I Won't Let You Go (28 page)

Right from the beginning he’s been hanging on to me,

        that old chap, that antique of a bloke,

        camouflaging himself by blending with me,

    But today I’m letting him know

        that we’re going to part, we are.

    Along the bloodstreams of millions of forefathers

       he has come, bearing the hunger

    of so many ages, and so much thirst;

    all those pains had churned many days and nights

       in a long, continuous past;

          with all that baggage he decided to colonise

       this vessel of new-born life –

           that ancient, that crafty beggar.

    Ethereal messages come from upper worlds:

       he fouls them up by the din he makes.

    I arrange offerings on a ceremonial platter:

       he reaches out his hand and grabs them himself.

            Desires burn him,

       wither him, day in, day out.

    He smothers me with his decrepitude –

           me, who am ageless.

    Minute by minute he has squeezed pity out of me,

        so that when death-throes grip him,

           I’m really frightened, I am –

              I, who am deathless.

So I’ve decided to part from him today.

    Let him stay outside the door –

        that old, starving wretch.

    Let him beg and enjoy what scraps he gets.

    Let him sit and patch his tattered wrap.

    Let him live precariously on gleanings

        in that little field, earth-ridge-bound,

            between birth and death.

        I shall sit at my window and watch him,

            that long-distance traveller

            who’s been travelling for so long

            along the road-curves of many bodies and minds,

                across the ferries of such various deaths.

    I shall sit upstairs

        and watch his different crazes,

the see-saws of his hopes and despairs,

   the chiaroscuro of his mirths and sorrows.

I shall watch, as people watch a puppet-show;

              I shall laugh to myself.

    I’m free, I’m translucent, I’m independent;

        I’m eternity’s light;

        I’m the flowing joy of creation’s source;

                a total pauper am I;

        I own absolutely nothing that is walled in

                by ego’s pride.

Under the cascading stream

                    I place my little pitcher

and sit

    all morning,

        sari-end tucked into waist,

        dangling my legs

                on a mossy slippery stone.

In an instant the pitcher fills

    and after that it just overflows.

        Curling with foam, the water falls, –

        nothing to do, no hurry at all, –

    the flowing water has its holiday play

            in the light of the sun

    and my own play leaps with it

            from my brimming mind.

The green-forest-enamelled valley’s

                           cup of blue sky.

Bubbling over its mountain-bordered rim,

          falls the murmuring sound.

             In their dawn sleep

                 the village girls hear its call.

    The water’s sound

           crosses the violet-tinted forest’s bounds

           and descends to where the tribal people come

                       for their market day,

               leaving the tracks of the Terai villages,

climbing the curves of the winding uphill path,

       with the ting-a-ling-a-ling

           of the bells of their bullocks

       carrying packs of dry twigs on their backs.

    Thus I while away

the day’s first part.

    Red’s the colour

        of the morning’s young sunshine;

            then it grows white.

        Herons fly over the mountains

                towards the marshes. 

        A white kite flies alone

        within the deep blue,

            like a silent meditative verse

               in the far-away mind

        of the peak with its face upturned.

Around noon

    they send me word from home.

        They are cross with me and say,

            ‘Why are you late?’

        I say nothing in reply.

Everyone knows

    that to fill a pitcher it doesn’t take long.

        Wasting time which overflows with no work –

        who can explain to them the strange passion for that?

        Just one day among many days

             had somehow got caught

                 in a picture, metre,

                    or song.

    Time’s envoy had managed to keep it stranded

        outside the path of traffic’s constant current.

In the image-immersion rituals of the epoch

    many were the things that sped beyond the ghats.

        No one knew when that one day got stuck

            in a dry bend of the river.

In the Magh forests

    so many mango blossoms budded,

        so many fell down.

In Phalgun flowered the polash

        and carpeted the ground.

Between the Chaitra sun and the full-blown mustard-field

        in sky and earth

            it was a contest between bards.

But no brush of any season

        left its mark

            on that day of mine that got stuck.

I was once right in the middle of that day.

    The day was recumbent

        amongst so many things,

    all of which crowded round me, before me.

        I saw them all

            without taking it all in.

        I loved,

            but didn’t really know

                how much.

                So much was wasted,

            absent-mindedly left

                undrunk in the juice-cup.

That day, as I knew it then,

       has changed its looks.

So much is dishevelled, so much is topsy-turvy;

       details have vanished.

She who emerges from it all –

       I see her today against the background of distance:

    a new bride of those days.

            Her body was slim

            and her sari-end, peacock-neck-coloured,

       reached her head just above the hair-coil.

    I couldn’t make time

       to tell her everything.

    Much was said at random now and then,

       but they were trivial things.

           And soon the time was up.

Today her figure has re-appeared,

           quietly stood

       at the fence between shadow and light.

    She seems to want to say something

               and can’t.

    How I long to go back to her side,

               but there’s no way to return.

       I’m letting the neighbourhood club

       have use of my ground-floor room.

           For that, they’ve praised me in the local paper,

           called a meeting, put a garland round my neck.

