Mumbai - ek kada dard

Fractals be damned. I have no patience with patterns too large to see. I find I can’t wait for revelations. I want to make sense of it now.

Even as I write, even as I grasp at the air-framed hour-glass of reason I find my faith ebb from me; along with it all my peace.

I look in other directions.

I look then not for answers but for empathy. I look for other times that have known our despair; other hearts that have winced in similar pain. I look perhaps for patterns.

A flicker of despair arrived at a coophole of memory. It revealed what had been well-liked but preserved unowned. Perhaps because only that which is truly known is truly owned. And when I had first come to it-this poem - I had not the resource of empathy to know it by. I leaned out to it today armed with fresh dry grief. I felt a linking of hands and a banding of arms. It was a sudden solace that you, I and Faiz are caught in a pattern that perhaps, is somehow beautiful from up there.

Hum Log

Dil ke aiwaan mein liye gulshuda shammon ki kataar

Noor-e-Khursheed se sahme hue, uktaaye hue

Husn-e-mahboob ke sayyal tassavur ki tarah

Apni tareeki ko bheinche hue liptaaye hue

Gaayat-e-sood-o-zayan, soorat-e-aagaaz-o-ma’aal

Wahi besood tajassus, wahi bekar sawaal

Muzmahil saa’at-e-imroz ki berangee se

Yaad-e-maazi se gameen, dehshat-e-farda se niDaal

Tishna-afkaar jo taskeen nahi pathe hain

Sokhta ashq jo aakhon mein nahi aate hai

Ek kada dard jo geet mein Daltaa hi nahin

Dil ke taareek shigaafon se nikalta hi nahin

Aur ek uljhee huee mauhoom si darmaan ki talaash

Dast-e-zindaan ki hawas, chak-e-girebaan ki talaash

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Update-

I did this translation of sorts at my mother's request. It is not literal or particularly lyrical but its there for what its worth.

We the people

Extinguished flames that line the corridors of my heart

Frightened, tired by the sun’s incandescence

Like the liquid beauty of a phantom lover

Shrouded, wrapped in an intimate darkness

Enormity of gain and loss, sequences of causation

The same gainless quests, the same useless questions

Depleted by present disenchantments

Grieved by the past, petrified in fear of tomorrow

Thirst-ridden unquenched

Scorched tears that don’t appear

An igneous grief that cannot melt in verse

Or seep from the heart’s lurid cracks

And a mired quest for an illusory panacea

Lust of captive wastelands, a search for madness

Nawab

Most people who have a day-to-day kind of association with me know of Nawab. Nawab is a tailor. I almost said my tailor but wasn’t sure of a right to the possessive pronoun. Nawab is capricious, taciturn and entirely unreliable, but he is a damn good tailor. I have sworn off him a dozen times but I always seem to return to him when everybody else frustrates me even more. The thing is that on the rare occasions that he bothers to work, Nawab works magic. He has a better understanding of the relationship between the fabric, the cut and the body than a lot of fashion designers I have known. He is not what you would call industrious but if an idea takes him, no effort is too great. We always thought that it was pity that a man of his talent could not be a bit more diligent and a tad shrewder, especially given the fact that he has a family of six to feed.

Recently, after a longish gap we managed to interest him in some work. After about a week of promises he came home and looked at what was wanted. I think he was feeling particularly inspired because he sat at ten that night to cut up three patterns. I was satisfied and I prepared to wait for him to turn up next. Thinking it was perhaps strategic to put in an occasional reminder, I called him today. His wife answered his phone and it turned out that he was in hospital. From what she said I gather that he has had some sort of retinal detachment; he had gone in for a check up because his vision had blurred and they admitted him immediately. She said that that the doctors had advised him not to sew because that was what had had caused the strain in the first place. I am not sure how much of that holds water but it was not the time to advance theories. I had noticed when he came home that he was wearing glasses with pretty powerful lenses and I thought he was having more than normal trouble threading the sewing needle. I had put it down to him not being used to his new glasses and that perhaps that he had also developed long-sight.

My mother called his wife again and asked if she needed anything. She said she had everything under control. I hope to god she is right. And I hope to god he is completely healthy soon. And I hope he does not have to give up tailoring either out of necessity or out of fear.

I had earlier written this, mostly to amuse Footloose, who had heard many tales of woe of my relationship with Nawab.

Today I write this for Nawab, in prayer.

लिए एक झोली आस फिर उसी दर पे

दुआ कर के निकले थे जहाँ से कल को

विश्वास के कतरों का बाँध के सेहरा

चाक-ए-नाला का बुनकर अधना सा मंतर

होटों पे सजाकर ज़िक्र की लाली

पोहुन्चें हैं फ़िर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

जहाँ सिले हैं सब संसार के सपने

गिरेबान-ओ-कफ़न-ए-गरीब सिलतें हैं

अपनी भी एक अर्ज़ी दर्ज कराने

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

देखो तो और चारा भी क्या है?

बस इस एक दर पे रहम मिलतें हैं

उधार पे लायें हैं जो झीनी सी चादर

उसके रफू के सामान भी यहीं मिलतें है

उम्मीद को बनाके दामन का गांठ

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर