A Story

TELL ME WHERE WE CAN FIND HIM

There was nothing to wait for. It was a normal day, and as usual I was within myself until there was a very light knock on the door. I was in a semi-sleep-full state, imagining the days I would live with a man of my heart. That day also, thinking of him, a little while ago I had happened to hum to myself… Oh! The prince of my heart, oozing honey, and standing there under the sugary rain of sweets… I wish to come near to you as a bride in your dreams…

There, a little away I saw a haggard middle-aged man, somewhat tensed and stammering. He asked if I am the same person he was looking for. I made him sit down, but he was still very tensed. I offered him water and a cup of tea. By then he was more comfortable, and possibly also felt more confident since he sensed that there was no one else in the house.

He said he read my scribble in the toilet in one of the compartments of Ahimsa express, and so had decided to meet me. It was years back that I had left that message for the world, that I am lonely, and the briefest possible address, all done in great haste. But then, I was truly frustrated being alone, and I couldn’t think of any better way to reach out to an unknown world at that moment.

But, now I was feeling least interested in the man of my invitation who was sitting across me. Suddenly he held out one of his hands, asking me to sit near him. He was looking pathetic and I had no other choice but to move nearer. He held my hand and kept it on his chest, and said in a tragic tone that he had been also terribly lonely in this world for so long.

“So what”, I was beginning my counselling. He listened patiently all I told him, but still he was unhappy. Now I didn’t know what to say, and hoped that he will push-off soon.

I was a bit tensed since I didn’t know how to avoid him. He was simply looking at me and there was an anxious smile on his lips, which made me all the more uncomfortable.

Suddenly he asked me if I would like to listen to some of his writings, and I was only too happy to feel that he is not expecting anything more from me.

He pulled out a small bunch of folded paper, and without any confusion went straight into a particular page and began reading slowly and softly:

*

On that throne of gold and jewels sits my prince,
His youth, like radiant marble,
The transparent silk robes displaying the perfection that had been reserved for gods,
As he stood up and walked slowly towards the table, his gait enticed all,
Then he put the cup on to his mouth and drank.

Then, he walked towards me
I was trembling,
When he stood near me
I was shrinking
He looked into my eyes
I was fearful
With his touch
I was ablaze

Then he grabbed me and took me into the bed. The desires of a million lives quenched, and I didn’t know when he left me, it was forever.

I wandered everywhere, looking for him, but have not seen him again.

May be I will never see him again,
My dear friend, tell me where we can find him.

*

By now I became interested in the visitor and shortly he began telling me about his life. “I knew what I wanted right when I was a child, may be five or six” that is how he began. For long he had known nothing about others with his kind of desire. Then one day all of a sudden something happened. The fast moving train was over crowded. Among the men who were piled-on in the corridor he had noticed a guy intensely looking at him again and again, and at some point was standing very close to him. Then he was seventeen or eighteen years old. “Then he touched me, and I was excited and terrified at the same time.”

He stopped for a while and asked me if he can read out one more of his poems, I was thinking about the prince of my heart, and so I only just nodded.

*

Fire in hand and eyes, he was Agni,
And I; like the ashes of dead slowly melting into the depth of dark waters.

My helpless spirit roaming on the sultry bank of the summer river,
Looking for regeneration in the womb of his heart.

“Love” that is the only thing I said since he snuggled his body into mine.
“No, that is not possible”, he told me in several ways before we parted.

Water flowing through the pipe, and over the bucket,
I cried loudly in the bathroom,
No one could hear me, and no one should hear me either.
Bath room always make me cry.

Years of silent cry, I waited at all times to see him,
“No”, he had said, and it remained forever, till now.

*

The visitor left me not much late, and I was awake from the semi-sleep-full state, and was confronting a new reality.

Where can I find him, tell me, the prince of my heart, oozing honey, and standing there under the sugary rain of sweets… how I wish I could go near to him as a bride in his dreams… dreams…

Tell me where can we find him, I asked the visitor desperately in silence as our shining dreams floated wastefully over the world like dead silver fish over the vast fields of liquid gold.

Shivaji
1st and 2nd Feb. 2001.