RFW June Weddings

June.  The end of spring, the start of summer.  The last bit of the transition.  I always feel the seasonal cusps more than the seasons, and this one’s been a bit hectic.  So I am glad of the chance to get back to Romantic Friday Writers, where exciting changes are afoot and the challenges get more sumptuous with each passing month. Who doesn’t love weddings, or prizes? Only I am stuck in some sort of medieval melodrama mode which I keep stumbling back to, can’t seem to snap out of it. And I seem to have lost whatever little grip I had on word counts too :) so I guess that rules me out of the race, but I’d still love your critiques!

 

A bit about the context – henna tattoos are applied to the hands of brides in many parts of North India. An ancient tradition still observed today, the designs very elaborate, very beautiful!  It is commonly held that the deeper the colour sets on the bride’s palms the more deeply she will be loved by her groom.  The Indian Hindu wedding ceremony at its core consists of vows made in the presence of the sacred fire-god, Agni-dev, and sealed with sacrifices and libations.

 

Here is my entry for the challenge:

 

 

 

 

 

Hennaed hands

The groom’s name had been hennaed, hidden, discreet

within the exquisite design the bride wore,
and the women joked they’d bar the bridal suite
they’d allow him in, only open the door
if he could find in her hands something his own;
else he’d have to spend the night outside alone.

 

The bride flushed and looked away, then anxiously

sneaked a look at her palm, would he find his name?
Oh, it was done too fine, this filigree;
it wouldn’t do, she’d never live down the shame!
She cursed the henna-woman, and the age-old jokes
played on bridal couples by rowdy womenfolk.

 

The wedding was quite out of the common run,

it’s not every day that a princess weds;
and this one was a brave heart, a young woman
who could ride and fence and drop her enemies dead
at thousand paces with her unerring aim
and in her hennaed hand was her groom’s name.

 

The Senapati’s son, Samir – beloved of the gods,

his eyes blazing coals, his skin, dark and tanned,
sheathed a supple body keen-edged like a sword
and his was the name hennaed on her hand
and his the face on her throbbing heart tattooed.
They had trained and played together since childhood.

 

***

 

First met when she was six and he was eight,

at the royal armoury choosing their bows.
Together they learnt to shoot their arrows straight;
they fenced and parried and evaded deadly blows,
they honed their arms and their weapon skills
to a fearsome point able to defend and kill.

 

There were other children there, but somehow these two -

the young, fearless boy and the little princess
formed a natural team when they were required to,
then fought duels amongst themselves with ferociousness,
relished a deep friendship off mock battlefields,
and on them fought to win, to make the other yield.

 

She dealt him a blow one day in a late teen year

the wound too shallow to do any lasting harm;
his blood made her drop her blade and some strange fear
unnerved her heart and petrified her sword arm.
The cut was his, but hers felt the painful sting
and a poignant epiphany that only love can bring.

 

The days went on and he came back, his wound healed

and she who was whole never again felt whole,
she thrust and parried in the arena, rode the fields
with the same ruthlessness and superb control,
but distracted, she slipped whenever Samir was close,
she never dealt him anymore those hard blows.

 

***

 

They fought one day paired again in a free-for-all

and a weapon point flashed too near Samir’s face;
she turned pale, and intervened with a concerned call,
her demeanour, and the words, left no trace
of doubt and so finally she stood revealed
and he knew her yearning heart in that field.

 

He didn’t speak, but his coal-black blazing eyes

burnt a hotter flame, a sparking, leaping light
pared his soul during an arms exercise
and awakened to love through sudden insight;
and so the two who were once childhood friends
came to be lovers suddenly at its end.

 

The king was pleased to bless their union

for the Senapati was a friend both noble and staunch,
the two old men had seen many battles won.
And so  the palace hung garlands and blew the conch;
and so the henna-woman piped paisley designs
and hid Samir’s name within the saffron lines.

