Of Noses and Civilizations.

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amasis1.jpg

The ubiquitous gaze slithers off the arched brow
so meticulously done, yet a disappointment!
Of the crafted hands the beautified face speaks not
Nor the shared pain of womanhood, but of an immediate slant

The enlarged swell that meets the eye at the earliest
seems to alter perceptions vividly.
A mountain, housing two distinctively dark hollow caves
gathers all attentive air up the nasal cavity.

Of sanctions and of sheer disgust, the facial mound discerns all
Of denounced stenches and of glorious scents.
In one cave resides the thick haired righteous morality and
As its neighbor, the blinded ageing law-keeper.

The higher the rise, greater the dignity stacked inside.
And true, poor Sroopnakha’s heart must have bled green.
Lethal the blow must’ve been to have hurt her aroused femininity,
to culminate into an elaborate myth of resplendent beliefs.

Of snorts and of sniffs and of ecstatic smoggy fumes,
The benumbing of nerves and of nauseating dramatic spells,
Repeatedly the device has failed to detect the
of humbling black deaths and mighty winged plagues.

Warm odors travel up slowly, giving texture to desires.
And there, She paints her lover musk, in fragrant imagination
Of sensuous bliss and of awakenings beyond,
Nothing makes monsoons smell so fresh and earthy.

A clownish frown – and a wrinkle too cranky!
A loud toothy laugh – and a droop too low!
Donning myriad characters, neither too far, nor too close,
Such momentary protagonist is our collective Parrot Nose!

Bimla in Ghore Baire

“Frailty thy name is woman”, Shakespeare had said. But the Shakespeare of India, Rabindranath Tagore would beg to differ without aiming to dispel the aesthetics of a woman being petite, frivolous on one hand and the mythical kali swaroopa on the other. Subtle exquisiteness has been the forte of Tagores female protagonists. The social milieu he places his female characters in is predominantly and strictly quite indigenous. They hail from all walks of life and depict a mosaic of grays and greens of femininity. He playfully renders an abstract impression to the “character of women” through his stories.

Ghore Baire (The Home and The World) is one such unhurried but glorious story of Bimla, the beautiful, well kept wife of an educated and modern zamindar, Nikhil. Set in colonial Bengal at the time when tides of transformation swept its cities and villages, both reside in a huge haveli, amidst the clatter of maids and servants. Bimla’s World is this Home she stepped in as young apprehensive bride. Here, Tagore reiterates the enormity of alteration that marriage bestows upon a girl at the threshold of womanhood. Bimla so far has been unaware of the fears and thrills of a free flight. The dungeons of orthodoxy and aristocracy she has stayed in since childhood has conditioned her deeply to accept whatever comes her way. Now, Nikhil is essentially the hero of this story for he believes to love truly and let go fully! He is never rigid to his homely wife but constructive in adding to her assets as a skilful Bimla. He enrols her for piano lessons and tries to adept her in English styles of attire and hairstyles with some assistance of a British helper. She accepts all willingly.

Bimla in her haven is extremely grateful to have a husband ever so caring and loving. She is content but even in this contentment lives a lingering desire, a desire to fulfil what she too knows not, maybe a free flight!? It is this mysterious nature of her being that is out of grasps even for Bimla herself. Probably the pleats of saree she dons everyday meticulously has kept her real self hidden even from herself. She disrobes herself slowly but vehemently in front of Sandip, Nikhil’s so-called political revolutionary, feminist friend. Interestingly Sandip always refers to Bimla as mokhi, Queen Bee – Goddess of the Nationalist Movement, thus eventually instilling in her a sense of novel power and importance. This is when she gets a glimpse of the world outside the portals of her home. Being oblivious to Sandip’s manipulations she blindly mistakes her affliction as love. Here too Tagore never judges her character negatively because this is the first time she is confronted with the question “Who am I?”. And as this existential thought strikes, her journey inwards begins which finally ends with Nikhil waiting for her.

The two dimensions of time and space in which the story has been woven is no doubt of the pre-independence era but it hasn’t lost its relevance even today. Through this story of Bimla, I could strongly personify Nikhil, as the free, pious, thoughtful, pure human love filled heart, the Home for Bimla. And Sandip on the other hand as the crude, futile, luring, pseudo-humanist, hypocrite world which Bimla tastes and chooses against eventually for her good hearts sake.

INSIDE

The blazing pupil of her eye, Contracting- Expanding
Souls of two boats of the river,
And she crouching over, knitting or sewing.
those boats are now into saline waters, sinking.
Her koo-koo voice is now dry and hoarse,
On which once floated lullabies galore.
Her tendril fingers used to brush through
My hair and doze me off to an addictive calm.
Now, life escapes these hands. Its fingers
Recline extraordinarily entangled in her lap.
The pallu I once pulled and hid behind,
He ripped that apart, the animal.
The bosom that’s was pillow to my dreams,
He rubbed it grim, the traitor.
The moon she used to be, is no more.

What occupies her thoughts is my cause of anguish
For once she occupied me in her cosmic womb.
She has seen me change,
“Metamorphose onto a bug”
As I saw her amended, become diminutive.
Elaborate pain hugs me to see he pale pallu now,
Her bosom with broken heart,
And still but unresponsive eyes.
She is stoic as I venture into by lanes of anonymity,
Her benign figure bedecked in my memory of odds.

