Time and the Year

And then there came the rains, bathed in the ephemeral landscapes of light and triumph. The days had passed like a moment and she was left with an eternity to mull over. A life led in the carefully woven honeycombed wishes, making the best of the older novelties and newer reminiscences. Then the weather god tried her and tested her with fire. She was a lady of the sun, and gave in to the waywardnesses of nature. As a freshly plucked plant that sustains itself in the soil where you embed it, she belonged to the soul of sustenance, embryoning herself along with the rules of the natural world.

She makes you wonder in awe, leap into consciousness and conscience from the tenements of oblivion. When asked about the trails of her roots, she smiles at you like a thousand illuminated chandeliers. The streamlets made havoc of her contours, scanning her tresses for spaces of deluge.

The verdure of the swat mindscape is preparing itself to the ways of the cosmos, like the mindfulness of the words that never fail to impress. La Aura: the dazzlement of virtue, the guide of a dream.

Bihzad: A Study in Miniature

Kunal’s Bihzad is an artist making sense of forms, filling empty spaces with his genius. He is illiterate like the lesser-born, his dad holds him a genius, as does others in Akbar’s empire. The shapes – naqsh – invite his presences as he is considered the ‘blessed one’. He is tireless in his efforts to make his pen speak, the ink comprehend the colour. He dreams from imagination … imaginé. Zuleikha reads out The Tale of the Parrot, Hafiz et al as Nikisa smiles on. The languages of dream and fiction acquire a life of their own, even as they pursue their own domains … she the emperor’s harem, he the kitabkhana and the slave girl her chore of lending them a hand.

She has the perfumes of Arabia, of the desert land: ones which are known to possess strange powers. They are unlike the Haji’s daughter, ruthlessly banishing failure from her kingdom. She is somehow tolerant of this kid who inspires, as well as is inspired. They often complement each other, indeed spouses to each other. For a long time they accompany one another until the day Bihzad, like the warrior in Hazari’s serai, sees what he shouldn’t have seen. In a sweep of divine intercession, the desert is taken by calamity, something that turns the artist into a saint.

***

A new chapter is introduced into the artist’s world – who chooses blindness over vision, silence over speech. The digression of non-seeing is a rite of passage for our Bihzad who finds solace in the birdwomen upstream. Factual discourse ceases to appeal to our creator who would rather revel in the fragmentary nature of non-entities. The children, Jamaal and Jamil, who befriend their ‘Tana’ are the first to notice the gift of sight when he no longer needs their help to scramble down the slopes or search for eggs in the birds’ nests. Across the mountains, the aviators are known by different names and Bihzad identifies them with his bird calls.

***

The Great One is on his last days, preparing for the final journey home and he turns to the evicted Bihzad as his agent to Allah’s kingdom.

Bihzad, a study of compulsive exclusion and solitude … He lies in each one of us, realized if our environs permit us the liberty of transgression. Often, we are tempted by the quiet boulevard that lies beyond. Bihzad chose remoteness, as opposed to privileged royal company, which is why he is bestowed with Kunal’s beatitude!

Terminally Yours

Yesterday, I met someone whom I hoped not to meet this fast! Friends: the word that masters our worlds. What are they? Someone who holds that finger of yours no matter what, who loves to pamper your nonsenses, whatever the cost. A sacrifice unparalleled by any other.

When they speak a silence, you don't wonder about its implicit meaning. Like a Bihzad from the dustbowl to have a last glimpse of the Great One, or kids expecting a return from a fellow kid (as if it were rightful!) Ha! The miracles of an age that blends all into a crazy potboiler of f-e-e-l-i-n-g. When there's them to take you in their arms, how much do we know about it?

Silences shared ... words and places revisited, and memories unleashed. There's about a single trauma -- the trauma of delight, of excavating the mind of the other. 'Joy' and its nuances command a redefinition, as if a little soul is taking a carousel's delight! A friend is all the 7 wonders, as exacting as a feudal patriarch, pampering you to no end. They dare you to dream in a fool's robe in regal splendour :)

Mwaahs ...

Shafts

The day recedes into the nooks of the fleeting twilight as my dreams prepare to come out of their nonchalant sorties. In an old world, where days are like aeons, and cities are guarded with walled gates, you wish you could fly a kite or breathe on the still waters of an ornate Mediaeval fount.

The Goddess who Cried

Far from the crowd of the city, where whole realms can escape,
let alone dreams:
It's a sphere of bliss and praying phantoms, flying the magic rug.
The betel nut garden, embryoned beside a pious stone, serves faith in perfect fealty
Where the suns rise early and mother a thousand autonomies.

Late in the eve, a Lady Ghost of a moon comes up beside the guardian palms
Her exquisiteness securely sheltered from the naked view
As we indulge in self-liberating doings – merely making fools of ourselves in the process.
We mind others, not knowing we need minding too!

She’s a pagan damsel wreaking mayhem in men’s lives. She enchants, disappears and resurfaces in the moods of my wanton loneliness. In my self’s several impoverishments, she eludes and works spells, that I may not fail my loyalties to infidelity – a veritable urge. Tonight she comes all in white – my beauty of darkness – in my lavish arms. Happiness, after all, is learning to forgive and making the best of what there is.