Image: Rajendra Biswal via Unsplash
When you spot me in a red
Chanderi kurta embroidered with
Srayikkadu patterns, white, green, blue and orange,
Eyes winding in your direction,
Curved mountain roads leading to
Spicy aloo ke gutke and tapri chai,
Dew making pearl moulds on your skin,
Your breath mixing all the wheat and bronze of the evening sky,
The sky breathes you know?
And it chimes and blinks thrice when it sees you,
And when your eyes arrest at the sight of the evening sky blooming,
You know it’s not a charade
Steps summoning a calm rendezvous
of sitar and ghazals,
Let my language be known and heard.
Drink dollops of dusky tears and
moon-soaked hair and peppermint lips
Dangling Jhumkas with Urdu letters whispering,
“Let all the ears perceive this language
What is it? What does it mean?”
Say it out and aloud, it’s me.
Swallow the bittersweet coffee,
My mehendi-laden palms,
Making rangoli markings on your wrist,
Forgive me,
If my language cut deep through your tongue,
It’s the only way I carry myself,
It’s the only way,
A revolution of waves and rapids stream all the way through Beas,
Tinkle the shores of Kullu,
And cast a silent spell throughout the foothills of Himachal,
Into dusty terrains and dried mango libraries
Ancient leather and wine stained finger rings,
Let the inkling of my language bathe your shivering soul.
You feel.
Really feel.
You don’t find my language,
You stroll all the way through winding roads selling dried mango achaar dipped in Daedalian exclamations and limpid commas,
You walk in search of syllables,
But only find punctuations,
Punctuations are useless without syllables, right?
So you try to decode the pattern of Urdu
sentences,
The way the letters curve inwards and outward
Right after one another
Summoning Kadak kava and shayaris
But you only find sonnets,
Instead of a story,
You lay all confused on the wet dewy grass
All fresh and suffocated,
Warm and cold,
You lean in closer to a mango tree and whisper
“Where to find your language”
Giant pipes drooling at the sight of thin, crisp, sharp silhouettes of barren trees,
“Do they have a language?”
You know, words always tell you
how you feel.
And punctuations tip toe from beneath your jaws
and warn you against them.
Punctuations like,
Comma ( I was here, and)
Question ( will you share silence with me?)
Waqf e Laazim ( yes. )
“Did you find my language?”
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