Nandini Sahu |
A Man Like You
Did I paint the image of a man like you and secured you to that
canvas, I don’t really know. But I know, I tailored myself in.
You may ask me, why did I come to your life in the first place?
“Well, not because I was lonely, depressed, blue or was feeling awfully
alone.
For those ailments, there is therapeutic support, isn’t it? I sensed my
ideal
quest for a man like you when I was feeling the best of my feelings--
contented, romantic, ebullient, jovial, strong, real, feminine.
I wanted to share a segment of those with you, a man like you,in crux.”
You treasured that. You cherished when I said, “if someone
comes to our lives with depression, they will only share that. And
if one comes with optimism, that becomes infectious.”
Then you resolved that I am the most optimistic woman you have come
across.
I love the way you touch me without touching me sometimes
and of course your gentle kisses and ardent touch when you are intense.
I know you will never give up on me even if I am grim or otherwise;
I love your catching giggles and the beam. A man like you is my happy
place!
You are unceasingly on my cognizance—if they call it love.
You are the man who can finish not just my sentences,
but my thoughts. Are you my Stream of Consciousness,
or that Objective Correlative that I live in reverence?
They say the glass is half-empty or half-full, it’s a construal so
false!
How about our new narrative my love -- of filling the quasi-filled
glass?
After I had given all my reasons you just winked. As if you knew that
you knew
that you knew -- a woman like me is your lifetime quest, your solitary
wish.
Manthan—A Ghazal
Then you asked me, why do I
shine so bright?
I said, my love, because
I am your agenda of the light!
Then you pondered, how can my
love be such a delight!
I said calmly, because love,
at once, is opaque and clear daylight.
You brooded, “how can someone,
how can someone
be a lover of your poise, your
repute!!”
I said, Samudra
Manthan, the churning of the ocean, was accomplished to extract
the Amrit,
celestial nectar, where the Devas and the Danavas took part.
In a tug of
war challenged to roil the elixir from the ocean
bed to
attain immortality and eternal life beyond bereavement.
The medieval Hindu Theology encompasses this legend
that the Devas were carrying the amс╣Ыit away
from the Asuras, adamant.
Drops of nectar fell at four places on the Earth--Haridwar,
Prayaga (Prayagraj),
Trimbak (Nashik), and Ujjain, in their divine right.
In the churning of the ocean delightful treasures,the
archetypes
for their earthly and heavenly complements were
brought.
Oceanic depths brought Chandra, the moon, Parijata,
the tree fragrant,
the four-tusked elephant Airavata, Lord Indra's
mount.
Amid all that glory and glee of me, your Lakshmi,
you churned our fate,
using Mount Meru as the rod and Vasuki as rope, the
king of the serpent.
You became Lord Shiva, you chose to devour the
poison, you drank it.
In my ‘manthan’, you elected glory for me
and for yourself, venom was kept.
Nandini’s conjecture--love
churned me, this love was my ‘manthan’.
Love took me out of the
darkness of coalfields, like a granite.
My adorable, love is ember,
love granite, love murky pebble, love-- a stone bright.
Love devotion, love
renunciation, love merger, love—a prayer from the heart.
***
Epilogue
“To love is to
burn, to be on fire.” – Jane Austen
After the homily today, the much-needed discourse,
after the t├кte-├а-t├кte after eons
I had those heart-in-the-mouth immersions.
I apostrophized you, my paramour,
and contemplatively recollected the vivid feelings
that we had before ages.
The heart brimmed, eyes teemed, soul abounded.
When you said
thinking of me is ‘an accidental impulse’,
I of course didn’t take that fabrication.
You know love,if you
live to be a thousand-years-old,
I want to breathe a thousand-minus-one-day
so that I never have to
live run-down of your love.
I love you as certain clandestine
things are to be loved,
surreptitious, between
the sleuth and the soul.
Despite your I-don’t-love-you edifice, I know, I always know,
that you have been in love
increasingly, and then
all at once, the way you fall numb.
There was a time when I
thought that you were perfect,
and so I loved you. Then
I knew that you were imperfect
like me, and I loved you
even more.
I love you for what I am
when I am with you
not for what you have
made of yourself,
but for what you have assembled
of me.
I love you for the fragment
of me that you fetch from time’s womb.
Love, thinking of you
keeps me wakeful.
Fancying you keeps me benumbed.
Being with you keeps me thriving.
You are essential to me
like the heart needs a beat.
I love you and it is the
commencement of the whole lot.
You make me wish to be a
better person.
Love, now we know, love
never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don’t
know how to restock its foundation.
It dies of blindness and
blunders and perfidies.
It dies of ailment and lesions;
it dies of inertia, of acerbic ruination.
But then, now I agree with Theodore Roethke,
“Love is not love until love’s vulnerable.”
Shall I call it the epilogue of love, or a new
foundation?
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