UNTITLED STORY- Shivaji K Panikkar

Iqbal wrote a poem for his lover, which was found out by his lover’s wife from under his pillow. It read like this:

Your flesh was the flesh of the moon, dear love,
But I was an orphan nurtured by the moon,
I drank the white milk of the moon,
And sucked her dry…

Kamala Das (from a short story, `Iqbal’).

Although a very touching story, I am sure that you and I hate any wife’s anger towards her husband’s boy lover. To Iqbal, she revengefully showed off finally that she could bear a child for her husband, whom our poor Iqbal cannot, and he suffered, which seemed to him unending.

My story begins where Kamala Das stops.

Actually Iqbal had consumed poison trying to take revenge on his humiliation.

When her husband had gone to the office she went to the hospital again, where our tender Iqbal lied miserably ill.

He is a poet, and so he could make use of even the worst situation in his life.
He was imagining and feeling him when she entered the room.

His flesh
His skin
His smell
His voice

The way he walks…
The way he kisses…
The way he smiles…
The way he spreads all over my-self…

I, endlessly his own… his-own
No one can ever touch spirit, they say… but I can.

The kid is for her…
But love… his endless love is for me, for me alone.

Taste, breath, smell, hear and touch, and
His spirit is only mine
Mine alone.

There was no fear, nor was there any tears when he looked into her eyes that moment. The confidence he realized that day looked as if it was forever.

Through the blazing light of love, that day she went back from the hospital sad, realizing that she got only a kid, and not his love.


5th Sept. 2000.