Painstakingly, feather by feather,
Like all the plaster peeling from the walls of your thoughts, I too am falling away bit by bit, and I'm quite well with it. So many auspicious moments have passed, yet not a single letter has come even now. My mailbox remains utterly empty! The fragrant envelopes I bought to write replies are all suffocating to death in their box. On one side my mailbox is empty, on the other my golden box is full of dead envelopes! What a life this becomes—imperiled by letters!
Let all that be. Today instead let me tell you a story—that would be better. The story itself is an entire life, a free spirit, the draft of a novel that perhaps still needs much revision. You belong to many, yet you are mine alone—you who love difference, love rebirth, love peace. Today then I'll tell you a story in just that flavor, in the form of difference, tell it to you in poetry, tell it in broken rhythm!
Do you remember, exactly three years ago a living fossil wrapped in the shell of narrow-mindedness suddenly entered your circle!? A small message, with your name written on it. What was written there? What was its manner? Did it ask something of you? Did you think then... unwelcome trouble! Like everyone else, it's come to torment me, this goblet! Did you trust it? Though it had done nothing worthy of trust—not then, not now! It knows that this isn't as easy as leisurely cracking and chewing peanut shells or casually making promises with words a few times. Questions, then sharp distrust, then questions again... then a wisp of smoky hesitation, and after that you came to trust it. Tell me, why do people trust? To survive in this world, one must trust someone or other—every person holds this as an absolute truth! Why? For their own sake? Or for the sake of the person standing before them?
One day at the end of evening—that is, dusk was just about to fall—when suddenly the clouds burst into fierce quarrel! What rain it was! Sitting on the veranda, I was touching and tasting the rain, the eternal drops of rain spreading purity through every fold of my flesh, purity entering my flesh and muscle, I was becoming pure with the rhythm of rain, the scent of earth, the kohl of clouds! My lungs filled with newborn air! Clean, cool, purified life coursed through my blood, flesh, breath! I felt this wasn't rain—this was poetry! The purest lines seemed to fall as rain! I touched it, tasted it in my flesh and blood! My blood filled with verses, words gathered in my lungs! Such happiness I was selfishly smearing on my body... was going... was going, when suddenly I saw you there! I cried out in joy like a bird—
'You know, it's raining hard here, the cloud-ladies have started a fight.
Never mind that! Tell me, do you like rain?
Have you ever stolen mangoes while soaked in rain?... And then... the kadamba tree... rain rolling down the edge of a sari... royal swans... rain gathering its body in green fields... fish dancing in the pond...!'
How much more I said that day! I hadn't yet learned to address you as 'tumi'! It was 'apni'... yes, 'apni'... once more 'apni'... I just loved calling you that then! Now whenever I see rain, I want to write your name somewhere. I wanted to give you a little bit of my full heart's purity that day. You only gave me love! You exchanged happiness. You gave a name to me near you, to you near me, to our path, to the garden still in the womb then, to poetry, to the night that ended on the roof! You made me happy. I find joy in thinking myself happy, you know! I find joy in saying I love you, waiting for you makes me happy. Poetry gives joy, sorrow gives joy, your sulking fills me with happiness.
The thought that you exist gives me happiness. The thought that you might not exist gives me pain, yet still I find joy. The happiness I get from crying, I don't get that same happiness even from laughing heartily. I feel that happiness with blood, with flesh, with breath—not with touch. By the way, do you remember what name you gave exactly?
Since then I've been walking the path. You are my personal path, and that path makes me happy. On that path flowers fly as butterflies, wings full of color spreading joy as they fly; I watch them, my eyes find happiness. Every moment you've given me has made me happy. Even the moments you haven't given have made me happy—do you know why? I've had time to tend to my thoughts about you. Someone somewhere once said, Take care of your thoughts when you are alone! O my blue-colored feather, loving you makes me happy.
