Anaahat

there is a painting on my wall, a dark, broad wood frame, enclosing Meera, as she sits amidst colours galore, waiting in lonely solitude, with her dotara, her hopeful eyes brimming with longing, and love, colossal, celestial, expressed in this melodic trance, that strums to the tunes of my heart. (This poem is inspired - apart from Meerabai herself - by this painting by my good friend Arti Jalan.)

Bridging the gaps, an attempt, amidst lifetimes of love unexpressed. Without, those treacherous teardrops, let us now begin where you and I, said goodbye last. Let us try and calm those countless expectations, waiting in melancholy stupor on that turning where yours were cradled and mine were crushed. And yet, summers ago, with shadows sprinkled on the ground, we had picked flowers, tiny and pretty, the fragrance of which doesn't leave my hands.

where does it come from the hope that moves you the optimism to see life so merrily, so tirelessly, without any weight on your soul. the feelings and hopes and the loves that you carry around. like a wounded soldier ready to breathe life in a dead country's soul. where in your soul, does it persist, to exist, the happiness, the peace, the quest for a forever, for what you dream in your mind's eye, hoping you will, someday, be there. where is it that you head in this manner, my wounded soldier, carrying those burdens of feelings, of hopes, in the quest of love alone.

I see him there, in the throngs at Azad Maidan, wearing a side-cap, his hair neatly combed, slick at his nape, head held high, lips pursed in silent determination, and his shoulders drooped with some unaccountable weight. Hunger strikes and human strikes, young hands raised in hope and anticipation, angered at the Kasabs, the tolerant us, the depleting life styles, the increasing price of lentils. My hands freeze in time, and my heart drums. I ask him how is he alive? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead in Taipei? His ashes in that temple in Tokyo? No, he says. He never died and he is carrying his burden ever since. And all that we are forced to eat are potatoes and the load of bullshit fed by the whitewashed faces, the turban-clad Indian man, and the saree clad phoren mem by the daily-getting-richer leeches and the lying, cheating and swindling businessmen. What burden, I ask. Isn’t his dream realized? I wave around. See, I say. We have ach...