Pompei, Bhuj, Tangdhar, Port au Prince
Not my turn yet, not yet.
The sun still shines across eclipses on my doorstep.
Echo, echo, rumbling, calling,
Once more, one more, yet one more…
Civilization falling
Cry, cry, rising,
Distant wordless sky
And we remain,
Here,
Only here,
Under it all
Unheard, unable to hear
Crumbling, bit by bit.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Short Story: I , Muzammil
I, Muzammil
Srinagar, September 1985
“Today is Friday, Muzammil.”
His mother stood in the doorway, her plump work worn hands tied across her large belly. “Must you go out even today?”
“My teacher said he would take an extra class for the weaker students, Mauji,” replied Muzammil. “He says it is more important for me to obtain my degree at least this year, and stand on my own feet, than go to the Dargah.”
His mother shook her head sadly. “There is little difference between a man who is too educated and a kaafir. Too much worldly knowledge makes you forget God.”
Muzammil could see from the corner of his eye, his sister Hameeda sitting in the next room, her eyes alight with anger. “Nyabarim!” she muttered ominously. An outsider. Muzammil said nothing, but looked down at his toe sticking out from beneath his summer pheran. Shehzada, the younger of the two girls, came out carrying a cup of tea and a bun on a tray. She put it down on the mat in front of her brother.
“The rice will be ready by the time you change your clothes,” she said to him.
“ No, “ said Muzammil, ” I have no hunger for batta this morning.” He took a sip of the salty red sheer chai and bit into the bun. He knew there would be only a little green haak with the rice and no meat. Better to leave it for Hameeda…she was always hungry these days, with the baby kicking lustily inside her.
Shehzada watched Muzammil through her unbecoming black rimmed spectacles as he donned his only jacket, a mousy brown one with collars that were too large, and stepped out into the cobbled street on both sides of which the drains were filled with refuse. Then she turned back into the front room that served as cellar for the coal and sawdust used in the bukhari during winter, and latched the large wooden door. She went over to where her sister sat knitting.
“See, now you made him lose his appetite!” she said crossly
“He should not get too close to outsiders.” Hameeda’s eyes smouldered again. “The time has come to weed them out and save Kashmir “
“At least he’s trying to do something, since Father is no more. For our sake, and you know that. What good is that Muqaddis of yours to you? He has left you with child and doesn’t even send any money.”
“He’s working too. It’s people like him who will liberate Kashmir, not boys like Muzammil. We, too, must make sacrifices for our land.”
“You talk like a man”, Shehzada looked at her sister with some contempt. ” What is our land? Tomorrow if you were to marry an outsider you would lose your State Subject-ship. To women, nothing belongs, not even our own bodies. Men own everything---they even make us think like them…in terms of frontiers…and bloodshed.”
“Your education, Shehzada, has done you, and us, great harm. Father made a mistake, sending you to Delhi. It would have been better to let you finish your degree here itself.”
“And remain short-sighted forever, like a frog in a well!”
“You are a traitor! You side with the nyabarim! You have no love for your country!”
“Because you say so? I can see that there are good and bad everywhere. I will not hate a man simply because he is a nyabarim. Neither do I believe bloodshed is the answer. Men are all the same—they kill each other for power and for land—then both will turn upon us, and our children, like hounds…”
“Shehzada!” their mother called anxiously from the kitchen. Shehzada rose immediately and went to her. “Shehzada, myon koor, daughter! Must you argue like this with your sister when she is in a delicate condition? You know her views, and Muqaddis’. Go and make up with her.”
The young girl went back to her sister, kneeled down and flung her arms about her. “Didi! I’m sorry! Don’t worry about anything. Things will go well for all of us.”
And the two sisters stood at the open window, arm in arm, apple-cheeked, silent, watching the tiny street behind the wall of the Jama Masjid get busier and busier.
Even Muzammil, who was not tall by any standard, had to duck his head to get through the little arched doorway that led to the outer compound of the Jama Masjid. It was early, but already the walled area of the mosque had become alive with the Friday traders putting up their stalls. Muzammil walked across it slowly. To his left the imposing pagoda-like structure with its green roofs and high spires rose up, indifferent, it seemed, to the fate of humans who strode about purposefully in their beige and green Pathan dresses. Muzammil glanced towards the stone doorway of the mosque, by force of habit, almost as if expecting a miracle to occur each time he passed by: he saw against the light a familiar figure.
Tohfeeq smiled warmly and moved toward him. “Assalaam-aleikum!” he said,
“Waar e? Khosh poeth? “
Muzammil returned the other youth’s greeting with as much warmth. He liked Tohfeeq. He was perhaps the only one who did not treat him for a dullard—maybe because he was above the pettiness found in most people—he was a poet.
“I have come here after many days,” said Tohfeeq in reply to the surprise on Muzammil’s face. “I do come from time to time. I stand in the inner courtyard… the sunlight on the roses gives me a feeling of peace and belonging.”
“Then you must come and see us too, your old friends?” said Muzammil
“But you’re off! I shall go see your mother and sisters.” Tohfeeq felt about in his breast pocket and took out a piece of paper. “See, Muzammil, I have written a new poem.”
“I shall read it on the bus.” Muzammil took it from him. The two friends embraced, and Muzammil began to walk towards the doorways leading out onto the main road. The bus stop was becoming very crowded. Several SRTC buses marked “Dargah” were getting ready to leave for Hazratbal.
“Rainwor’—Dargah! Rainwor’—Dargah!” screamed the conductors. Men, women and children clambered noisily into the buses, happily, for it was Friday, always a festive day. Muzammil felt a little out of place in his coat and trousers: everyone would know he was not going to pray at the Dargah. He was just pushing himself into a seat when he heard Tohfeeq’s voice close to him.
“ Muzammil!” Tohfeeq panted, “Wait! I’ll come with you a little distance!” They sat in the crush of chattering passengers, and Tohfeeq said he wanted Muzammil to read his poem. “It’s very important!” he said. Muzammil unfolded the piece of paper he still clutched in his hand. He began to read it aloud:
A Cool, Clear Day in Kashmir
If I could only touch
that f athomless depth
could I know?
atoms of aimlessness
can they learn?
the sky the sky
fire snow flaming snow
jagged moving mountain faces
can I learn?
myriad moving particles
burning burning
churning somersaulting waves
glorious straining sparkling waves
waves of mountain snow and sky
waves of apple cider air
waves of freezing sunshine air
zigzagging blue flame white
sparking whirling waves
streaming searing blinding waves
tornado!
quaking sky and earth
tornado!
alive soundless moving
death death.
In spite of the noise in the bus Tohfeeq had been listening as if in a trance. When Muzammil finished, Tohfeeq looked directly at him. “It’s a prophecy, “he said, “I felt it was a prophecy when I wrote it.”
“But I don’t understand it!” said Muzammil a little sadly.
“I don’t very well either,” said Tohfeeq passing his fingers through his hair, “not yet, anyway.”
