Cheeku
This year would be different, i thought. When I opened my eyes in the morning of January 1, I thought this year would be different. It would be different because any moment I would hear the phone ring and then hear your booming voice say ‘Happy new year dad!’ You would be calling from NY your favourite winter haunt. I would laugh and said, ‘You idiot, where have you been all these years!’ And then the yearning of three years or more would vanish. I thought this year would be different because you would begin to feel a little settled in your profession and would be discussing with your friend Sunny the setting up of the Abhishek & Anirudh firm of lawyers. I thought this year would be different because you would finally relent and agree to marry the pretty, little, perky thing that you loved so much. With Sunny, Deepesh and Kashyap married, would you have any further excuse to defer the inevitable!
I thought it would be different but it wasn’t. ‘Yun na tha maine faqat chaha tha yun ho jaye.’
I wanted to send to you Pablo Neruda’s ‘A Song of Despair’-
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
No, but song of despair cannot be your song. For the one who brings so much hope and joy everyday of my life, it must be different,something you would have loved. So here’s the poem for you this year, Cheeku:
Ode To Wine
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.
Happy New Year Cheeku…
Dad