A Soap Bubble and a Couple of Revolutions

Writing this poem has been to me the end of a delusion and the beginning of a search. It is long, but do read it all: you might understand what I mean when I say that this has been a deeply personal pilgrimage for me.

(Blogger doesn’t allow me to use the tab key. Hence I’ve used bold fonts for alternating lines to improve readability. Using bold fonts has no other significance.)

* * *

Nightly train journeys
lead me to the inevitable:
The chilly winds stir up memories of a winter
we refused to pull down the shutters,
And the incessant sway of the coach makes me thank
the long, long train journey that brought you to me.

I promised myself to get over this nostalgia;
But that was a promise that couldn’t stand against
an unyielding love, or the night train home.

My mind wandered on into abandoned territory,
and I let it:
Perhaps a little pain can cure the numbness
of my heart.

I bypass the lunches under the margosa
and the cycling on flat tyres,
And walk to the day of the missing mistletoe
and the quick hug on the doorstep:
That was the day you opened the windows
and showed me the stars.

Then there was the story of a seer who predicted
an inseparable friendship;
There were days when we discussed
part-time gods and misshapen universes.
There were nights with Gibran
and storms in inkpots,
And there was the magic of an addictive smile
that did what a thousand battles couldn’t.

When you met me on those corridors that summer, you and your fragrance
defined home to me like nothing else.
You gave me colour and meaning,
and the memory of a sleepless, frigid summer.
You gave me Gandalf in return for my Dumbledore,
and a love story that kills and resurrects.
We built an eternal soap bubble and sucked time out of it,
and filled it with our souls and quizbooks.

And then the days when under a fan with four blades
you fed me a spoonful of life,
Followed by the night I spent under the moon
looking at your face and guessing your dreams;
And there’s the bittersweet pain in the memory of the day
I feared I didn’t deserve you:
You took me so close in your arms and whispered,
“Would you talk about you deserving yourself?”

You gave me a challenge, a box of chocolates and questions to answer.
You gave me dreams to chase, that will overflow a lifetime.

That was a long ago summer in a far away country,
and a far away happiness –
Because for reasons that I do not know exist,
I lost the soap bubble and my soul along with it:
My deciduous delights were exactly that.

–

By another train journey I reach our semi-arid tropics;
it is summer again.
I’ve made this journey many times before
but it never was this painful;
Down pour memories of a violet ink and yellow envelopes
I no longer use,
And of the very next summer I came to say goodbye
and you gave me a mock embrace.
I’ve been many things and places since, but one thing I haven’t felt
in five years, is home.

That mocking, jeering, disheartening hug of yours,
made the first crack in my heart.
Then one day you crossed the road
forgetting me, and leaving me behind you.

Then came the day you told me your dreams were your own
and your plans are but your business.
You told me you wouldn’t correct me any longer, nor should I,
for there are limits!
Because however close two universes come, you said,
there is always a fine line separating them.
That was when we stopped debating and started arguing –
we were on that one way road.

What followed wasn’t a blur, it was one long moment
of unacknowledged oblivion
My silence and your insouciance,
broken promises and fatal changes –
Were you tired of me, or was it somebody else?
Was it the different places that we had to go?
Or was I just a compromise and a stand-in until
somebody else walked in?

There was a day I said I was going to miss you,
that I will wait, come back for you.
(Such a cliché. You answered with a line that could be
a writer’s delight).
You said you wouldn’t miss me, that you will stay
with yourself, wherever you go.
That was the last time I expected someone to wait for me;
the last time I ever counted myself in.

I befriended the moon and conducted a lunar love affair,
and added my tale to his long repertoire.
There were long nights on the stairs when
tears wiped all thought away.
I shredded your letters and burnt my diaries, but still you haunt my dreams –
this is the one promise you’ve kept.

Disappointment. Humiliation. These were your choicest words for me when I needed you.
Was acceptance impossible? Had understanding gone out of fashion?
That was the final blow, the final crack in my crumbling heart.
That was when I forgot what emotion meant.
The chirping of birds and glorious sunsets no longer meant anything:
I went to bed with the Reaper’s daughter called despair.
The passage of time didn’t make sense anymore.
Years passed and my wounds didn’t heal, didn’t bleed.

Worldly fortune was fair to me and humoured
the glutton I became trying to fill an invisible void;
But all the cities I’ve been to had nothing to offer
to fill this obstinately dead void.
I tried to run away from it, tried to
wash myself of everything life refused to give me;
I absconded the man in white and the smiling woman who taught us life;
in a happy, happening rich world, I became numb.
I only did not realize that in this great escapade,
I was running away from myself.

But today, here I stand in this grand little town
we once called home.
The green patch where once we sat entwined, and the bench where I waited for you,
are still there and enquire about you;
Someone mentions Physics and my heart skips a beat, and I visit
shady Attar shops in search of a lost Arabian perfume;
The noisy summer wind however, is not accompanied
by your voice, nor do I feel your breath on my face.
And I realize, the melody in your arms
might never again claim me.

Our library asks me questions I dared not acknowledge,
and our corridors rebuke my numbness;
People ask me where you are and I say
somewhere up north, having fun;
And my eyes lose their dryness
and regain a depth I deemed impossible.

In our dusty little town that gave us raw mangoes
and exalted purposes,
I realised it was time I looked for the pieces
and started picking them up.

Plaques and pictures brought me home
from the emptiness I madly sought:
I can’t live in an uninviting yesterday
in a lost world;
Because I am human and my search for permanence
is capable of looking beyond one eternity that decided to be ephemeral.
Nor can I annihilate those memories
which lie at the heart of all I am;
Nor can I desert our dreams which still fuel my days
and court the stars.

–

Epilogue
I don’t want to be a dead phoenix.
I want to rise again, just like I did every time I fell
before you happened.

There is a world you gave me.
There is a world you stole from me.
And there is an insane moment when the two come frighteningly close,
and a moment of horror when they converge.
I live in that impossible moment.
Anything else would be just a mediocre imitation of life.

A decision is imminent:
The lights are dimmed, and I need to take
a blind turn.
Yes, I am ready.

For if the Giver of Things asks me now,
what’s the one thing I want to clutch to my bosom forever,
I am no longer sure what the answer would be.
And I want to find out.

KISHORE KUMAR