A faint note of his flute.
An abstracted Radha
wanders through a
flower garden. She loses
herself in his strains.
Why do you wander
in the forest looking for
him, Kabir teases. He’s
everywhere, in everything.
Entwined in your very being.
Bhimpalasi courts me even
now. Still as shy. Still
as persistent. Soft. Plaintive.
I seek like Radha. Sometimes I
Find like Kabir.
Radio waves dance between
sleep and the half light
of dawn. Yawning, Ma adjusts the
knob to wake up the station. The man
on the radio invokes the Mother in
gravelly chants. Malkauns,
waiting in the wings,
takes the stage. The beginning
begins.
Far away, in another lifetime,
a temple bell rang. The devotee,
crazy for a single glimpse of the
lord, cried his heart out. “Don’t
shatter my hopes; leave me not.”
The dark-skinned god stood still.
Wobbling across decades
of palsy, an old man’s feet
breathed life into its
stone.
Malkauns moves mountains. Cripples.
Stony gods. An adored mother goddess
and her carousel of
children. It moves sleepy heads
into a dozy trance. Malkauns
moves dark nights of the soul
into mornings that must
awaken.
A soothing sadness, the colour
of mellow afternoons, glides in.
Tears soak stationary hours
and passing cataclysms.
Annapurna’s and Ali Akbar’s fingers
work gritty strings. Particles of
bizarre are spliced together in
a dystopian harmony. For now.
Negotiating years and terrains
Manj Khamaj keeps breathing.
A footsure confidant. In its
folds, wars lose their way.
The notes explode into a million
neurons. Flames of a ravaging fire,
accrued. The jhala races restlessly
like brittle rain swathing scars.
Bhaswati Ghosh 