Apu's Letter To Durga Didi

At last, you too, O Didi, have eaten The fruit of the forbidden tree! Those who eat its fruit are thrown away by God From the garden of Eden into the dustbin of Earth. Those who eat its fruit discover youth Within their bodies; that youth sets fire To all the organs of body; then men, like drunkards, Go to live in a forest leaving their homes behind And build there with a great devotion Their Spring-dwellings. Now I play on my old bamboo-flute sitting alone Into Kashful garden as white as a dhuti. Crossing the border, its tone cannot reach you At your father-in-law's house in Odisha. It is many years you went to your husband's house. After your departure, barbed wires came In the border. How will I go to you, Didi, When the border-guards, like hunters, raise their Hungry guns towards us as if we were the tasty Hariyal doves sitting on the boughs of a peepul tree? Now when the fields of Autumn get full Of mustard-flowers, your memory gets alive; You wearing the yellow sari used to run like a fairy On the dew-wet boundaries of mustard-fields Catching my one hand tightly- I started panting- I only recollect those sweet scenes now. When the mango trees get surged now with small Green mangoes, I rush to our kitchen to steal away Some salt and then I start sharpening oyster On the cemented ghat of our pond- It seems you are coming within a moment Filling the loose end of your sari with mangoes And addressing me, you say, 'Look at, Apu, How big the mangoes are! Surely seeds have grown Within them.' O my sister, leaving those wild pleasures behind, Which pleasures do you run after now? Which peace does one get by getting married, Which peace does one get by going to a father-in-law's house, Which peace does one get by getting mad with body When the salty tears of separation raise waves Into her Apu's two eyes? Was Adam happy for a moment leaving the garden of Eden? O Durgadi, are you happy too, leaving your Apu behind? Yours Apu - - - - - - *Tree of the Knowledge *'Didi' means 'elder sister' *A kind of dove in Bengal # This poem is dedicated to my honorable sister and poet Bharati Nayak of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India