The bus had not begun to move, so Tohfeeq got up and pushed his way out through the crowd, shouting to Muzammil that he would go see his mother and sisters. A fat old woman in a grey pheran elaborately embroidered with the silver tilla work typical of the valley, sat down heavily next to him. All the windows were closed and some of the men had started to smoke. When the air in the bus became unbreatheable, it started, with a jolt; the conductor jumped onto the footboard, still screaming, ”Rainwor’! Dargah!” The bus would go via Rainawari to Hazratbal.
Muzammil was still thinking about Tohfeeq’s poem. What did it mean? Perhaps he could not understand it because he was not a visionary like Tohfeeq. Of course even ordinary human beings have their lucid moments, but for the most part we seem to be lost in a kind of fog. The fog around Muzammil seemed impenetrable.
The bus lurched and jolted along the potholed road, destroyed by the snows and never repaired. Almost there, thought Muzammil, as they went over the Nageen Bridge. He gazed, fascinated as always, at the shadows, the deep moving shadows, green and translucent shadows the willow trees made in the clear water where the two lakes, the Dal and the Nageen, met. Muzammil always imagined the rickety wooden bridge breaking down, and all of them splashing down into the soft caressing depths of the lake. They passed the Nageen Club, and as he sighted the strong wire fences of the Regional Engineering College, he thought of his little cousin Rasheed, who lived across at Nageen Bagh. Should he get off and look for Rasheed, as he still had some time? He thought the better of it, for Rasheed was probably out with his loutish friends, making vulgar graffiti on people’s walls, and scribbling in bold black lettering ‘INDIAN DOGS GO BACK’ or ‘FREE KASHMIR’. Besides his stomach was growling and the picture of the little bakery near the Dal was infinitely more inviting.
The bus halted, as was the custom on Fridays, in the square near the first gate of the University Campus. Muzammil was elbowing his way through the yelling, pushing, rather intimidating Friday crowd, when Jim and his friends waved to him from the little teashop at the corner. All the boys there were from the R.E.C., all nyabarim, outsiders. Jim was a Khasi, addicted to hashish, which was freely available in the valley; he wore beads around his neck and even on his guitar. He fascinated Muzammil, and frightened him at the same time. The others were from Bihar and Maharashtra. Muzammil had never been outside Kashmir, but he imagined the world beyond the ring of mountains to be rather bizarre. How else could one explain that the ‘low caste’ Hindu boys from U.P. and Bihar at the R.E.C. would touch the feet of the Kashmiri Pandit boys (who were their own classmates!) before an exam? It was really amazing. Of course there were castes among the Kashmiri Muslims too, and Shaikh attached to the beginning of your name entitled you to respect while at the end of your name it made you a gor, or grave-digger!
Muzammil waved to the nyabarim boys, and made his way down the street that skirted the gleaming marble mosque with its pure gold spire, into the marketplace, which was milling with the early devotees breakfasting on a variety of fried goodies emerging hot from the oil in immense pans. Drowning the din of their chatter the microphone at the mosque blared prayers for the muslimeen. Muzammil wished the prayers would be said without a microphone. The noise seemed undignified, and surely Allah would hear even a whisper?
Yet above it all, the September air hung tranquilly and limpidly glowing as though with thousands of suspended particles of moisture. Muzammil took the narrow street that cut across to the lake, where the tiny bakery was situated. Business was slack on Fridays, as all the customers went to the main market square, and there was only one tray of freshly baked bread: the doughnut shaped tsochwor’, studded with sesame seeds. He bought only enough to sustain himself, and stood gazing at the lake. The mountains reflected perfectly in its mirror-like green surface, and if you kept your gaze focussed in the distance, you needn’t see the foaming dirt at the edge. September was warm, still, limpid; where were the ‘waves’ of Tohfeeq’s vision?
Muzammil had dreamt a few nights before of a great dull-yellow snake that lay with its head in the Hazratbal Square, and spread right across to the University Campus…to Umar Bagh…Lal Bazaar…to goodness knew where. And in the dream, it devolved upon Muzammil to save his people from this terrible reptile. He ran hither and thither, trying to warn folk who seemed oblivious of its existence. Finally someone handed him a large saw, and told him he must saw off the head of the viper, for the town to be saved. Muzammil had just begun his awesome task, and sawed his way halfway into the great yellow neck when the dream ended suddenly. And he awoke perspiring, as one often does after such dreams. It was still vivid in his memory.
Muzammil dragged his gaze away from the hypnotically still Himalayan range and began to wend his way back to the market. He would go through it, just out of curiosity, and then go to his Department via the Naseembagh gate. He crossed the old one-eyed fisherwoman, asking her conversationally, ”Gaarh chha?’ Any fish today? “Aa,” she replied with a nod and a smile, knowing well he was no customer.
The little old man with his glass box of curiosities was there as usual, in the middle of the bustling square. He was so tiny that he seemed to have no body at all, only a lean elongated face, with a long hooked nose, rheumy eyes under bristling brows and the white beard trailing over the glass box right onto the road. From his dirty grey pheran emerged two long-fingered, knotty hands, with fingernails large and bluish as petals. Indeed, he seemed more puppet than human. There he was all the same, a very poor man, who had a hard time selling his meagre wares. Muzammil stopped by the glass box, more to observe the vendor than his curiosities, and the old man brightened, quickly opening the glass lid so Muzammil could get a better look. Muzammil’s eye went to something gleaming in the corner, and he bent closer—it was a copper ring, in the form of a coiled serpent.
“Only one rupee,” croaked the old man.
Muzammil put the ring on his index finger, wondering at the same time why he was doing so. He paid the old fellow and examined the trinket-- he noticed it was damaged: the coil cut halfway through at the neck of the serpent.
“Exactly as I had left it in the dream!” it suddenly struck Muzammil. ”Maybe I should break it off altogether…to ward off the effect of an evil prophecy.” Then he laughed at himself, thinking it would be a better idea to give the ring, which was a rather pretty one, to one of his sisters. After all, he’d paid a rupee for it.
Muzammil looked up to see the fat botany professor, Wanganoo, coming towards him, his mouth full of sweetmeats and his arms full of vegetables. His name fitted him particularly well at that moment—wangan means brinjal in Kashmiri.
“How come? “ asked Wanganoo, indicating Muzammil’s trousers and his coat, which now hung on his arm.
“Going for an extra class, sir”, replied Muzammil, smiling deferentially. “It begins in a quarter of an hour.” He then decided to ask Wanganoo what he made of his dream and the ring. The Professor, being a Shaivite, as are all Kashmiri Pandits, considered it a portent of good luck.
“Keep it on your finger, my boy. It is a sign from Lord Shiva. Great things are ahead of you.”
Muzammil smiled to himself as he walked towards the cool green shade of Naseembagh where his department was housed. The four hundred chinar trees had been planted under the auspices of the Emperor Jehangir, four centuries ago. According to Muzammil, it was the loveliest of the Mughal gardens of Srinagar, unadorned and neglected though it was, full of army barracks and chattering students. On Friday it was quiet, of course. As he walked under the symmetrically planted giants, their leaves beginning to turn orange at the edges, he breathed deeply of the air laden with the heady scent of the first fallen apples in the outlying orchards. How beautiful was his homeland!
