You are making dog ears tonight
You are water, I cannot write you
My window is closed to the night’s incandescent beams,
I shout at the stars for stealing light from papers,
each word an eye shut.
The madman in my alley tore the moon down, wrote a letter on it.
I saw him running here and there, asking for your address.
He said, you are drying your shirts in the sky’s clothesline–
The bulb’s fuse blew. The moon became a scrap of metal.
Brown rust ate it. Everything is dark here. Everything is dark here.
You are sitting on my page today, making dog ears again.
You thumb down the pages of my book,
asking in defiance, “Akou ekhon kitab? But why the ado?
Has aai slept well? Did she eat something?
Does the godhuli gopal bloom in profusion this year?
Does it smell of my autumn song?”
You create pools of reflections, splashing, scooping up light,
scattering the sky in droplets of melodies, but that’s a stubborn sky,
not your own, it did not rain when you sang.
Outside, when the sea flowers in wounds,
You fly with silver fins on jelly back –
the nubile water,
floating algae, blueness, that night
learnt rebellion from you. They said, water does not have a heart,
you lent it yours:
waves crashed, small, big,
expanding, constricting.
Listen, we have waited long enough.
Are you coming back now?
“The water would give him a cold,” aai moans, worried.
Are you coming back now?
Here, take, aai has made poita bhat for you,
You must be hungry.
Have your fill.
II
Faces
Water has many faces, yet it does not have any
After you are tired of putting on faces after faces on a scarecrow-shadow, come to me. I shall hold your hand, take you to a place where faces grow alongside wild grass and rain flowers, whose names we can never recall, nor find in any book.
In the carpet of rain, when your heart flutters, blooms as misty white flowers caressed by the Kamarkuchi wind, don’t bury your face in slivers of brown soil, mud and earth, don’t dig further down in search of a new face. Look, water, flower, rock, valley, and the wind have always worn your face, and you theirs. When you are tired of putting on faces after faces on a scarecrow-shadow, come to me. I will give you my eyes and hands, my roots, my face too.
Come back in any face you want. Take ours. You have many.
III
Sarusajai
When you pour down on us as rain
Where have you learnt
this art of disappearing?
In Sarusajai, rain and tears
made the strangest of pacts,
those needles of water have sewn a fulam gamosa
in the sky.
Or have I lost my mind?
When the two half arcs
of the sky fell down on us before,
you held our hands, led us to the sun.
Today the sun is a child in peril.
It dips its finger in a pitcher flower
to see if
it swallows human flesh.
It does not pay heed to us.
Glossed terms
Akou ekhon kitab?: A book again?
Aai: Mother
Godhuli gopal: A fragrant flowering plant
Poita bhat: Rice soaked and fermented in water
Sarusajai: Zubeen Garg’s body was kept here for 2 days for everyone to pay their last obeisance. It rained the first day and a rainbow stretched in the sky. His fans cried bitterly, shouting his name. His funeral in Assam is the 4th largest one in the entire world and entered Limca Book of World Records (later on it became 2nd).
Fulam gamosa: The traditional Assamese gamosa features a floral (phul) design. It has a unique cultural significance.
