Raat Pashmine Ki

 The title has been borrowed from Gulzar, who lent this name to a collection of his poetry. 

Before we begin with the work proper, I will take this moment to thank those who took their time to read the debut of this blog and were also kind enough to provide their feedback on the same. I have also discovered that Blogger has Helvetica and henceforth, I shall use the same.


1.

You had asked for a letter on a lonesome summer night - those nights when the lull of the world seeps into the very sinew and the heart grows fonder.

A chorus perched atop the neighbor's roof has positioned itself perfectly to add to the proceedings.

Ensue jugalbandi.

The chorus says "Yes" and they nod, they raise their instruments - a motley mix of the East and the West.
An argument arises if they should proceed with the guitar or begin with a rendition of the khamaj.
It doesn't matter.
I say, "Yes. It should be there, soon."

Hesitant of the power that my words possess, they are limp, and seem to hover
around the fringes - drunk on past glory,
morose at their present predicament,
and anxious of the future.

Raat hain aayi - baat bhi aayin
Aur yaad bhi aayi - pause, pause, pause.

Where do I begin?

2.

The first alphabet of the precious vocabulary that
has been passed to us as a rite of passage - A.

Think of the words that begin with it - amour, amore, attraction.
Think of the words that end with it - viraha, aarohana, jaana.

Think of the times when I have mused on your name
Carefully treading around the three syllables - 
The Muse, The Beloved, and The Distant Star.

Think of the times when I have walked through
every single town with names that I am all too 
familiar with - yet strangers have haunted me as
have their hearts - and comfort rested in you, still.

Yaad - memory is treachery - and yet you seem to
reside in the very recesses of those dusty alcoves.
Yaad - memory is bliss - a glimmer of a smile while
a boat hovers over the holy river - I have seen God.
Yaad - memory is ambiguity - forming the stairway
to the future - yet, what clings to the sleeves of
an old shirt is an imprint of a palm.

And so the night proceeds, the chorus has stopped bickering,
they have decided to only interrupt when the time
calls for it - jugalbandi, please proceed.

How many letters? - I ask.
Four and a half - you say - one for the heart, one for the mind,
one for the soul, and a half for me, for mine alone.
There are no half letters, only incomplete ones.

You clear your voice and say - are we complete yet, farzi?
Are we complete, you whose words are borrowed, stolen,
your emotions not your own, but those contrived and conjured
because it worked in the words of others, in the glance of other people,
where is your love, farzi?

Farzi, you tell me, you can write but where are you in
your words? Your promises borrowed from afternoon matinees,
and your melodrama from that Bard you have quoted
endlessly before. Where are you? You say, that you wish to occupy the
space beside me, but can you be with the ghosts that are?

We are haunted by spirits, Farzi. Let us exorcise ourselves.

3.

Horoscopes - what use are they when one is so vastly different from
the other?
He says, "Aries, your love looks bright."
They say, " Tread light."
Even the cards lie, but I look for comfort in them - the joy when the long
fingers reveal the intertwined Lovers, a sense of glory when the
Emperor and Empress arrive in unison, and here comes Death.
Death, according to the mathematics of the voices in my head, means the end.
A seer tells me, death is change.
A sorceress tells me, that death is unpredictability.

Poetry is death - see, how I kill sentences,
Puncture it with unsaid punctuations.
See, how I purify myself - and I feel so unclean.
Here, I will write a couplet and then crumple it,
Pollute the world forevermore.

Farzi, tell me - the jugalbandi continues, if your promises are true,
why are you telling me that which has already been told?

Farzi, tell me - the chorus leans forward to respond - why will you
withhold your words? What are you afraid of?

Faint cello, manic trumpets, syncopating drums, the twang
of the veena, the thump of the tabla - "Oh he is afraid, oh he is afraid."
"Oh, he is afraid, anxious, agitated, oh he is, he is. He is afraid
of the music ending, and henceforth there shall be no spring."

Farzi, tell me. I can see that you are thinking.

Jaana, look at my hands - the line that represents the heart has rupture.
My friend read my palm eons ago, and he said, 
"Here is the river of fate that flows - your heart, my dost, your heart. 
Love herein lies, but love lies cautiously. You have thrown your
dil to the wind - rein it in."

Farzi, do you believe in his words?

I do, but I cannot. For, I hold the testimony in my palms, and my words.
For I, forger, fraudulent, fake - look to the words of others for comfort
when I should be judging my soul. Seers and prophets -
Walk away! Fie!


4.

At this juncture of our story, the chorus is only to eager
to see how this goes on - they are exhausted, exasperated, yet ecstatic.

The violin player inquires if there is any need for them to be there.
The one with the bass - who oddly looks like Jaco - breaks into a triplet
and says, "Why can't we be here?"
She, with the sitar, says, "Because they are there, and we are the voice
in their head, perhaps nudging them awry or bringing them to a fruition."

We must be here.
We must be still.
We must not let the words flow with ill-will.

5.

It is near the end of the night -
Baat - a conversation falters under the weight of
expectations.

Baat - whispers of the heart slowly emerge
to be a loud monologue in the head.

Guftagoo - tender, sweet, of flesh against flesh,
of soul against soul, sweet everythings, bitterness at
the nothings.

Farzi, why will you be so patient? The world awaits you.
Farzi, why will you try so hard?  Why will you wait?

The whys, the whens, the wheres, the whatnots - 
words will now fight against words and there is no 
sense of an appeasement.

Enter silence.
They loom over the chorus - admonishing their bickering only
through a glance.
Their cloak moves over a starless night, and the only thing
that brightens their face is that of a jugalbandi that
has moved too frequently, never to pause.

Jaana, I cannot say.
Jaana, I am uncertain.
Jaana, all I have is love.

Four men from Liverpool say, "Love is all you need."

Silence creeps closer to the jugalbandi.
He looks at her.

A silver nose-ring, a chipped tooth, hair in a bun, jasmin ka tel.
Brown eyes that seem to reflect the waning afternoon.
Small earlobes that listen too keenly.

She looks at him.
Remnant of a scar above his left eyebrow, mole below his eye,
a mustache that  droops unevenly, small round fingers that seem
so restless, and eyes that never seem to move away from her.

Farzi, do you wish to say something?

Jaana, I think the letters are overdue.

6.

Slowly, the sky moving into an effusion of purple.

The chorus slowly move away - it is time that they visit
the cubicles where they reside - yet in the midst of all this, the violinist seems
to have a liking to the sarangi player, and the one with the mandolin
has decided to give love another go.

Farzi, the night is over.
Jaana, there is always another night.

Let us wait and be there, until the sun arrives.