He saw two blue-clothed policemen strolling past, (this was perhaps the only university campus in India to have policemen on it), ogling lewdly at two jeans-clad students from the girl’s hostel, who, like Muzammil, must have come to Naseembagh on some work.
“I’ll fuck you with the penis of a goat!” one of the policemen mouthed a typical vulgarity and the two of them laughed uproariously. But the girls did not follow, or pretended not to, more likely, as one of them was a native of the valley. Muzammil felt his stomach churn with anger and a sense of injustice. The day was ruined once more.
Aharbal, July 1986
The tourists had been enchanted by the view of the silver waterfall at Noorabad, under the full moon. Now they sat outside the little guesthouse in the moonlight and listened to the cook and the sole room attendant singing folk songs to the music of the battered but still tuneful rubab.
Their guide, Muzammil, meanwhile, decided to take a walk on the road just above. The moonlight fell in sheets of silver across the silent landscape. Silent, except for the wind whispering in the pines on the slopes, thickly wooded, of an incredible beauty. As Muzammil walked, he saw here and there, the phosphorescent gleam of an occasional glow-worm, trying to match its light to that of the moon. From time to time, plaintive snatches of the song talai lati yaaras van… drifted up from the guesthouse. O please tell my lover…a song sung at weddings.
It was only a summer job, but it was something at least. Jobs were hard to come by, especially if you didn’t have the money to pay bribes. People wanted bribes even to do the work that was normally theirs. Even to pull a file out of a cupboard. Muzammil was not rich, unlike most of his classmates whose fathers had booming businesses in the carpet or tourist trade. His father had been a small trader who catered to local needs.
At the turn of the road three youths in Pathan suits and jackets sat on the low wall protecting the edges that fell away into the ravine. They called out cheerily to Muzammil. Muzammil stopped to chat. How did they manage to make a living in a remote place like that?
“We have people across the border”, one of them smiled, “in fact we are crossing over tonight”.
“On foot?” asked Muzammil, who was not much of a climber, having spent most of his life in the plains of the valley, by the lakes.
“ Of course,” replied the other, “it is the most silent. Tonight is a good night to cross, in the moonlight. Normally there is little surveillance. I know the mountains like the back of my hand. They won’t catch us in a hundred years.”
Muzammil asked them if they knew Muqaddis, his sister’s husband. They laughed derisively. How would they know him?
“Want to come with us?” asked one in a challenging tone of Muzammil. “ No need to search for a job then.”
Muzammil looked up. The other youth was looking him unflinchingly in the eye.
Srinagar, April 1989
Tohfeeq sipped the kahwa Shehzada had poured out for him from the ancient samovar. There were no almonds in it or cardamoms, or saffron. Only the green leaf and a little sugar. Shehzada’s face looked pinched and worn. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hand trembled as she poured out the infusion. She was working as a part-time teacher in a local school. Hameeda could find no work. She was hardly up to working anyway, Shehzada confided in Tohfeeq. Their mother had pawned all her silver and gold. It was hard to make ends meet.
Two large tears trembled in Shehzada’s young eyes. Tohfeeq’s presence made Muzammil’s absence unbearably acute. There was nothing else to talk about.
“All he wanted to do was to earn an honest living, so that he could look after us.” She must have uttered those words a million times. The fateful letter, posted at Khanyar, had reached even before his body had been dragged out of the Jehlum the preceding year: “I, Muzammil, take full responsibility for my own death.”
“No greater lie has been told,” Shehzada said to Tohfeeq. He knew it to be true.
“If Hameeda’s child had still been with us, we could have been more cheerful. We mourn two members of our family…even though our baby Aslam is still alive. But who knows if we will ever see him again?”
Hameeda, after Muzammil’s death, had refused to aid and abet her husband in his terrorist activities. In retaliation, one night Muqaddis kidnapped his infant son Aslam, leaving Hameeda desolate. It was a cruel blow indeed to the household of women.
Shehzada’s mother shuffled in on swollen feet. She sat down heavily, and without a word, began turning the beads of her tasbih between her fingers. They could hear the April rain pouring unceasingly outside.
”Khodayah!” Tohfeeq stared up at the blackened ceiling. “Vyn kya banei!” he cried, “What will become of us?”
Hameeda came from the inner room and leaned against the doorjamb. There was a wild look in her eyes.
“Tohfeeq,” she said, “no one believes me when I say the body wasn’t Muzammil’s!” She threw something that landed with a clink at Tohfeeq’s feet.
“Muzammil would never wear that!”
Tohfeeq picked up the trinket—it was a harmless-looking copper ring in the form of a coiled serpent, rather pretty, only a little damaged at the neck.
End
Mariam Karim
Published in the South Asian Review 2006
Srinagar, September 1985
“Today is Friday, Muzammil.”
His mother stood in the doorway, her plump work worn hands tied across her large belly. “Must you go out even today?”
“My teacher said he would take an extra class for the weaker students, Mauji,” replied Muzammil. “He says it is more important for me to obtain my degree at least this year, and stand on my own feet, than go to the Dargah.”
His mother shook her head sadly. “There is little difference between a man who is too educated and a kaafir. Too much worldly knowledge makes you forget God.”
Muzammil could see from the corner of his eye, his sister Hameeda sitting in the next room, her eyes alight with anger. “Nyabarim!” she muttered ominously. An outsider. Muzammil said nothing, but looked down at his toe sticking out from beneath his summer pheran. Shehzada, the younger of the two girls, came out carrying a cup of tea and a bun on a tray. She put it down on the mat in front of her brother.
“The rice will be ready by the time you change your clothes,” she said to him.
“ No, “ said Muzammil, ” I have no hunger for batta this morning.” He took a sip of the salty red sheer chai and bit into the bun. He knew there would be only a little green haak with the rice and no meat. Better to leave it for Hameeda…she was always hungry these days, with the baby kicking lustily inside her.
Shehzada watched Muzammil through her unbecoming black rimmed spectacles as he donned his only jacket, a mousy brown one with collars that were too large, and stepped out into the cobbled street on both sides of which the drains were filled with refuse. Then she turned back into the front room that served as cellar for the coal and sawdust used in the bukhari during winter, and latched the large wooden door. She went over to where her sister sat knitting.
“See, now you made him lose his appetite!” she said crossly
“He should not get too close to outsiders.” Hameeda’s eyes smouldered again. “The time has come to weed them out and save Kashmir “
“At least he’s trying to do something, since Father is no more. For our sake, and you know that. What good is that Muqaddis of yours to you? He has left you with child and doesn’t even send any money.”
“He’s working too. It’s people like him who will liberate Kashmir, not boys like Muzammil. We, too, must make sacrifices for our land.”
