserving person. I’m on my way

to do the king’s business. So, my Lovely, permit me.’

Suddenly Bajrasen lifted his head and said,

‘Beauty, what sport, what perverse humour is this

that makes you call me from the street into your house

to humiliate this innocent foreigner’s hurt

of humiliation?’ But Shyama said, ‘Alas,

foreign traveller, this is no sport at all!

All the jewels I carry on my person

I could give up to take your chains on myself,

and this insult to you, believe me, insults

me to my inmost core.’ As she said so,

her eyes, their lashes wet, seemed to want

to wipe off all the insult from the limbs

of the foreigner. And she begged the Chief,

‘Take all I have and in return set free

the prisoner.’ But the Chief replied,

‘Beauty, it’s a request I may not grant.

To satisfy you there’s beyond my power.

The royal treasury’s robbed, and royal wrath

won’t be appeased till blood-price is paid.’

Holding the policeman’s hands, poor Shyama pleaded

pathetically, ‘Keep the prisoner alive

just for two days – this is my humble plea.’

‘All right, then, I’ll do just that,’ said he.

At the end of the second night, a lamp in her hand,

the woman opened the prison doors and entered

the cell where Bajrasen lay in iron chains,

waiting for death’s dawn, silently repeating

to himself his God’s name. At her eyes’ signal

a guard came quickly, freed him from his chains.

The prisoner, his eyes surprise-whelmed,

gazed at that fair face, soft, open as a lotus,

amazingly lovely, and in a choked voice said,

‘After the horrors of a grotesque nightmare-night

who are you, appearing in my prison-cell

like the white dawn, the morning star in your hand,

life to the dying, liberation incarnate,

merciful Lakshmi in this merciless city!’

‘Me merciful!’ The woman laughed so loudly

that the grim prison woke again with shudders

of renewed terror. She laughed and laughed

till her bizarre lunatic laughter burst

into a hundred mournful tear-streams, and she said,

‘Many are the stones that pave the city’s streets,

but none as hard as Shyama, who’s hard indeed!’

So saying, she firmly grasped his hand

and took Bajrasen outside the prison gates.

Day was breaking then on Baruna’s banks

above the east woods. A boat was ghat-tied.

‘Come, foreigner, come,’ said the belle,

standing on the boat, ‘listen, my love,

only remember what I’m saying now –

that I’m floating with you on the same stream,

bursting all bonds, o lord of my life and death,

my heart’s sovereign!’ She untied the boat.

On either side in the woodlands the birds

merrily sang their festive songs. Uplifting

his lady-love’s face with both hands, filling his breast,

Bajrasen begged, ‘Love, tell me, please,

with what riches you have set me free.

Foreign woman, let me know in full

how big a debt this poor miserable man

owes to you.’ Tightening her embrace,

the beauty said, ‘We won’t talk of that now.’

A brisk breeze and a fierce current made

the boat sail away. Above, a blazing sun

ascended to the zenith. Village wives

went home in wet drapery after their bathes,

carrying bell-metal pitchers of Ganga-water.

The morning market closed; the hubbub stopped

on either side of the river; village paths

emptied. Below a banyan was a stone ghat;

to it the boat was tied so bath and lunch

could be had. On the drowsy banyan branches

shade-immersed birds’ nests were songless.

Only the indolent insects buzzed and buzzed.

When the noon wind, stealer of ripe-corn-odours,

blew off Shyama’s drapery from her head,

suddenly then, tormented, oppressed

by the fullness of his passion, voice near-muffled,

Bajrasen whispered thus in her ears,

‘In eternal chains you’ve bound me, freeing me from

transient chains. But you must inform me

how such a feat, so difficult, was achieved.

Love, if I but knew what you did for me,

with my life, I vow, I would repay you.’

Drawing the end of her drapery over her face,

the beauty said, ‘Let’s not talk of that yet.’

Far away, folding its golden sails,

daylight’s boat went quietly to the ghat

of the sunset-mountain, and by a grove on the bank

Shyama’s boat was moored in the evening breeze.

The moon – fourth day of waxing – had nearly set;

a faint light glimmered in long lines upon

the calm unruffled waters; the darkness massed

at tree-bases vibrated with crickets

like vina-strings. Blowing off the lamp,

below the boat’s window in the southern breeze

Shyama sat, her face deep-sigh-tense,

and leaned on the young man’s shoulder. Her tresses

unbound, fragrant, fell without restraint,

covering the foreigner’s breast with soft cascades

of darkness, like a net of the deepest sleep.

‘Dearest,’ murmured Shyama in whispered tones,

‘what I did for you was hard enough,

hard indeed, but even harder it is

to tell you about it now. I must be brief.