 

***

 

Seven vows the groom made to his princess bride

and sealed the pledge with libations for entire life,
seven circles around the sacred fireside
their garment ends knotted tight as man and wife,
palm upward, within it his hennaed name
she gave him her hand before the holy flame.

 

The news came a lightning bolt from the blue

the messenger ran panicked in disarray -
a rebel attack on the fringe, what to do?
they must be stopped at all cost without delay!
The old king left to strategise and oversee
and he was followed closely by his Senapati.

 

The shehnai took on a newly mournful strain,

Samir undid the bridal knot and laid it flat,
“Princess, you will understand I cannot remain
while our fathers lead soldiers into combat.
My darling, please let me go with them now,
I’ll come back to you if the gods allow.”

 

The merry pace of a happy wedding band

the fates can flip in an hour to battle march -
a groom came at dusk to claim a hennaed hand
and left a soldier ready to face the enemy charge;
his bride watched him go, her heart aflame
and tight her fist gripped around his hennaed name.

 

***

 

Battles end, soldiers return, lovers reunite

but none return the same, they come back scarred,
and Samir of the blazing eyes, coal-dark and bright,
returned at last after the gods treated him hard;
six slow days and nights he rode on his horse
held steady by kind men on homeward course.

 

The henna-woman wept aloud, the rest too shocked

eyed his many grievous wounds on breast and thighs;
just one whisper rose and fluttered, then was choked,
“Alas, Samir of the blazing coal-black eyes!”
Wordless his bride the princess stood and gazed
disbelieving, at his eyes that no more blazed.

 

She looked at him then at her hands hennaed deep,

the designs refreshed every day since he’d left
and still she didn’t speak, nor did she weep,
though one by one her women lost control and wept,
“Alas, O Samir, beloved of the gods!
Their love counts for nothing at the point of swords.

 

“And how will he find his name written on his bride

and who will press his warm lips to that pulsing spot?”
The bride meanwhile drew a dagger from her side,
and held the point to a torch till glowing hot.
On deeply hennaed hand she branded his name
with scorching steel, in letters of blood and flame.

 

“Yours the name, my love, my hand will always bear,

trace the blood and find yourself in my palm;
and in its corded burn scars too you’ll be there.
Beloved, I‘ll be your eyes and your weapon arm.
Women, hurry, now open and deck the rooms -
he’s found his name, and tonight I have my groom.”




WC  - 1049
FCA






Senapati - Defence chief (Sena=army, pati=master/lord)

shehnai - a flute-like instrument played during weddings

 

I can call it a ghazal if I like

You read it only when a spotlight shines on it,

and it’s the light itself that fades the lines on it

 

so should I fix this light or switch to pitch dark

and will you find the sense without clear signs on it?

 

nibs scratch the surface, silence leaves a deeper mark

so ink or blank? and now they both look fine on it

 

can’t say for sure which fades first, which stays fast

nuances its meaning and goes on, refines on it

 

who stands by me while I make the darkness last

no matter what the blank white light defines on it?

Free

It’s good again to be back on the road

my roots and skirts in my arms, horizons broad;
the moon-cool night at my back, silver-soft
flimsy clouds overhead in travel mode,

 

free again from what’s lost, both odds and gods,

weave the roots into cloth and pin with clods;
the moon hushes whisper light and all talk’s stopped,
sapphire fire’s in the stars, the breeze an ode.





 

The small print on the wall

You built a den, and I rented it for some time,

and I hung a picture that I liked on a strip;
as I looked at it suddenly the wall felt mine,
yet I knew the truth - rights of use and ownership.

 

The print was mine, and what lay behind the print

was never mine, but it held the string and it pegged
something dear; and so the wall, inch by inch,
moved closer to me through the fragile connect.

 

You asked for it in due course, the lease was up

so I took the picture off the wall and out I came;
but all day long all I could see was this smudged

faint dark line on the paint rubbed by the frame.