“You talk like a man”, Shehzada looked at her sister with some contempt. ” What is our land? Tomorrow if you were to marry an outsider you would lose your State Subject-ship. To women, nothing belongs, not even our own bodies. Men own everything---they even make us think like them…in terms of frontiers…and bloodshed.”
“Your education, Shehzada, has done you, and us, great harm. Father made a mistake, sending you to Delhi. It would have been better to let you finish your degree here itself.”
“And remain short-sighted forever, like a frog in a well!”
“You are a traitor! You side with the nyabarim! You have no love for your country!”
“Because you say so? I can see that there are good and bad everywhere. I will not hate a man simply because he is a nyabarim. Neither do I believe bloodshed is the answer. Men are all the same—they kill each other for power and for land—then both will turn upon us, and our children, like hounds…”
“Shehzada!” their mother called anxiously from the kitchen. Shehzada rose immediately and went to her. “Shehzada, myon koor, daughter! Must you argue like this with your sister when she is in a delicate condition? You know her views, and Muqaddis’. Go and make up with her.”
The young girl went back to her sister, kneeled down and flung her arms about her. “Didi! I’m sorry! Don’t worry about anything. Things will go well for all of us.”
And the two sisters stood at the open window, arm in arm, apple-cheeked, silent, watching the tiny street behind the wall of the Jama Masjid get busier and busier.
Even Muzammil, who was not tall by any standard, had to duck his head to get through the little arched doorway that led to the outer compound of the Jama Masjid. It was early, but already the walled area of the mosque had become alive with the Friday traders putting up their stalls. Muzammil walked across it slowly. To his left the imposing pagoda-like structure with its green roofs and high spires rose up, indifferent, it seemed, to the fate of humans who strode about purposefully in their beige and green Pathan dresses. Muzammil glanced towards the stone doorway of the mosque, by force of habit, almost as if expecting a miracle to occur each time he passed by: he saw against the light a familiar figure.
Tohfeeq smiled warmly and moved toward him. “Assalaam-aleikum!” he said,
“Waar e? Khosh poeth? “
Muzammil returned the other youth’s greeting with as much warmth. He liked Tohfeeq. He was perhaps the only one who did not treat him for a dullard—maybe because he was above the pettiness found in most people—he was a poet.
“I have come here after many days,” said Tohfeeq in reply to the surprise on Muzammil’s face. “I do come from time to time. I stand in the inner courtyard… the sunlight on the roses gives me a feeling of peace and belonging.”
“Then you must come and see us too, your old friends?” said Muzammil
“But you’re off! I shall go see your mother and sisters.” Tohfeeq felt about in his breast pocket and took out a piece of paper. “See, Muzammil, I have written a new poem.”
“I shall read it on the bus.” Muzammil took it from him. The two friends embraced, and Muzammil began to walk towards the doorways leading out onto the main road. The bus stop was becoming very crowded. Several SRTC buses marked “Dargah” were getting ready to leave for Hazratbal.
“Rainwor’—Dargah! Rainwor’—Dargah!” screamed the conductors. Men, women and children clambered noisily into the buses, happily, for it was Friday, always a festive day. Muzammil felt a little out of place in his coat and trousers: everyone would know he was not going to pray at the Dargah. He was just pushing himself into a seat when he heard Tohfeeq’s voice close to him.
“ Muzammil!” Tohfeeq panted, “Wait! I’ll come with you a little distance!” They sat in the crush of chattering passengers, and Tohfeeq said he wanted Muzammil to read his poem. “It’s very important!” he said. Muzammil unfolded the piece of paper he still clutched in his hand. He began to read it aloud:
A Cool, Clear Day in Kashmir
If I could only touch
that f athomless depth
could I know?
atoms of aimlessness
can they learn?
the sky the sky
fire snow flaming snow
jagged moving mountain faces
can I learn?
myriad moving particles
burning burning
churning somersaulting waves
glorious straining sparkling waves
waves of mountain snow and sky
waves of apple cider air
waves of freezing sunshine air
zigzagging blue flame white
sparking whirling waves
streaming searing blinding waves
tornado!
quaking sky and earth
tornado!
alive soundless moving
death death.
In spite of the noise in the bus Tohfeeq had been listening as if in a trance. When Muzammil finished, Tohfeeq looked directly at him. “It’s a prophecy, “he said, “I felt it was a prophecy when I wrote it.”
“But I don’t understand it!” said Muzammil a little sadly.
“I don’t very well either,” said Tohfeeq passing his fingers through his hair, “not yet, anyway.”
The bus had not begun to move, so Tohfeeq got up and pushed his way out through the crowd, shouting to Muzammil that he would go see his mother and sisters. A fat old woman in a grey pheran elaborately embroidered with the silver tilla work typical of the valley, sat down heavily next to him. All the windows were closed and some of the men had started to smoke. When the air in the bus became unbreatheable, it started, with a jolt; the conductor jumped onto the footboard, still screaming, ”Rainwor’! Dargah!” The bus would go via Rainawari to Hazratbal.
Muzammil was still thinking about Tohfeeq’s poem. What did it mean? Perhaps he could not understand it because he was not a visionary like Tohfeeq. Of course even ordinary human beings have their lucid moments, but for the most part we seem to be lost in a kind of fog. The fog around Muzammil seemed impenetrable.
The bus lurched and jolted along the potholed road, destroyed by the snows and never repaired. Almost there, thought Muzammil, as they went over the Nageen Bridge. He gazed, fascinated as always, at the shadows, the deep moving shadows, green and translucent shadows the willow trees made in the clear water where the two lakes, the Dal and the Nageen, met. Muzammil always imagined the rickety wooden bridge breaking down, and all of them splashing down into the soft caressing depths of the lake. They passed the Nageen Club, and as he sighted the strong wire fences of the Regional Engineering College, he thought of his little cousin Rasheed, who lived across at Nageen Bagh. Should he get off and look for Rasheed, as he still had some time? He thought the better of it, for Rasheed was probably out with his loutish friends, making vulgar graffiti on people’s walls, and scribbling in bold black lettering ‘INDIAN DOGS GO BACK’ or ‘FREE KASHMIR’. Besides his stomach was growling and the picture of the little bakery near the Dal was infinitely more inviting.
The bus halted, as was the custom on Fridays, in the square near the first gate of the University Campus. Muzammil was elbowing his way through the yelling, pushing, rather intimidating Friday crowd, when Jim and his friends waved to him from the little teashop at the corner. All the boys there were from the R.E.C., all nyabarim, outsiders. Jim was a Khasi, addicted to hashish, which was freely available in the valley; he wore beads around his neck and even on his guitar. He fascinated Muzammil, and frightened him at the same time. The others were from Bihar and Maharashtra. Muzammil had never been outside Kashmir, but he imagined the world beyond the ring of mountains to be rather bizarre. How else could one explain that the ‘low caste’ Hindu boys from U.P. and Bihar at the R.E.C. would touch the feet of the Kashmiri Pandit boys (who were their own classmates!) before an exam? It was really amazing. Of course there were castes among the Kashmiri Muslims too, and Shaikh attached to the beginning of your name entitled you to respect while at the end of your name it made you a gor, or grave-digger!