Listen to it once and then wipe the story

off your mind. –

                        A young teenager,

his name Uttiya, was nearly driven mad

by his hopeless passion for me. At my request

he pleaded guilty to the charge held against you

and gave his own life. And this is my pride –

that the greatest sin of my life I have committed

for your sake, o most-excellent of all!’

The slim moon set. The speechless woodland,

the sleep of hundreds of birds upon its head,

stood still. Slowly, ever so slowly

the lover’s arms around the lady’s waist

slackened, and a harsh distance settled

silently between the two. Bajrasen

stared before him, mute, stiff, as rigid

as a stone image, and her head on his feet,

Shyama, released from the embrace, collapsed

like a torn climber. The massed riparian darkness

slowly thickened on the ink-black river-waters.

Suddenly, clasping the young man’s knees with force

within her arms, the tormented woman cried

in a dry voice, free from tears, ‘Liege, forgive!

May that scourge, the punishment for my sin,

be that fiercer at the Creator’s hand,

but may you forgive what I have done for your sake!’

Looking at her, but moving his legs away,

Bajrasen burst out, ‘Why? What need had you

to save this life of mine? Now until death

bought at your sin-price, a sharer in a great sin,

this life’s a disgrace, thanks to you, shameful woman!

Fie on my breath that stands indebted to you!

Fie on my eyes that blink in each moment that passes!’

So saying, he rose with assertive force,

left the boat, went ashore, wandered aimlessly

in the sylvan darkness. There his feet

trampled the dry leaves, each step startling the forest.

In the stuffy airless underwood, thickly packed

with strong vegetal odours, trunks of trees

raised their twisted branches everywhere,

assuming so many grotesque, frightening shapes

in the darkness. All exits were blocked.

The creeper-manacled forest spread its hands

like mute forbiddings. Utterly exhausted,

the wanderer slumped to the ground. Like a ghost

someone stood behind him. She had come

on his heels in the darkness a long way,

following him without words, with bleeding feet.

Clenching both his fists, the wanderer shrieked,

‘Won’t you leave me yet?’ At that the woman

rushed with lightning-speed and fell upon him,

covering all his body with the flood-waves

of her embraces, tresses, dishevelled drapes,

sniffs, kisses, caresses, deep breaths,

her voice emotion-choked, almost muffled,

repeating, ‘I won’t leave you! No, I won’t!’

‘Liege,’ she begged, ‘for your sake I sinned.

Punish me yourself, hurt my inmost being.

Pass it on me – your sentence, my reward.’

The sylvan gloom, bereft of planets and stars,

blindly experienced something – a nightmare.

Hundreds of thousands of tree-roots all around

shuddered with terror, buried underground.

One last pitiful plea could once be heard,

in a choked, strangled voice; the next minute

a body fell on the ground with a heavy thud.

When Bajrasen came away from the forest,

the temple’s trident-peak on Ganga’s bank

was the colour of lightning in the dawn’s first rays.

On deserted sandy beaches along the river

heedless of all things, he spent the livelong day

like a madman. The fiery midday sun

lashed him all over with its burning thong.

Pitcher-on-waist village wives, seeing his state,

said with compassion, ‘Who are you, homeless waif?

Come to us.’ But he did not respond.

Thirst split his chest, yet he did not touch

a drop of water from the river before him.

At the day’s end, with his body, fevered, burnt,

he ran and went aboard the empty boat,

even as an insect, seeing fire, runs

with ardent zeal. And there upon the bed

he saw an anklet lying. A hundred times

he pressed it to his breast. Its tinkling sound

pierced his heart like an arrow with a hundred tips.

In a corner lay

her blue drape, which he gathered to a heap,

then pressed his face against it, lying down,

drinking in with insatiable passion

the delicate odour of her body with his breath.

The moon – fifth day of waxing – about to set,

had slipped to the crown of the saptaparna tree,

dipping into branches. With his arms outstretched,

Bajrasen, looking at the forest, began to call,

‘Come, come, my love!’ Whereupon

on the sandy beach, against the deep-black woods,

appeared a shadowy figure, like a ghost.

‘Come, come, love!’ ‘My love, I’m here!’

Shyama fell at his feet. ‘Forgive me, please!

Alas, from my body my tough life couldn’t be released

by your merciful hands.’ For just a minute

Bajrasen set his eyes upon her face,

stretched out his arms, as if for an embrace,

then, startled, pushed her away from himself,

roaring, ‘Why, why did you come back?’

He took the anklet, flung it from his breast,

and from his feet kicked the blue drape off

as if it was live coal. Even the bed

was like a bed of fire beneath his feet

and burned him. He then closed his eyes,

averted his face, said, ‘Go, go back.

Leave me, go away!’ The woman, for a minute,

stayed quiet, her head bowed, then kneeled

upon the ground and saluted his feet.

She then got off the boat, stepped on the bank,

softly walked towards the dark woodland,

as when sleep is sundered, a moment’s miraculous dream

merges into night’s obscurity.