 

 

Fine, just leave it blank then

You feel and think, and write the stuff you must write

a few dark drops of allotted ink, then mostly white.
The longest poems still leave half the paper blank,
and blanks within the verse however crisp and tight.

 

I read and think that a mass of ink spattered dense

without those very blanks and spaces makes no sense;
there have to be the loops and gaps, they must soak in
before the meaning dawns like a lotus opens.

 

So leave the blanks as you please, don’t ink each bit

and I will find my way to the meaning of it
easy perhaps due to the gaps, what you don’t write
the inferred words more poignant than the explicit.

The big reveal

No tree falls, so there’s nothing to hear

just a shrub of lilac flowers, they appear
pale, bleached to white in the harsh sunlight
the fragrance too delicate to be clear

 

even when breathed in deep and long. Outside

the four winds quickly disperse it wide.
I bring an offhand handful in the room
and a dimmer light reveals what sunlight hides.




 

Adjustable

The eye adjusts to all dark, star loss, moonset;

and it can drop its lid on things when they get

too dazzling, too complex their luminescence,

too intricate their outlines in silhouette.

Bitten by some sort of short verse bug here. Otherwise aal is well.






 

Maybe you’d come back to me if I didn’t try so hard

to find you everywhere, in ribs of leaves,

in ruffles of afternoon petals, in the textured dark bark

of night, in the fuzzy days of windblown grass,

in the dim muddy alleys of my own grief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Change of Roof

The scriptures say, I’ve heard them tell

this is not a home
the earth is just a carousel
you spin round with it for a spell
you dance a jig, you sing and marvel
and then when the metronome
marks the stop
you get off
and find a place to dwell.

 

So a change of roof here is a trifle

flat terraced or a dome
and I should know that very well
yet I overwrap the fragile, breakable;
this porcelain and that crystal
with paper and plastic foam
I’m far too anxious
all this fuss
as if any roof is final!

 

Yesterday a harbour, today a channel

change is my only home
yet so much effort to make walls habitable
each roof loved, each window, each corbel
clutched too hard for easy farewells
as all things slowly transform
what flashes past
is that no homes last
they crumble and/or expel.




 

ma phaleshu kadachana

It can be won only part by part

and not with the tools I choose,
not with the one lovingly penned;
the price of each victory gained
are the crumpled ones that lose;

 

this nib’s been dipped into this heart

but blood’s too thick, no use,
must get some ink and keep it plain -
no dramatics, overdone pain,
forget the wound and bruise;

 

no attachment to any art

learn to turn them loose
once they’re done wipe heart and brain,
once they’re gone from this domain.
Others say if they win or lose.

Polite advice to hunters. Of homes and sundry other things besides.

The stars the graffiti of the gods

like shaky letters on walls and roads,
the moon puffs out a gibbous cheek
bitten off more than can be swallowed.  

 

 

 

The path is narrow, the path is broad

widespread the world and space hallowed;

peg the tent by a daisy face

but keep your own in alert mode.

 

 

Give your mind away to awed

but keep an eye out for the fraud

set no store by cactus smiles

and sunflower hearts without a code.

 

 

The slap of field's green, roughshod

feet trample at whim, crush rows sowed.

Keep pegs light and hammer not deep

and up they come at slightest prod.

 

 

The tent is all and the tent is flawed.

The walls are frayed, cup what’s hollowed

thin air, thick air, hot air, cool -

it’s nothingness that forms abodes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This isn't the one

That’s a different poem that hums in my head

but this the one now I’ve got to write
don’t start that again, that dispossessed
wannabe swansong full stream midflight
that gets nowhere popsickles iced dead
between mighty maybes limp oversights
stick to now, stick to what’s got to be said
see to the other if everything’s alright
when the final dream’s cut, spliced and shed
like a reptile tail, pulsed, convulsed tight
in circles, looping the loops on itself
the animal tucked away out of sight.
Who gives a damn what can or can’t be helped
what plays out gently against the lobes of nights
the drumbeats in blood, the restless fevered bed
the sudden sobs in thin veins of light?
that’s a different poem, different its mesh
of rhymes and words cut free from black and white.

