Rarely yes
It was a day of two hundred years. It must be five o'clock in the morning, still yesterday's darkness is falling on the garden, like a black sack, but above it a faint silvery light. Sounds of crackers bursting into the late night of yesterday's 'Khali Diwas' seem to have piled up. This empty day on the calendar looks like a black hole in the solar system. Ko'ka Mahabagasa's frozen picture of the universe, the ko' maiden's limp step out of the almanac. A whole day was spent grasping/understanding its scope. This depiction of a day that did not meet the calendar, tried to make the language of this day unfamiliar, but it did not work. The word used for such a day in the people is 'cheat'. The evening came, so the young people who were eager to celebrate the festival started. Crackers and crackers and crackers. Small crackers burst and burst like bubbles. Every firecracker like an empty day or every firecracker like a man exploding here. empty deceive It seems to me that on such a day one should write a poem of emptiness, one should love a completely empty man, a man who does not follow any calendar. It is not the business of all formula living men, to understand this 'deceit'… how to explain to the bhudhrs of a language fortified by eating the vitamin of definitions the fullness of this empty day…. Where does one have time, to read the definitions of time and space or to make new definitions… It seems as if the air maiden standing under the tree is standing with her ears pressed. Just last week in a poem by Czech poet Vladimir Helan, a girl asked 'What is poetry?' I'm standing right in the middle, in the middle of the garden, on a street of nameless but well-known trees who haven't bothered about their KYC. Don't know the name, but the love is sure. Big leaves like elephant ears wave and call me. Like a mantra of Brahmamuhurta. A celestial tree eager for a star or two to be answered. I'm having fun. On the day it rained heavily, this tree said something without asking for help. I sang, 'Some music sleeps in its bath, why do I feel like the cock is standing with me in all solitude….' Today, this tree is saying something in the early morning of sitting year, I listen and walk in the direction of its awe. The other two plants seem to be getting up early and standing ready as if today is the sitting year. The wind is having fun as if it were a new year. Champa plants seem to be in full swing preparing to flower. Now it will be light, so the housewife who comes first will take the champa flower, and the gods of their house will be pleased. But now I can see the long shadow of this Champa plant, the murk murk murk murk murk murk murk on the branch standing next to the sky. The flower will come when it comes, but today, the festival of a new year's growth is unfolding in this bud. Satisfied eyes are overflowing with rangoli drawn late into the night. There is a line from the Spanish poet Larca, 'I am a lingering shadow of my own tears.' Not so for me, I am a Gujarati poet, I am a poet of celebration and enthusiasm. I am deeply saddened by people who sit around wearing eternal indifference. I have read Uma Shankar and Suresh Joshi so I can speak to Pushpo. I am not a student of history questioning the objectives of the Dandiyatra to the saber-handling boy who heaps small heaps of salt in the courtyard. My clan is of poetry, the umbrella is of words, the street is of verse, and so I must chant the Gayatri Mantra into the ear of a small Mogra plant before the light comes and the New Year, routed on routine, robs me of my festive fervor, for I belong to twenty years of the calendar. Much more than that it is of sunshine, of freshness, of rhyme and rhythm. Water sputters from a faucet that has been turned on in the garden. I want to talk to the fading stars in the sky before the red-bordered cover page goes to print, because then it will be until next year. They know, now the fairies of the festival will be arriving. So the Mogra bud has defeated all the darkness by giving me a brand new smile. A rose has also pushed the wind from a leaning branch at the opposite end. It occurred to me that riding on the dark 'last year' before it completely disappeared, I would turn my hand over its bark. It is necessary to read a little grain of time in his two eyes.
Image Credit: (Divya-Bhaskar): Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).
