NEERA, DON'T GET LOST

Each day for us was a day of changing birth In the light - like pieces of broken glass in the sky - From the horizon before me, like an exile, you advanced with hesitant steps Your body covered with a white swan's feathers, garland of gunja seeds round your neck I was afraid That wasn't a time for sightseeing, it was a time of banishment Then the city was burning with hate, the knife in the human hand was being planted in the human heart Religion fed on corpses burnt in flames in buses and roads Patriotism was being regurgitated like blood-vomit I was imprisoned in the attic, I couldn't recognise you Then, with a small notebook, I rose and leapt into deep blue space You were, then, standing upon Dakshineshwar bridge, The river in your eye's pupil Profound silence of night-time in the town, all the schoolbells going ‘dong dong' . . . Each day for us was a day of changing birth Do you remember, when you, like cave-woman suddenly wounding adolescence, Had tenderly embraced, very early at dawn, the soft, red winter sun From the kadamba tree on Hari Ghosh Street, at the time, small shards of diamond were slowly falling The day's first blade-sharp tram went by, saying, Awake, Awake As on a revolving stage, all was helter-skelter - now afternoon, now midnight, now evening I was, at the time, shouting out my lungs in a rally, drops of blood dripping from my nose On all sides, hunger was flickering like a serpent-tongue Ah! that enthralling, beggarly, imperious hunger Like the direst circle in hell, that stomach-gnawing hunger At certain moments, I saw, on the verandah, the anxious figure of motherhood, eyes like a bird's I'd dreamed that, one day, the world's mothers would serve steaming rice to all the small, small children Those bullets and explosions on College Street You alighted from the bus, and, at that instant, inside, the festive gunpowder went off With a jump, someone cleared the park railing, and lay down as an ascetic might His face in the grass. Each day for us was a day of changing birth You were once Woman, you became Neera I wore false beard and moustaches and became a clerk in a pharmacist's godown My sandal-strap tore, I squatted before a roadside cobbler No one could recognise me, we're all unrecognisable from the back Sometimes I was the cobbler, and he the pedestrian Sometimes I was the road; people walked by, treading on my breast Sometimes I was silence and, at once, a restless roar You gave a coin to the blind old man, in Sealdah the clock stopped ticking So many people rushing, after getting off a train, stopped, motionless, for a few seconds And then with a crashing sound much destruction ensued Tear-gas smoke the police crying, the Chinese didn't want to be ‘bhai bhai' Deflected by a handbill, people fell into a hole dug in the road - many sprained their ankles Three live cubs frolicked ebulliently in the gutter A group of red-haired Englishmen left after photographing the scene on a French camera You sat alone in the examination hall, the question paper didn't arrive I was bent low, searching for small change in my torn pocket You went to the flower show and flew your sari's aanchal like a flag I lay all evening by the side of a cremation ground. Each day for us was a day of changing birth The body's lustre shines upon all those magic scenes The body peeps inside the poem, sometimes it is shadow; sometimes it's the recalcitrance of flesh and blood Now it drowns, now comes and sits, face to face Kalidasa's bee touched your quivering lip I, having become grass and flower, placed my tongue upon your navel Like Modigliani's woman, the moonlight glistens in your thighs Once I became the child, and you the eternal Mother At one point you were the absolute girl, an adulterous king desired you The ocean flung powerful waves skyward The sky was louring towards hell A tantric was inhaling the smell of the yoni-lotus the great illusion, unsatisfied, was saying, More, more Ah! that playfulness, the heart's openness In the springtime, we lay in bed and composed a hundred histories of copulation Our arms round one another's necks, sitting unclothed by the window at the hour of cow-dust or at dawn A cigarette in my hand, in your hair a golden comb The forgotten earth was returning to us, little by little; from heavenward, the soft sound of a voice At cow-dust or dawn, drop after drop of rainbow-coloured water in the sky You kept staring in that direction; there was no aeroplane anywhere at that moment Speaking in one voice with Keats, you absent-mindedly scolded Newton That split-second was the moment of my rebirth. Neera, our delusion ends, we once again build from sand those tiny houses of sorrow We're still prancing about like naked children On the seashore Sometimes, what a splendid hiding-place, the century's jhau thickets I can't see you, I've dipped my pen in the inkpot in your name I haven't touched you, like a pregnant doe you melted into a mountainous kingdom Storm after storm is blowing away entire sides of horizons A wave of the magic wand is enough to summon from heaven waves of lightning the earth growing in eminence All's sound and sound's deletion, the turning of a page The amloki fruit beneath the hands is sending out intermittent glances; it, too, glances at me with a suppressed smile Neera, you're alone on a faraway boat, you've spread your two wings I'm alone in a distant mail train, can't read the name of a single station You withdrew from the factions in the school committee, went and hid behind a door I'm spending afternoons on a chair in a glass-ensconced room While, on the other hand, so many tree-shadows by the river remain unoccupied Those who'd said that revolution's at hand are now composing their memoirs And those who were wiped out, were too much wiped out The red-haired group's camera is still roaming the nooks and by-lanes No one speaks of love any more Whenever civilization hears of love, it breaks into giggles and laughter When someone visits the bathroom to wash their face, they weep alone and splash their face with handfuls of water Neera, we have much further to go, don't get lost There are many births to change, don't get lost Neera, immortal girl, don't you get lost now!