Moving

The soul clothed in the folds of skin and flesh

the flesh housed in concrete walls and cells;
the soul switches its costumes and that’s death
what’s it when flesh changes housings, travels?

 

The shapes of shadows morph, the leaves, the street

names change to strange foreign tongues, can life then
be same in differently fashioned concrete?
where absent fig tree shade shocks the garden;

 

the same silver but different the anklets

on the feet of passing women, the wells
few and far between, even the planet
changes her outfit, different here her veils.

 

You carry too much, you can’t take enough

this must be thrown off, it's outlived its use
no place perhaps to string mango leaves up
different the rules there, different charms, taboos;

 

get over the longings for a certain

size of courtyard, a blooming branch, a view
from a fixed window, casual, sudden
prints of careless altaa’d feet which stepped few

 

minutes too soon before the red had dried.

It’s not written - the altaa and anklets,
familiar jingling metals inside and outside;
workday sounds. That’s not for you, so forget

 

being rooted in the same courtyard and walls;

for rice paste painted wavy ears of  grain.
The body’s housing changes faster than the soul’s
the path stumbles on the rocky terrain.

RFW May Challenge - Letters

When I saw the prompt - Letters – for this month’s challenge at Romantic Friday Writers, it seemed a perfect fit for some characters/lives I dreamed up a few years ago.  I wrote a triad of Bengali short stories sometime back – Chithhi (“The letter”), Ashtamangala (“The return of the bride”) and Seemaheen Bidesh (“Borderlessly Foreign”), and you can read a synopsis of all three stories here, if you have the time. 

The mc is Abin Bhaduri,  a middle-aged widowed man, living in early-nineties Kolkata, Bharati is the name of his wife.  The others are Chhuti, his step-daughter and her husband Tareq, the couple live abroad; and Abin's long time companion-come-helper Ramcharan, and Ramcharan’s wife, Namita, though they have no role in the current story.

My first response to the prompt was an abridged and translated version of the first story.  But it felt a little lame to let go of the prompt with a tweak of an old idea.  So I sat down and wrote afresh, directly in English no translations involved, about the same characters.  I also used the challenge to write a separate story in verse form,  in a series of sonnets, so all in all I have exploited the prompt quite fully, thank you RFW :)

I write in two languages, and what I write in my mother tongue has always felt untranslatable to me, even though the cultural context for what I write in English is much the same and I hope, smoothly interchangeable.  I have always kept my Bengali and English writing separated, I have always thought the emotions evoked, the settings, the dialogues in Bengali can’t be seamlessly transposed to English.  But this prompt made me want to try. It will be interesting to see if I have been able to prove myself wrong.

Looking forward to your views!

The Guardian of Letters

Abin looks out of the window into the garden briefly, before he bends to open the cabinet under its sill.  He lifts up the pile of old newspapers and gropes the concrete surface gently – nothing.  A little flutter of panic and he kneels laboriously to look closer, and ah, there it is.

“The thing to say is – of course I’ll always be with you, in everything, everywhere, don’t grieve.  But that’s a lie.  I’m tired of lies.  The truth is, I will be nowhere when you read this.  But I was.  I was with you. Everywhere.  I must remember that till the end.  So must you.”

A flake of paint falls into his teacup from the ceiling as Abin straightens up. Early morning, there is no-one in the garden, just the birds with their frenzied news exchange.  He tries to remove the floating flake, but it leads him a chase and crumbles.  A crow sits on the gatepost and croaks a single warning caw as a taxi turns in at the far end of the block.

Abin heaves a long sigh.  The house, Bharati’s house, needs repainting.   When she died, his household help and companions, Ramcharan and Namita saw him through that loss; Bharati’s own daughter Chhuti left her mother’s house at a marathon run soon after, didn’t stop till she crossed an ocean and settled into a foreign land and faith. Quite some time since she married her Arab husband Tareq. 

