‘SHE’ – A Misinterpretation (Part - I)

  At every turn of my life-in my silence, in the conflict of my speeches, in combat, in all my encounters, in the town fair or in the holy celebration on the streets, in daytime, in the nights of sighs, in every line of my poetry, in my sweats by the heat of the midday sun, in the pages of ruined history and in the heaps of broken bangles that children play with-‘she’ pervades all walks of my life. She troubles me quite often. So, ‘she’ {both the word and what it symbolizes} is a big question to me. “she” began resting in my eyes the moment I came to this earth. As I grew up to be a young man, ‘she’ shed light on my path. During my youth, putting ‘her’ warm flesh in my hands, plunging herself into my body closing her eyes ‘she’ said-this is a yoga. Sometimes ‘she’ smiled at me and quarreled with me making me a culprit. And sometimes ‘she’ will be silent like a burnt thread, still kindle a light in me. Now I have a little time, feel a little bit relaxed, being in the thirty-fifty years in the middle of my youth, to recount what I have done. After having played with air and dust I ask the question who is ‘she’?
        ‘she’ is the same outside me. ‘She’ became a thorn in the flesh of Bodelair’s description; ‘she’ razed the city of Troy to the ground. She troubled Yeats as his love and later born as his daughter. Coming from Babylonia ‘she’ became the holy dust of this land. ‘She’ was ruined simply waiting for kings like Odyssey, Rama and Lakshamana. ‘She’ became a slut resting on my broad chest and putting the nipples of her round breasts into my mouth. ‘She’ became merely a roaring wind to Omar Khayyam, a friend to Ghalib, troubling the sharanas in their illusion as their wife, husband, daughter and a desire of the mind; became a wife to the Sufis, a dullard to Milton and a blood sucker killing Agamenon. Who is ‘she’ who immortalized Jonson by drinking him up with her eyes?

      Who is ‘she’ who became the core of my song, a little attraction, a road side rose, a cry of the forest, a flower of the mind and a two-faced poisonous snake and anything and everything! The more we condemn ‘her’ the more important ‘she’ becomes. ‘She’ will become immoral even if the entire world blames ‘her’. ‘She’ makes the death of an ascetic meaningless; ‘she’ will make a person wearing a saffron cloth become naked secretly and wait for ‘her’ soothing touch; ‘she’ will not die when she is dead; ‘she’ she made them to write the Fifth Veda; a sister-in-law to a fight over, a dear wife who talks, like a dear daughter, she taught a language but is beyond it, settled down in desirous eyes? Who is ‘she’? Who is ‘she’? is a big question to me!

        ‘Her’ birth is also equally queer. ‘She’ will be born as a poem from the depth of the river of the deepest emotions, she will be gloriously presented in colours on the canvas, a dancer in the sculpture, nobady in the world can be compared to ‘her’ on qec. Of the way in which ‘she’ is born. ‘She’ is an obstacle in the life of the mundane world; ‘she’ is meaningful or meaningless in the calculation of this life. So, who is that ‘she’? ‘She’ is sometimes, the Betala on the back of Vikramaditya. ‘She’ joins me in the song of both my defeat and victory, crying and laughing. When I am about to tell ‘her’ this is all your handiwork and you are responsible for all this, ‘she’ laughs in such a way that the night becomes startled by flinging my words into the fire of abuses, hanging from the branches of the trees that are not born. Thus, who is ‘she’ that fills the night with horridness, the earth with silence putting a ladder to the sky?

            This is not my question. Why should ‘she’ alone become of and on my mother, my sister, my wife, my keep, my friend, the dim of my night and the end of my life? Or are these words merely the witness stones for the path that ‘she’ has trodden? I am afraid; all the words that we used for her were meant to accuse ‘her’. They were a means to escape from ‘her’ attention. ‘She’ is like a rainbow. We put seven colors together and called it a rainbow. But what should I call the beauty that is born out of these seven colors? I say words as words and silence as silence. What definition should I offer for the state where both words and silence meet? ‘She’ is like that. It is true that ‘she’ is a mother when she delivers a child, the land when sown, she becomes a friend when she walked, a wife when she fight and laughs and a rati when I meet her in private. But how should I catch in language the mere smell that is still lingering on the seat that she was just vacated, the shadow that she has left behind along with the cloths in the cupboard, the undying smile seen in the last bus stand and her face that disappears quickly after appearing for a while on the canvas of my mind? Should I describe the power that becomes a life force for the flowing river, in the roaring waves, in all the life forms both for the happiness and unhappiness as ‘she’?