Muzammil waved to the nyabarim boys, and made his way down the street that skirted the gleaming marble mosque with its pure gold spire, into the marketplace, which was milling with the early devotees breakfasting on a variety of fried goodies emerging hot from the oil in immense pans. Drowning the din of their chatter the microphone at the mosque blared prayers for the muslimeen. Muzammil wished the prayers would be said without a microphone. The noise seemed undignified, and surely Allah would hear even a whisper?
Yet above it all, the September air hung tranquilly and limpidly glowing as though with thousands of suspended particles of moisture. Muzammil took the narrow street that cut across to the lake, where the tiny bakery was situated. Business was slack on Fridays, as all the customers went to the main market square, and there was only one tray of freshly baked bread: the doughnut shaped tsochwor’, studded with sesame seeds. He bought only enough to sustain himself, and stood gazing at the lake. The mountains reflected perfectly in its mirror-like green surface, and if you kept your gaze focussed in the distance, you needn’t see the foaming dirt at the edge. September was warm, still, limpid; where were the ‘waves’ of Tohfeeq’s vision?
Muzammil had dreamt a few nights before of a great dull-yellow snake that lay with its head in the Hazratbal Square, and spread right across to the University Campus…to Umar Bagh…Lal Bazaar…to goodness knew where. And in the dream, it devolved upon Muzammil to save his people from this terrible reptile. He ran hither and thither, trying to warn folk who seemed oblivious of its existence. Finally someone handed him a large saw, and told him he must saw off the head of the viper, for the town to be saved. Muzammil had just begun his awesome task, and sawed his way halfway into the great yellow neck when the dream ended suddenly. And he awoke perspiring, as one often does after such dreams. It was still vivid in his memory.
Muzammil dragged his gaze away from the hypnotically still Himalayan range and began to wend his way back to the market. He would go through it, just out of curiosity, and then go to his Department via the Naseembagh gate. He crossed the old one-eyed fisherwoman, asking her conversationally, ”Gaarh chha?’ Any fish today? “Aa,” she replied with a nod and a smile, knowing well he was no customer.
The little old man with his glass box of curiosities was there as usual, in the middle of the bustling square. He was so tiny that he seemed to have no body at all, only a lean elongated face, with a long hooked nose, rheumy eyes under bristling brows and the white beard trailing over the glass box right onto the road. From his dirty grey pheran emerged two long-fingered, knotty hands, with fingernails large and bluish as petals. Indeed, he seemed more puppet than human. There he was all the same, a very poor man, who had a hard time selling his meagre wares. Muzammil stopped by the glass box, more to observe the vendor than his curiosities, and the old man brightened, quickly opening the glass lid so Muzammil could get a better look. Muzammil’s eye went to something gleaming in the corner, and he bent closer—it was a copper ring, in the form of a coiled serpent.
“Only one rupee,” croaked the old man.
Muzammil put the ring on his index finger, wondering at the same time why he was doing so. He paid the old fellow and examined the trinket-- he noticed it was damaged: the coil cut halfway through at the neck of the serpent.
“Exactly as I had left it in the dream!” it suddenly struck Muzammil. ”Maybe I should break it off altogether…to ward off the effect of an evil prophecy.” Then he laughed at himself, thinking it would be a better idea to give the ring, which was a rather pretty one, to one of his sisters. After all, he’d paid a rupee for it.
Muzammil looked up to see the fat botany professor, Wanganoo, coming towards him, his mouth full of sweetmeats and his arms full of vegetables. His name fitted him particularly well at that moment—wangan means brinjal in Kashmiri.
“How come? “ asked Wanganoo, indicating Muzammil’s trousers and his coat, which now hung on his arm.
“Going for an extra class, sir”, replied Muzammil, smiling deferentially. “It begins in a quarter of an hour.” He then decided to ask Wanganoo what he made of his dream and the ring. The Professor, being a Shaivite, as are all Kashmiri Pandits, considered it a portent of good luck.
“Keep it on your finger, my boy. It is a sign from Lord Shiva. Great things are ahead of you.”
Muzammil smiled to himself as he walked towards the cool green shade of Naseembagh where his department was housed. The four hundred chinar trees had been planted under the auspices of the Emperor Jehangir, four centuries ago. According to Muzammil, it was the loveliest of the Mughal gardens of Srinagar, unadorned and neglected though it was, full of army barracks and chattering students. On Friday it was quiet, of course. As he walked under the symmetrically planted giants, their leaves beginning to turn orange at the edges, he breathed deeply of the air laden with the heady scent of the first fallen apples in the outlying orchards. How beautiful was his homeland!
He saw two blue-clothed policemen strolling past, (this was perhaps the only university campus in India to have policemen on it), ogling lewdly at two jeans-clad students from the girl’s hostel, who, like Muzammil, must have come to Naseembagh on some work.
“I’ll fuck you with the penis of a goat!” one of the policemen mouthed a typical vulgarity and the two of them laughed uproariously. But the girls did not follow, or pretended not to, more likely, as one of them was a native of the valley. Muzammil felt his stomach churn with anger and a sense of injustice. The day was ruined once more.
Aharbal, July 1986
The tourists had been enchanted by the view of the silver waterfall at Noorabad, under the full moon. Now they sat outside the little guesthouse in the moonlight and listened to the cook and the sole room attendant singing folk songs to the music of the battered but still tuneful rubab.
Their guide, Muzammil, meanwhile, decided to take a walk on the road just above. The moonlight fell in sheets of silver across the silent landscape. Silent, except for the wind whispering in the pines on the slopes, thickly wooded, of an incredible beauty. As Muzammil walked, he saw here and there, the phosphorescent gleam of an occasional glow-worm, trying to match its light to that of the moon. From time to time, plaintive snatches of the song talai lati yaaras van… drifted up from the guesthouse. O please tell my lover…a song sung at weddings.
It was only a summer job, but it was something at least. Jobs were hard to come by, especially if you didn’t have the money to pay bribes. People wanted bribes even to do the work that was normally theirs. Even to pull a file out of a cupboard. Muzammil was not rich, unlike most of his classmates whose fathers had booming businesses in the carpet or tourist trade. His father had been a small trader who catered to local needs.
At the turn of the road three youths in Pathan suits and jackets sat on the low wall protecting the edges that fell away into the ravine. They called out cheerily to Muzammil. Muzammil stopped to chat. How did they manage to make a living in a remote place like that?
“We have people across the border”, one of them smiled, “in fact we are crossing over tonight”.
“On foot?” asked Muzammil, who was not much of a climber, having spent most of his life in the plains of the valley, by the lakes.
“ Of course,” replied the other, “it is the most silent. Tonight is a good night to cross, in the moonlight. Normally there is little surveillance. I know the mountains like the back of my hand. They won’t catch us in a hundred years.”