Then Ramcharan died, and his son claimed the mother; so Namita too left, and all that remains here to see him through all his losses are the letters.  Bits of paper that Bharati wrote as she got ready to die.   Two years she’d had to prepare, and she had used them to make pickles, rows and rows of jars, and to scribble those odd conversational notes, an instruction manual for coping; straight talk tucked into desks and closets, messages in bottles and jars.  Well, the pickles had finished a long time ago. But her letters are there still, in the empty jars, inside the closets and cabinets; read and reread.  Bharati’s voice still echoes around him in this house; he can access that comfort whenever he wants.  Though he hasn’t quite made out till now what she meant by “So must you” – what? Remember that they were together till her death, or remember it till his?  He’s chosen to till his end, not that it’s a choice.  One can’t remember or forget on demand. She was absurd sometimes.  Abin smiles a little and looks down again at the note in his hand.

It’s all still exactly as Bharati had planned.  The house, the garden.  A gardener still comes to tend it part-time, though Ramcharan is not there to supervise anymore.  Few houses with patches of garden left now, the older ones remade into high rises, often with only potted plants in the lobby.  Houses have changed hands in this street itself.  Sutapa, Abin’s long time neighbour and Bharati’s friend, has sold and moved out recently.  He misses his old neighbours, Sutapa used to make him pickles; sometimes he used to play chess with her husband.  Another link with the past snapped. 

“Everything needn’t be filed away in triplicate.  Leave this note where you found it, you’ll see you’ll forget, and come upon me suddenly some other day, and it will be like a fresh discovery again. Isn’t that better?”

He knows some of the notes by heart, and still, the specific details of contents and locations do slip his mind sometimes; so when he comes upon one suddenly, it still gives him an aching thrill. 

“No-one can spend a lifetime rambling around alone.  One must find someone to share a laugh with, a shoulder to cry on, to talk to.  It’s easy to find shoulders, but to bring oneself to rest one’s own head on a different living body and let the tears soak it, now that’s never going to be easy.”

She never wrote any salutations or signed off anywhere, he had thought he’ll find one headed “Dearest” or ended with the customary phrases of undying affection, but nothing had ever been found.  In retrospect, it made sense, she wasn’t the type to write in predetermined formats.  He’d never found that shoulder anyway, and doesn’t particularly want to.  He stays here, the guardian of her letters and garden.  He is content enough alone, shadowed by his own grief, an outcome Bharati hadn’t foreseen. 

The taxi meanwhile makes its way round and now stops at the gate, to his surprise.  Which redoubles when Tareq gets off it.  They have just spoken last week, nothing mentioned then.  Tareq has dropped in unannounced before, and that didn’t bode too well for Abin.   He leaves his seat, walks swiftly out onto the patio.

“Salaam aleikum!”

“Peace to you too, Tareq! Everything well?”

“Oh yes, all fine. Chhuti would have come, but she isn’t allowed travel. You are going to be a grandpa, Sir! I thought you’ll want to be with her, a woman needs her parents such times. And we didn’t want to tell you on phone.  There are other things too -,” he hoists his bag.

It strikes Abin again, this easy-going gravity with which Tareq affords him the respect due to a father; of a step-daughter’s father.  He is delighted, but all change, even good ones have a bitter-sweetness about the core.

“That’s great news, Tareq! Congratulations! But how will I leave now? Before, Ramcharan was here.  But now –“

“You leave that to us.  This might be a good time for the repairs. We could get a contractor, make a turnkey job of it –“

Abin interrupts horrified, “No, no, that would mean all the letters – . Everything in the house will be upended, disorganised—“

Abin can’t quite explain the dilemma, why he avoids all maintenance work like the plague.

” Let’s talk it over,” Tareq says as he steps inside.

WC- 996

FCA

Read more about RFW and the May challenge here.  Membership isn’t mandatory for participating, so go on over if you enjoy writing.