This message won’t probably reach you, or maybe it’ll remain unheard:
Have we met before? No—not in this life, not this time round, not here;
I mean—have we met already, in a time disowned by past and future?
There—somewhere in that eternal present—where all is remembered,
And nothing is forgotten—tell me have we met there before?
Here are a stranger’s words: maybe a lover from another life (fancy!)
Or maybe a random stalker on the internet—easily blocked, forgotten.
Deeply familiar to the self, yet from the depths of othered unfamiliarity.
Two leaves have broken off from the grand tree—time’s gusts are cruel.
Now they hover in the swirling currents, dancing under the dark clouds.
The monsoon storms will banish us away far away—never to meet again.
Yet in the intimacy of close distances: one has looked at the other, sighed!
The exiled goddess has painted her eyes, her half-moon on your forehead.
Her haughty indignance she has etched over your arched brows—
A thousand lovers’ kisses—thrown yet ignored—on your lips dangle;
Her bleeding feet’s dust, and the toils of sweats—on your skin’s canvass.
She has taken new form—she has sent her mirth, her avid dissent—
Now from the fiery spirits of your body, it radiates like an ominous sun.
The monsoon has ravaged our homes, washed away souls, rent our griefs—
Griefless now, how can we ever know the very grief that has exiled us all?
No words remain to be spoken—woe!—no words remain to be heard,
All songs have lost their voices to choked throats and empty stomachs.
In the night’s sea, a thousand thatched roofs float over under the stars:
Twinkling lights now shine all around us: heaven’s mourners sent to cry.
Where are your lifeboats? Where are your saviours? When do they come?
The boats are long-gone, the saviours float under—only a dark sun dawns.
Your visage has touched my heart, destroyer, now my heart beats with drums:
Come, pull up the hanging by his noose—O godly child, can you save the living?
My heart will burst with the drum’s torment—come, quieten my aching soul.
Distantly, they pray for deliverance, but these waters do not cleanse souls:
For the goddess’s wraths do not spare the unjust—your chants are but jabber!
In the devastation’s din, only the drum beats, tired fingers of angst and pain.
Listen to the drum’s beats, ye pious fools! Only your poison can cure your ills!
The unwelcome sun has creeped up to a destroyed and uprooted land:
Here lay irreverently the high-born, and his bloodstained peasant,
The goddess’s justice and liberation—all delivered in one fell swoop.
Here lay the wet earth oozing water, like slaughtered flesh still bleeding:
The gods beneath the earth will now feast on all—enough has been enough!
Ye poisoners, preaching herbs and purity, wait yet—your monsoons approach!
At the play’s end, the two leaves remember their journeys:
Where did we come from? O woe! Where have we ended up?
At the now cracking earth, rent apart by vengeance’s trampling,
Where oppressor and oppressed lie in irreverent indifference—
A little sapling sprouts—and dreams of many, many, many leaves.
Hope never dies.
A thousand bodies, tormented by hunger, thirst, penury, whips,
Yet ravaged, yet devastated—refusing to die, rises and rises again.
Distance, and class, and caste, and religion, and skin, and language:
Climbing over the barbed wires, the martyrs have bled away rivers—
Their love—foolish, irrational, mad, blasphemous, forbidden, beaten—
Love—imagined, delusional, crazy, laughable, ridiculous—abides.
Love never dies.
Couched by the midnight’s refuge, he pens down fearfully to you—
Will he reply? Will he hear beyond the words? He will. Perhaps he won’t.
This message won’t probably reach you, or maybe it’ll remain unheard.
At the goddess’s feet—
Bardhaman, Āśvina Śukla Dvitīya,
The 18th of October in 2020 CE.