Muzammil asked them if they knew Muqaddis, his sister’s husband. They laughed derisively. How would they know him?
“Want to come with us?” asked one in a challenging tone of Muzammil. “ No need to search for a job then.”
Muzammil looked up. The other youth was looking him unflinchingly in the eye.
Srinagar, April 1989
Tohfeeq sipped the kahwa Shehzada had poured out for him from the ancient samovar. There were no almonds in it or cardamoms, or saffron. Only the green leaf and a little sugar. Shehzada’s face looked pinched and worn. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hand trembled as she poured out the infusion. She was working as a part-time teacher in a local school. Hameeda could find no work. She was hardly up to working anyway, Shehzada confided in Tohfeeq. Their mother had pawned all her silver and gold. It was hard to make ends meet.
Two large tears trembled in Shehzada’s young eyes. Tohfeeq’s presence made Muzammil’s absence unbearably acute. There was nothing else to talk about.
“All he wanted to do was to earn an honest living, so that he could look after us.” She must have uttered those words a million times. The fateful letter, posted at Khanyar, had reached even before his body had been dragged out of the Jehlum the preceding year: “I, Muzammil, take full responsibility for my own death.”
“No greater lie has been told,” Shehzada said to Tohfeeq. He knew it to be true.
“If Hameeda’s child had still been with us, we could have been more cheerful. We mourn two members of our family…even though our baby Aslam is still alive. But who knows if we will ever see him again?”
Hameeda, after Muzammil’s death, had refused to aid and abet her husband in his terrorist activities. In retaliation, one night Muqaddis kidnapped his infant son Aslam, leaving Hameeda desolate. It was a cruel blow indeed to the household of women.
Shehzada’s mother shuffled in on swollen feet. She sat down heavily, and without a word, began turning the beads of her tasbih between her fingers. They could hear the April rain pouring unceasingly outside.
”Khodayah!” Tohfeeq stared up at the blackened ceiling. “Vyn kya banei!” he cried, “What will become of us?”
Hameeda came from the inner room and leaned against the doorjamb. There was a wild look in her eyes.
“Tohfeeq,” she said, “no one believes me when I say the body wasn’t Muzammil’s!” She threw something that landed with a clink at Tohfeeq’s feet.
“Muzammil would never wear that!”
Tohfeeq picked up the trinket—it was a harmless-looking copper ring in the form of a coiled serpent, rather pretty, only a little damaged at the neck.
End
Mariam Karim
Published in the South Asian Review 2006
Short Story: The Unbeloved
The Unbeloved
Eliot, Keats, Mallarme, Gide, Hugo, Faiz watch me from the shelf where they sit. The glass of my windows is keeping out the night. Beyond, the city gleams in a sleepless torpor. Unreal city. The light osmoses in and out of the crystal turtle on my table weighing down pictures of unreal women in unreal dresses. But if I open the back doors the night will seep in and collect about my ankles, and stick to my eyes. Then I can step out into the darkness where a baby cries on the pavement and perhaps say: I. It is I.
“I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts….
It is I. And only the darkness knows what it is never to have been “I”. Always “he”, always “she”. Throbbing between two lives, each unreal.
There will be a knock on the door. Like yesterday I shall adjust my ponytail and fix my smile. I will be swept away amidst admirers in my white Cielo to the party. Like yesterday when I chatted with party hopper Anurag. Yesterday when the women with wide painted mouths laughed and screamed, and hoped their grasshopper legs would be noticed. Thighs the colour of peeled almonds. Bina took my arm and introduced me to her socialite friends from Bombay. Mumbai, if you like.
“His summer collection was marvelous!” she enthused to them, “He is just so creative…” Always “he”. An aspiring model clutched my hand and kissed my cheek. Wide painted mouth and grasshopper almond thighs. The wine sparkled in crystal glasses. Beaujolais, Porto. But the night was out there, waiting behind the doors. If I had opened them, it would have flowed in about our ankles and stuck to our eyes.
Lonely city, a city with nowhere to go. A village without the green relief of fields. But how can I complain? I am always out, invited about. He is just so creative, they say. It is not the grasshopper almond thighs I drape. I drape myself. Her. It is she who creates for herself. Creativity, always feminine. I drape about her the sequined jackets, and seamless skirts. About her the traditional odhnis, and blouses exposing peeled almond midriffs. In her eyes reflect the kundan accessories to jacquard sleeveless tops. But she is not young anymore. Her thighs are not smooth almond thighs. What are the girls with the painted mouths doing with their youth? Will the loneliness churning out like a fog from the cities bowels grab them too, one day? But perhaps they have no hospital smells in their youth to drape. No bed-pan smells to drape in embroidered taffeta.
***
He will ask her:
Qu’as-tu fait
Toi que voila
Pleurant sans cesse,
Qu’as-tu fait, toi que voila
De ta jeunesse?
If only Ma had loved me better, held me, looked at me when I was a child, my Freudian feelings would have been sublimated and I would have become. I. Instead of floating thus in the violet hour…in a city with nowhere to go. A city of grasshopper almond thighs and painted wide mouths. Draping bedpan smells in embossed taffeta.
Ma knew I would look after her till the end. She made sure of that when she put her perfumed cheek against mine and her silk pallav rustled against my arm, before she left each evening, ushering me into Mary’s soft hanging arms. My longing to be cherished by her was that which made me take care of her through those long months at the hospital before the end. And then it was over, and darkness came. Nothing had changed... the evenings that I had been left with Mary remained evenings that I had been left with Mary. Hospital smells were added to the smells of silk and perfume, that was all. The past remains the past and cannot be sublimated.
Those who have been loved and accepted in their childhood …they are made whole forever. There is no dark fog of loneliness churning in their breasts. Their world is whole. It is the unbeloved that seek to make the world a better place. It is the unbeloved that create: he who has not seen himself reflected in love in a parent’s eye, his world has no equilibrium. He is not. She is not. I am not. Not existing because never perceived. Living in the violet hour.
The eyes of millions are upon me. The cameras swing left and right. I am surrounded by grasshopper thighs, wide smiling mouths, painted, grimacing. I can see Ipsita, a has been model,—her son is twelve now. She will not give up. I want to ask her “Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?” : What have you done with your youth? There are lines on her face, yet she is but thirty-three, much younger than I. Her smile towards me, overused, stops at the violet halo. It cannot validate me. Nothing can, any more: Ma is dead. Dead without having loved me.
Naveen Vaid! The microphone screams. The wide mouths kiss my cheeks. I am the man of the hour. But creativity is always feminine, female. Unbeloved.
And outside the night travels unbidden on the lonely pavements where little girls sell peanuts to nocturnal travelers. It invades the dark sleeping bodies of the rag-pickers in grey hovels. Even amongst them there are those who have been loved, whose worlds are whole. The night carpets the pot-holed tarmac roads, and sits outside doors, waiting to be let in. It peers with violet eyes in at windows and shuffles its feet.