For eight years now

    my home’s stood empty.

        Now when I come back from work, I find

        in a portion of that room

someone reading a newspaper,

     his legs thrust on a table,

        others playing cards,

     others locked in some furious argument.

        The enclosed air

            gets stuffy with tobacco smoke;

                ashtrays pile

                with ash, matchsticks,

                     burnt-out cigarette ends.

With such turbid conversation’s din

         day after day

     in huge quantities

         I fill the emptiness of my evenings.

     Then after ten p.m. a stretch of time

     like a meal’s left-overs piled on dirty plates

         is vacated for me once more.

     The noise of passing tram-cars invades the room

         and at such times I sometimes listen to songs

                     on the gramophone –

         the few records I have, the same

                     over and over again.

Today none of them are here.

    They’ve all gone off to Howrah Station

            to give an ovation

     to someone who’s just brought

         hand-clappings from across the seas

            clipped to his own name.

     I’ve turned off the lights.

     What’s called ‘current times’ –

after many days

     that current time, that herald of everyday

       isn’t in my room this evening.

     Rather, I sense a lingering pain

     clinging to everything

        from a touch that was air-dispersed,

     a faint scent of hair

        that was here eight years ago.

     My ears are alert,

        as if to receive a message.

            The old empty seat

                with its floral cover

                    seems to have someone’s news.

        An old muchukunda tree

            from my grandfather’s days

                stands in front of the window

                     in the black night’s darkness.

                In the scanty sky that there is

                     between this tree

                     and the house on the road’s other side

                         a star shines brilliantly.

     I stand staring at it

        and it begins to ache inside my chest.

            How many evenings had seen that star reflected

                in the flood-tide waters of our life together!

    Amongst so many things

        one tiny incident makes a special come-back.

That day I’d been too busy

    to read the paper in the morning.

    In the evening I’d at last sat down with it

        in this very room,

           by this window

                and on this armchair.

    She came ever so quietly behind me

        and quickly snatched the paper from my hands.

We tried to grab it from each other

        with bursts of loud laughter.

           I recovered my plundered property,

              cheekily once more sat down to read it.

       Suddenly she turned off the light.

    That defeat-acknowledging

       darkness of mine that evening

envelops me totally today

       even as her victorious arms,

       loaded with silent, teasing, mischievous laughter,

    had encircled me

           in that light-turned-off seclusion.

       Suddenly a wind

           rustles the tree’s branches.

       The window creaks.

    The doorway curtain

               flaps restlessly.

‘Love,’ I blurt out,

‘From death’s kingdom have you

     come back to your very own home today

         with your brown sari on?’

     A breath brushes my body;

         a strange voice speaks,

     ‘To whom can I return?’

         I ask,

             ‘Can you not see me?’

         I hear,

             ‘He whom I knew

                 most intimately on this earth,

         that ever-youthful lover of mine

             I no longer find

                 in this room.’

         I ask, ‘Is he nowhere?’

             Quietly she says,

                ‘He is precisely where

                   I am and nowhere else.’

An excited hubbub reaches me from the door.

    They’ve come back

       from Howrah Station.

I was then seven years of age.

   Through the dawn window I would spy

      the upper lid of darkness lifting,

        a soft light streaming out

            like a newly opened kantalichampa flower.

Leaving my bed, I would rush into the garden

       before the crow’s first cry,

           lest I deprived myself

       of the rising sun’s preliminary rites

           among the trembling coconut branches.

Each day then was independent, was new.

       The morning that came from the east’s golden ghat,

           bathed in light,

           a dot of red sandal on its forehead,

       came to my life as a new guest,

           smiled to me.

Not a trace of yesterday would there be on its body’s wrap.

       Then I grew older

           and work weighed me down.

       The days jostled against one another,

           losing the dignity that was unique to each.

       One day’s thinking stretched itself to the next day.

       One day’s job spread its mat on the next day to sit down.

       Time, thus compacted, only expands,

           never renews itself.

       Age just increases without pause,

           doesn’t return

       from time to time to its eternal refrain,

           thus to re-discover itself.

Today it’s time for me to make the old new.

       I’ve sent for the medicine-man: he’ll rid me of the ghost.

           For the wizard’s letter

               every day I shall sit in this garden.

                    A new letter each day

               at my window when I awake.

           Morning will arrive

               to get introduced to me;

           will open its eyes, unblinking, in the sky

               and ask me,

                       ‘Who are you?’

               What’s my name today

                           won’t be valid tomorrow.

       The commander sees his army,

           not the soldier;

       sees his own needs,

           not the truth;

       doesn’t see each person’s

           unique, creator-shaped form.

Thus have I seen the creation so far –

           like an army of prisoners

       bound in one chain of need.

       And in that same chain

           I have also bound myself.

                Today I shall free myself.

           Beyond the sea

                I can see the new shore before me.

           I won’t tangle it with

                       baggage brought from this shore.

           On this boat I’ll take no luggage at all.

                       Alone I’ll go,

           made new again, to the new.