Friend by My Side

These rains,
all these countless streams,
meaningless now.

What shall I do with these streams?
I was never like this before,
I never knew
that rain could be watched sitting by the window,
that you could record and send handfuls of rain-news
in your cupped palms to someone far away.

This restlessness of my birds,
these birds never received my affection either!
I was merely their keeper,
it was you who made me their loving guardian.
I know birds are your great favorite,
they flutter in the storm wind,
I understand; yet
I don't go near!

Basabi is so incomplete...without Bhaskar.
Bhaskar has said it plainly enough,
the moment you ask for more than life can give, trouble begins—
the same with literature.
This is how Bhaskar saves himself from the weight of expectations
from his own writing...
and keeps on writing.

My days, though, are still filled with you,
all your beloved books,
all your cherished writers...everything that exists,
all their literary works have become objects of my devotion now.
I read,
I touch and examine them,
arrange the books right in front of me,
even the obsession with writing has come...
in this absence of yours.
When you find the person you love
nothing else in life gets found.

Tell me, my sudden stopping,
my vanishing,
however much like Kotaki it became, and
nothing changed in your way of living?
Doesn't your peaceful life feel any anxiety or lack?

Perhaps it doesn't!
Busyness is such a good thing—
it saves people,
lets them forget,
keeps them sleeping through the time of dwelling in sorrow.
Only suddenly...one night, perhaps it will rain,
that day your heart will ache terribly for my mad, mad words,
the storytelling with photographs will return again and again...you'll see!
That me who sang in tune and out of tune, who dug up joy to share,
and her wanting to have you
so very close—
perhaps that day it will want to hurt you deeply.

But I won't let that day come into these strange hours of mine,
instead of burying the words of my heart I celebrate them
...every single day.

They lose the power to cause pain,
instead they join my celebration,
become friends and stay beside me.