Eliot, Keats, Mallarme, Gide, Hugo, Faiz watch me from the shelf where they sit. The glass of my windows is keeping out the night. Beyond, the city gleams in a sleepless torpor. Unreal city. The light osmoses in and out of the crystal turtle on my table weighing down pictures of unreal women in unreal dresses. But if I open the back doors the night will seep in and collect about my ankles, and stick to my eyes. Then I can step out into the darkness where a baby cries on the pavement and perhaps say: I. It is I.
“I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts….
It is I. And only the darkness knows what it is never to have been “I”. Always “he”, always “she”. Throbbing between two lives, each unreal.
There will be a knock on the door. Like yesterday I shall adjust my ponytail and fix my smile. I will be swept away amidst admirers in my white Cielo to the party. Like yesterday when I chatted with party hopper Anurag. Yesterday when the women with wide painted mouths laughed and screamed, and hoped their grasshopper legs would be noticed. Thighs the colour of peeled almonds. Bina took my arm and introduced me to her socialite friends from Bombay. Mumbai, if you like.
“His summer collection was marvelous!” she enthused to them, “He is just so creative…” Always “he”. An aspiring model clutched my hand and kissed my cheek. Wide painted mouth and grasshopper almond thighs. The wine sparkled in crystal glasses. Beaujolais, Porto. But the night was out there, waiting behind the doors. If I had opened them, it would have flowed in about our ankles and stuck to our eyes.
Lonely city, a city with nowhere to go. A village without the green relief of fields. But how can I complain? I am always out, invited about. He is just so creative, they say. It is not the grasshopper almond thighs I drape. I drape myself. Her. It is she who creates for herself. Creativity, always feminine. I drape about her the sequined jackets, and seamless skirts. About her the traditional odhnis, and blouses exposing peeled almond midriffs. In her eyes reflect the kundan accessories to jacquard sleeveless tops. But she is not young anymore. Her thighs are not smooth almond thighs. What are the girls with the painted mouths doing with their youth? Will the loneliness churning out like a fog from the cities bowels grab them too, one day? But perhaps they have no hospital smells in their youth to drape. No bed-pan smells to drape in embroidered taffeta.
***
He will ask her:
Qu’as-tu fait
Toi que voila
Pleurant sans cesse,
Qu’as-tu fait, toi que voila
De ta jeunesse?
If only Ma had loved me better, held me, looked at me when I was a child, my Freudian feelings would have been sublimated and I would have become. I. Instead of floating thus in the violet hour…in a city with nowhere to go. A city of grasshopper almond thighs and painted wide mouths. Draping bedpan smells in embossed taffeta.
Ma knew I would look after her till the end. She made sure of that when she put her perfumed cheek against mine and her silk pallav rustled against my arm, before she left each evening, ushering me into Mary’s soft hanging arms. My longing to be cherished by her was that which made me take care of her through those long months at the hospital before the end. And then it was over, and darkness came. Nothing had changed... the evenings that I had been left with Mary remained evenings that I had been left with Mary. Hospital smells were added to the smells of silk and perfume, that was all. The past remains the past and cannot be sublimated.
Those who have been loved and accepted in their childhood …they are made whole forever. There is no dark fog of loneliness churning in their breasts. Their world is whole. It is the unbeloved that seek to make the world a better place. It is the unbeloved that create: he who has not seen himself reflected in love in a parent’s eye, his world has no equilibrium. He is not. She is not. I am not. Not existing because never perceived. Living in the violet hour.
The eyes of millions are upon me. The cameras swing left and right. I am surrounded by grasshopper thighs, wide smiling mouths, painted, grimacing. I can see Ipsita, a has been model,—her son is twelve now. She will not give up. I want to ask her “Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?” : What have you done with your youth? There are lines on her face, yet she is but thirty-three, much younger than I. Her smile towards me, overused, stops at the violet halo. It cannot validate me. Nothing can, any more: Ma is dead. Dead without having loved me.
Naveen Vaid! The microphone screams. The wide mouths kiss my cheeks. I am the man of the hour. But creativity is always feminine, female. Unbeloved.
And outside the night travels unbidden on the lonely pavements where little girls sell peanuts to nocturnal travelers. It invades the dark sleeping bodies of the rag-pickers in grey hovels. Even amongst them there are those who have been loved, whose worlds are whole. The night carpets the pot-holed tarmac roads, and sits outside doors, waiting to be let in. It peers with violet eyes in at windows and shuffles its feet.
******
The day after is always the best. I lock my door. The sunshine spills in in waves and shatters on the crystal and glass on my table. I read the notes of congratulation. I stand before the ornate mirror and try on all the dresses of the night before. My thighs are wrinkled and hairy, but the skirts suit me. I do not have female dugs; and I have not seen it all. Eliot , Keats, Mallarme, Gide, Hugo, Faiz. They are all watching me from the shelf where they sit.
Only Zubin, my mate, knows. He has walked the streets of the unbeloved with me many a time. From the tinted glass of my picture window the buildings look tall and prosperous in the burning sun. Burning, burning. Unreal city. Throbbing between two lives, as I, who even in the violet hour, will never be. I.
Note: the references in italics are all from Eliot’s Wasteland or The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The French verse is Mallarmé’s—
Meaning” What have you done, you, who weep incessantly, what have you done with your youth?
Published in:
NUESTRA VOZ: VOLUME 3 (NOTRE VOIX, OUR VOICE): ANTHOLOGY FROM THE INTL. PEN WOMEN WRITER'S COMMITTEE
Iride M. Rossi de Fiori, Ed.
01 Jan 2006 Chicago Network for Justice and Peace/Editorial Biblioteca de Textos Universitarios
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
POEM 3
Do not speak to me….
Do not speak to me of falling towers
Not of terrorists,
Not of nine-elevens and Taj attacks
Do not speak to me of Satyam scams
Do not speak to me of Mangalore pub assaults
Of rapes and murders and accidents
Of Hindus and Muslims and pompous clerics all
Of conferences where men sit in state
And women wilt in the wings
Do not garnish my world with these ugly things…..
For right where you are
There is the hungry child you waved away
There is the young widow you wouldn’t employ
There is the drunkard who broke his wife’s back
There is the unemployed youth who stole your helmet
There’s the refuse in the drain, and the child cleaner
There’s the man who sold his kidney
And the doctor who bought it
There’s the woman whose baby wouldn’t grow
For she nothing to eat and nothing for him
There’s the bin full of flies, the scabious dog,
And the pond choked with dirt……
Do not speak to me of MNC’s
Do not speak to me of hep yuppies
Do not speak to me of night shifts and foreign trips
Of the melting glaciers do not speak
Sitting in high glass rooms in the IHC
And do not speak of the children of Gaza
Of the tribals who did not return to Kandhamal
Do not speak…
Of conferences where men sit in state
And women wilt in the wings
Do not garnish my world with these ugly things
Let us talk of the night
And the fragrance of wet earth
Let us speak of the call of the jackal
And the cry of the kite
Let us speak of the moonlight
Cool as mint from the moon
And the world silver white
Let us speak of the meeting of eyes
When no words need be said
Let us speak of the whispers
Of grasses in the dawn
Let speak of the scent of the mountain fern
Let us speak of the satin reflections in lakes
The swish of the water on the silent oars
Let us speak of the mother suckling her child
Crooning her love in the infinite night
Lets us speak of you and I
Let us shut the world out
So we can exist
Let us extinguish our senses
So we can feel
Let us douse the light
So we may perceive
Let us quench the exterior
So that we can be.