If you came to my dreams every day, I would be happy; in three years you've come to my dreams once for one moment, and even this has made me happy. Dreams... why do they come? Have I called them? No! And what would happen if they didn't come? I've never thought about such things. Yes, but one thing—what happens when dreams come, now I know that! We've never met, but that doesn't mean I've wanted you in my dreams every night. Rather, I've never wanted it or thought I needed to want it! I could never quite feel what the happiness of dreaming is like.
For quite a long time I've been sitting here like a crow at a pilgrimage site, mouth agape, practically glued to the ground, waiting to see you. Some days I feel like leaving without telling mother! But I'm so afraid! I'm terribly afraid of new encounters. The outside sky, kites with torn hands and feet spread out, flying birds, heaps of busy people, the changing colors of their eyes—all of this seems disgusting to me, starts to frighten me. I feel everyone is angry with me, irritated. I don't understand what to do. Where I need to go, how far! I forget how to board a vehicle, can't remember whom to approach. I start feeling helpless. I start feeling I have no one, I'm a dead grasshopper among hundreds of thousands of ants!
Mother hasn't let go of my hand from childhood till now, so perhaps that's why I've become such a house-bound frog. But when mother is with me, my courage increases tremendously, the disheveled people on the bus seem like grandmother's handmade dolls, the flock of crows seems like a bunch of butterflies, I feel like giving those college-bunking spoiled boys a good slap. I want to spit on the faces of the middle-aged vultures on the sidewalk. What can they do—I don't care about them one bit... to hell with them! I feel very confident then, find peace, just as I do when I love you.
That night, after all the busyness was over, I sat down with my drawing supplies, with you in my head. After much thought, I drew a few lines and a bit of feeling mixed with carbon and blood and flesh. I didn't show it to you. I fell asleep. Suddenly that dense rain descended again, breaking the sky! In my greed to taste the rain's essence, the moment I crossed the threshold, the ground beneath my feet kept slipping, and for a few moments I felt like I was flying in the void—ah! The joy of freedom! And then to the earthly bed!
I, a thirsty chataka bird, had come out of the house alone on my own whim; when I first stumbled and fell into the depths, you came—only you came—and carefully extended your hand to stand me up on solid ground...
Dreams are the past of my last five years! I last slept about five years ago. It came one night on such an unplanned path, like Syed Shamsul Haque's "Unthought Full Moon."
Since then, I've put the sleep of both eyes up for auction for many years! In the eye sockets of me, the eternal recluse, lonely new moons gather like moss.
With diseased eyes I've seen that humans are missing from human bodies today! In the wrapping of souls, a procession of legitimate words' unnatural deaths marches on.
A shy lover walks in virgin moonlight. Breaking promises, touching finger to finger, separation thickens—no one sees it, no one understands it! Imperiled youth weeps in weak fists. A very strange time is passing for the world, for love, green leaves, poetry, the loudspeaker and the housewife! In that agony the stars die, cremating themselves!
Only a dream can give them liberation. Yes, that dream which will give joy, give respite for sleep. The people of the entire world today are not so much starved for love as starved for sleep! Since when they slept peacefully, burying their faces in the deep folds of mother's chest, perhaps no one remembers! There's such a famine of sleep in this world! They need liberation now! Where will I find that liberation? Who will give me liberation, filling my cupped hands to overflowing? You...? Yes, you indeed!
You are that liberation, joy, happiness and endless respite! The vow to sleep without burden, you are the dream, you are the green leaf, you are poetry's depths and the housewife's bottle gourd. They are all pilgrims searching for you. Whenever your face floats up, I remember that poem by Jibanananda...
One day I searched for her
In the crowd of heron wings in the rainy twilight darkness,
In the grove of jasmine vines,—under the kadamba tree,
At the ghat of silent sleep,—among keya flowers,—in clusters of shiuli!
—Her whom I have sought field by field in autumn mornings
Her whom I have sought in winter's cold grass, in the falling
Bedside of kamini's pain...
I didn't ask how you are today, didn't want to trouble you. My dear dream, take care of yourself, write letters, come home when evening falls!
Yours truly,
Your untouched Mauri
Ashadh 1429
Full Moon Letters, Night Portion 2 (Pekham Mauri)
Subarnagram, Ruhitan Lake