Divided Destinies

It was the time of partition. Trains on both sides of the border were totally full, bursting with people, ferrying them to the promised lands. A small station in north India. A train was standing on the platform. People were jam packed. A buzz hung in the air. It was a scene of tearful farewells. Parents were taking leave of their children; children were taking leave of their parents. Homes were being left behind. Belongings were packed in cotton bedspreads and trunks. Anxious words were being exchanged and faces tense with thoughts of the future. The engine whistled and sent out a puff of smoke. The carriages jolted. The frenzy increased. Words became louder and more anxious. A mother and father were about to leave their children behind. They were standing on the platform. The four of them drew close to each other in a final embrace. The hands wrapped around one another and the eyes were moist. They weren’t speaking-there wasn’t much to say. However, they tarried under their emotions for just a while longer. The engine whistled once again and the train started moving. Amid shrieks of anxiety the parents tore themselves off from their children and started running beside the train, and the next moment would have managed to clumsily clamber into the coach. At this precise moment somebody inside changed his decision and decided not to leave after all. He jumped out; their paths collided, and the parents were thrown on the rail tracks. In a flash the wheels sliced over them, first over the man’s body and dividing it into two parts, then over the woman’s neck and arm, which she had put across the rail to steady her fall. The shrieks of the children were lost in the prevalent din. Some people in the compartment bent down to see what happened and recoiled, while people sat oblivious in other compartments, and mothers expressed constant misgivings for the children they had left behind, and were chided by their husbands for their anxious solicitude.

THE QUESTION

My heart was heavy, my path was weary.
I could not unravel the mystery,
That so long had troubled me.
For to me, there no longer was any.

My heart was heavy, my path was weary.
But when the twilight revealed your tresses,
I remembered an old query,
Somehow connected with the mystery.

I walked in the sand with trepidation.
I stumbled and fell, but rose again for your vision
Beckoned to me, like twilight beckoned the night.
For inside, there was the same old question.

Your hand was close to mine,
But I didn’t dare take it.
My hand was filled with grime;
I couldn’t care t’wipe it.

Still! I wonder why you looked at me and smiled.
Perhaps you knew why I’d opened my door to you.
After years of banishing you from my sight
And perhaps you read like a sage,
The query on my face. Still! Not a word did you speak
As you stood and waited
For the question to fall from my lips.

I fumbled for words, long years had made them rust.
I thought of the years crumbling in the dust.
Searching for the elusive elixir, I asked you,
“I want to know what is beauty.”

There was a pretence of being happy.
But you pried inside the hollow smile.
You took my grime filled hand and showed me the sea
And stared unabashedly at my naked misery.

Far away, where the sky met the sea,
The sun sank in crimson fury.
I asked you, “Is that beauty?
Where the sun dances disjointedly?”

“Or is it to be found,
in that flying seagull,
squaking harshly, yet to its fledgelings,
how sweet a melody!
Or is it to be found,
In the stroke of the brush,
With which the artist,
Paints the canvas.
Perhaps it is to be felt,
In the yearning of the strings,
Which the fair lady plays,
As she draws close her violin.
Or perhaps it is to be discerned
In the realm of pure reason.
No place for ambiguous tremors,
In the realm of pure reason.

Sometimes I can feel it stirring,
Even though I’m divested of the feeling.”

You averted your face and smiled with indulgence.
I did not thank you for your time and patience.
Breathlessly I waited and dreaded the answer you’d give.
“Beauty is the reason you’d want to live.”

The sun sank deeper, the sea grew darker.
No telling between the sky and the sea.
Clouds and the horizon gnawed at the sun,
And only a point was left for me to see.

“Is that the reason for the setting sun?
into the depths of the sea?
Is that the reason that this is
My final destination,
Whence my steps will no longer be free?
Is that the reason the spell will
No longer be broken,
Hovering between the sand and the sea?”

The questions were bereft of sense.
The answer, both you and I knew.
Yet sometimes it pulls you down: existence!
I wished to run away from you.
You dropped my hand, for perhaps you knew!
And waited, for what I’d do.
I stared at my footsteps,
And grew weary of their hue.
All around me in crystalline droplets,
Were forming liquid drops of dew.
I heard you again in the silence:
“Beauty is the reason you’d want to live.”

“Is my life then a waste?” unwittingly I cried.
“No!” you smiled and said.
“See that mound over there?
That’s where your unquiet spirit will rest,
In the company of others long since dead,
Who’d come to me, with a similar quest.”

“Is my life a waste?” twice so I cried.
“No” you said,
“For one among them might resurrect,
and the answer might lie in its fate.”

“Is my life a waste?”, thrice so I cried.
“No”, you smiled.
“For your tears which fall so gently,
Are to me the perfect beauty.”