Do not speak to me of falling towers
Not of terrorists,
Not of nine-elevens and Taj attacks
Do not speak to me of Satyam scams
Do not speak to me of Mangalore pub assaults
Of rapes and murders and accidents
Of Hindus and Muslims and pompous clerics all
Of conferences where men sit in state
And women wilt in the wings
Do not garnish my world with these ugly things…..
For right where you are
There is the hungry child you waved away
There is the young widow you wouldn’t employ
There is the drunkard who broke his wife’s back
There is the unemployed youth who stole your helmet
There’s the refuse in the drain, and the child cleaner
There’s the man who sold his kidney
And the doctor who bought it
There’s the woman whose baby wouldn’t grow
For she nothing to eat and nothing for him
There’s the bin full of flies, the scabious dog,
And the pond choked with dirt……
Do not speak to me of MNC’s
Do not speak to me of hep yuppies
Do not speak to me of night shifts and foreign trips
Of the melting glaciers do not speak
Sitting in high glass rooms in the IHC
And do not speak of the children of Gaza
Of the tribals who did not return to Kandhamal
Do not speak…
Of conferences where men sit in state
And women wilt in the wings
Do not garnish my world with these ugly things
Let us talk of the night
And the fragrance of wet earth
Let us speak of the call of the jackal
And the cry of the kite
Let us speak of the moonlight
Cool as mint from the moon
And the world silver white
Let us speak of the meeting of eyes
When no words need be said
Let us speak of the whispers
Of grasses in the dawn
Let speak of the scent of the mountain fern
Let us speak of the satin reflections in lakes
The swish of the water on the silent oars
Let us speak of the mother suckling her child
Crooning her love in the infinite night
Lets us speak of you and I
Let us shut the world out
So we can exist
Let us extinguish our senses
So we can feel
Let us douse the light
So we may perceive
Let us quench the exterior
So that we can be.
POEMS
When I Took You In
I too am waiting for that moment
When I shall hold the string of the tongue in my hand
And watch it soar to my tugs and pulls, or dip as I leave the thread lax
When you came in at the open door your voice was not familiar
And neither were the words that rolled upon it
But I took you in.
As the sunlight was behind you,
I could not see your face
All I knew was that you were a stranger
Then I learnt the words that twinkled upon your tongue,
I took each one and pinned it like a moth for dissection
And learnt its every tonality, its every cadence.
You said I had robbed you,
But the sunlight was behind you,
I could not see your face when I took you in
The green of the bougainvillea was behind your still figure
And I could tell you were human
But you, you could see me,
Why then did you ask to be taken in?
Now your words have become mine and you are afraid,
Because you did not take mine in return
When I would have willingly given them to you
You did not ask, because you thought you could see me
So you did not need my words
I would have enriched your world with seas and mountains
Rivers and mango groves, cool interior darknesses
And sunsets through the same green leaves behind you;
With the call of vendors over whitewashed high walls and terraces,
And many more images made sound:
These were mine to give
If you had only asked.
But you thought because the light was on my face
You did not need my words
To know the world.
I too am waiting for that moment
When I shall hold the string of the tongue in my hand
And watch it soar to my tugs and pulls, or dip as I leave the thread lax
When you came in at the open door your voice was not familiar
And neither were the words that rolled upon it
But I took you in.
As the sunlight was behind you,
I could not see your face
All I knew was that you were a stranger
Then I learnt the words that twinkled upon your tongue,
I took each one and pinned it like a moth for dissection
And learnt its every tonality, its every cadence.
You said I had robbed you,
But the sunlight was behind you,
I could not see your face when I took you in
The green of the bougainvillea was behind your still figure
And I could tell you were human
But you, you could see me,
Why then did you ask to be taken in?
Now your words have become mine and you are afraid,
Because you did not take mine in return
When I would have willingly given them to you
You did not ask, because you thought you could see me
So you did not need my words
I would have enriched your world with seas and mountains
Rivers and mango groves, cool interior darknesses
And sunsets through the same green leaves behind you;
With the call of vendors over whitewashed high walls and terraces,
And many more images made sound:
These were mine to give
If you had only asked.
But you thought because the light was on my face
You did not need my words
To know the world.
POEMS
Drowned Woman
Who can you see when you are beneath the water?
None but those who have stopped breathing,
Those who have stopped speaking
Letting the cold seep into their lungs, to stillness…
Those you will address will not be speaking
in gusts of air,
But perhaps bubbling water swishing whispering
The drowned can speak only to the drowned
In the language of the drowned
In inundated sound, slow motion smiles,
And slow fingers moving like weeds
Like fish, in silent sounds
Or sounds reverberating only through water
Blue sounds
Green sounds
Sounds only the drowned can understand
Who listened when she spoke?
Who heard her cry of drowning? None, none turned even to look,
None came to succour.
Who drowned her? Father, brother, mother, spouse…
All around us on the street dance drowned women, see,
Their eyes, backward looking, unfocussed,
Their words, the words repeated once too often
Unthought words
Words that must be said
Unknowingly the same,
Actions that must be done,
Unknowingly the same
Who drowned them? Father, mother, brother, spouse…
The man on the street and the undrowned women too.
Refused to see her drowning
Refused her aid
A deaf ear to her cries
Until they became muffled, silenced
In her drowning
And though she was drowned
They looked upon her and could not see her
Their eyes so used
To the usefulness of drowned women.
None but those who have stopped breathing,
Those who have stopped speaking
Letting the cold seep into their lungs, to stillness…
Those you will address will not be speaking
in gusts of air,
But perhaps bubbling water swishing whispering
The drowned can speak only to the drowned
In the language of the drowned
In inundated sound, slow motion smiles,
And slow fingers moving like weeds
Like fish, in silent sounds
Or sounds reverberating only through water
Blue sounds
Green sounds
Sounds only the drowned can understand
Who listened when she spoke?
Who heard her cry of drowning? None, none turned even to look,
None came to succour.
Who drowned her? Father, brother, mother, spouse…
All around us on the street dance drowned women, see,
Their eyes, backward looking, unfocussed,
Their words, the words repeated once too often
Unthought words
Words that must be said
Unknowingly the same,
Actions that must be done,
Unknowingly the same
Who drowned them? Father, mother, brother, spouse…
The man on the street and the undrowned women too.
Refused to see her drowning
Refused her aid
A deaf ear to her cries
Until they became muffled, silenced
In her drowning
And though she was drowned
They looked upon her and could not see her
Their eyes so used
To the usefulness of drowned women.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)