Unhurriedly, each day passes and time grows
Into years of inappropriate events.
And blaring silence of hers continues to drill
Commotion into me.
The Hussshhh. . . hisses and crawls
Not like a snake but worms,
As slimy as the insides of my brain, and intestines.
The Hussshhh. . . of hers assaults and takes over me.
I, bequeathed with void, make haste to discharge
The degenerative fluids, all in hushed moans.

Abrupt noise dismantles the silent guild I haunt.
But oh! There, I hear laughter daunt,
Coming closer and closer
Stimulating me to degenerate
To rip, to rub and to terminate.
This woman is not my mute mother.
But her noise bleeds my ears
And seeps like acid into my slimy brain,
The rotten but moist walnut!

I take possession of her and she stops.
And then scatters into screams.
Oh! This noise shakes my contained bugs of turbulence.
Arousing me to extremes
Turning silence into violence,
Turning a corpse into a beast.
The earthy brown pupil of hers meets mine, the blinded ones.
They expand-contract too, but in flustered terror.
I feel her bosom, thundering against mine.
Her fear felt familiar.

Her petite being trembled like
The shriveling moon, among the deceptive clouds.
But she is not mute,
Neither was the koo-koo once.

the bullet

(a prolonged passing thought, while passing through the Delhi metro tunnel... ignore the jerks!!)


i feed on death.

Death shall guide me.

i aim your heart out, entering its deepest to quench my thirst. evading my way though the multiple layers of nerves, tissues and the exhilarating blood.
i must reach the unattainable depths of heart and see the lover complain.
i shall leave the nozzle of my beholder,one by one dispelling me like a tree sheds its yellow and so does a man.
Dispel me, a waste. but i am no yellow of thine nasty human or overgrown tree. i am a work of art, they, my protectors(dispensers) believe.
the giver of my birth is no female. there cant be any "she". i am the collective of all the history drowned in hatred. i pop in you and guaranteed salvation shall knock at the gates of your consciousness.

A BIRTHDAY

Dedicated to my dearest friend Prateek on his birthday, 22nd Nov 2008.


A BIRTHDAY.

you were born,
a bundle of joy.
fingers stubby
and cheeks chubby!
not in a manger,
but in my heart
Oh! but...
how would you have known.

you were born,
a reckless freak.
gay and merry,
in a world so bleak!
in dreams, not just thine
but also mine.
Oh! but...
how could you have known.

you were born,
a sturdy soldier.
"was a mishap"
you thought bolder!
i stood with open arms,
if only you were here.
Oh! but...
how could you have known.

you were born,
a milder man.
ever being so thoughtful,
not all of us can!
with abundant newness,
today you are born again.
Oh! but...
you always knew that.

MY BROKEN CRADLE

Kasheer, the cradle of
My happiest days which
Alas! I cannot summon.
Not even a trace,
Not even a figment
Can I recall.

A leaf of the springtime,
Fresh and tender to touch,
So I was told,
Fell off its branch,
Well before its time.
Fell into the autumnal drain
And swam with the current
Towards the sewer of this world.

The season was different
And the wind, ruthless,
So I was told,
which took all away,
All that its might could.
It shunted the leaf, still unripe.
Braced for the drudgery, but
not the loss of its hue,
It refused to shed its green, the
Emerald of a crown.
Refused to dry into pathetic despair.

Time passed,
The hue remained but
The delicate scent was lost.
Bereft, its longing grew.
The twig it belonged to
Had withheld its fragrance.
Memories deceive this leaf.
But resounding facts
Unleash the history that
Rendered the leaf its texture.

Beneath the surface,
The bruise is fresh
But when concealed,
Left unseen in worldly mesh.
A perception indebted with
Blood laden facts,
Gave way to a melodious rustle,
The blowing wind bound to
indelible pacts.

Separated by time and distance,
It pledged to return one day,
Flutter back to that
Spring of the Valley where
Once dwelled the Heaven.

It vowed to bloom someday
from its own ashes of dismay,
as a phoenix shimmering its light
as bright as gay,
to act upon the vengeance
and make them cower and pray.
At last, it broke the shackles and tangles
of the woeful plight,
The heaven showered the spring
and nature swore to sing,
the beauty that was lost has come back
as a blissful omen to dispel the prodigal past.

MAINE USSE JAATE DEKHA HAI ...

Maine use jaate dekha hai, us maasoom ko, kayin baras pehle, wo naa lautne ka waada karke gaya …fir bhi mein kabse usse in khilauno mein khojti rahi …par wo na aaya… Wo rooth ke gaya…. Yun waqt se pehle… ki fir na aaya… mera wo andekha bachpan. Jo kuch yaadein thi…yakeen maaniye yunhi khaas na thi…kuch yahan, kuch wahan ka rona de gaya. Us chutpan ka har aansoo fir bhi yaad mujhe hai…zehen ke dayre mein kam se kam ye sanjo sake, kaafi hai.

Par jawaani us bin bulaye mehmaan si lagti hai jo anjaane kisi maasoom ke maatam mein gumsum shareeq ho.
To wo phool kaise khile…
Kaise wo ujala ho,
Wo seher ho…?
Jawaan dhadkan ki zid koi to pehchaane,
Maine us maasoom ko jaate dekha hai….