You see, Renu, even now it feels like — years ago... My voice just deepening, jaw still firm, here and there a scatter of whiskers, I was a growing boy. Days passed wild with the hunger of feeling, waiting for something — I knew not what! What exactly I waited for with such longing, I could never fathom then.
The neighborhood aunties would look up and say, Get married, boy! Bina from this lane, Radha from that one, Shaili from the Brahmin quarter or Mouri from the Khan house... Red-toothed Kashem the doorman would laugh and say, Babu, won't you go to the pleasure district? Fine birds there! He'd say and say... That was my first ugly acquaintance with lust.
Ah, Renu, how you furrow that brow! Has sin's fever touched your skin? I became acquainted, yes, but never touched that cold sin! Three villages knew my father was quite respectable.
That day, the thirteenth of Poush, wandering the narrow lane, suddenly in the three-tongued evening I touched curse, thinking it was kohl. Since then the running began. Still running, still running... Then I wandered much across vast time, swallowed much pain, wrinkles appeared in lived life at the end of many days, and now I am an aged wanderer past eighty!
What was not, never became — I have no regret for that. And what belongs to her, nothing of it can be lost. Death comes creeping down my spine, the few breaths that remain, I've gathered them all today. Before I go, then, I write down the full account... Ah! There hangs my dream on barbed wire...whatever I kept in memory!
You know what I've seen! I've seen story-pages full of thirst! Not water — it wanted tears...thick, salty tears! This thirst was primal, sharp as the lifelong hunger of savage hyenas for flesh!
I've seen dream-baskets filled with nothing but desire! Not affection — it craved the taste of bodies smeared on beds! That gaze was murky as thick mud, and as it moved forward, piercing iron armor, it spread nakedness deeper and deeper!
I heard in garden after garden the moaning of flowers in her voice... She wants honey...you understand, not fragrance! The fierce intoxication of sipping away soul-nectar drop by drop! Don't mistake it. This is not love's warmth; this is intoxication that only spills blood!
I emerged from history's twisted turns to hear her terror-raising call... Scratchy celebration on the gramophone...as if frost forms even on flame! This was not breathless excitement at all, but breath-stopping cold savagery!
She sang with kohl-rimmed eyes, I heard the sound of blood-bubbles bursting! When half-bloomed moonlight came, she'd giggle and laugh, I'd see the air was warm, yet the night terribly cold! When clouds gathered in the sky, she'd get drenched in rain, I clearly understood she was drunk on the play of feeling!
She filled languid mornings with tuberose scent, in that flower's fragrance I knew each bud was scratched and scarred! When autumn came, she'd birth poetry in the womb of letters, the discarded pen testified how terribly each poem suffered with every stab! Every evening she ritually needed her lamp lit, the burning wick left written in smoke's haze: twelve flames burned twelve springs to ash in an instant!
Every full moon she'd put alta on her feet, anklets chiming, she'd walk along the boundary wall, I'd watch sideways how the newly sprouted weeds would rush with reverence! When afternoon came and the neighborhood's vagabond cuckoo dozed off, I saw her raising storms on the veena, scattering the midday home, chasing him away... People said his name was Akhilda.
You see, Renu, counting and counting, I couldn't keep track of how many springs passed! How much alta was washed away in water to make widows, I couldn't keep count, didn't write a single poem!
Your grandmother would say, prick the ring finger tip and soak it in salt water. You've gone mute, losing melody to beauty's wound, will you still light lamps in the prayer room! I'd raise my pen and say, Mother, look — glass shards on the threshold, smell of blood on the bed, smoking Om beneath the pillow, scattered brains at the window, heaps of words across the table, heart fragments on book pages, bitter touch of disbelief in clothing folds in the wardrobe, shadow-plays running mirror to mirror, dried stems of emotion lying in the flower vase, even the candle covered in sorrow's blue! The steady flame keeps breathing hot breath on the wall's neck... Will someone bring a little water?
In the discarded alta box, see — swooned happiness, unsolicited fragrance in the garden's lantana blooms, my dreams drowsing in the still swing... Mother, no lamp has burned for years in my lost eyes! Tell me, with what joy shall I light lamps in the prayer room?
In these broken arms, a hundred years of rust, gusts of heavy breath, my soul wounded and scarred, blackened veins, worm-eaten sight, letters hidden in forehead's creases, this skeletal body too wrapped in tattered cloth! You see, Renu, I am a handwritten poem ...of Time itself.