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
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