A Qawwali for the heart

-
Khabar-e-tahiiyyur-e-ishq sun


Khabar-e-tahiiyyur-e-ishq sun, na junoon raha na pari rahi
na to tuu rahaa, na to main rahaa, jo rahi so be-khabari rahi
(Khabar: report; tahiiyyur-e-ishq: wonders of love; junoon : frenzy/furor; pari : fairy/fantasy, be-khabari: unawareness)

Listen to the wonders of love, neither the furor nor the fancy remain
Neither you nor I exist, but a deadly unawareness is all that remain


sha’h-e-be-khudi ne ata kiya mujhe ab libas-e-barahnagi
na Khirad ki bakhyaagiri rahi, na junoon ki parda-dari rahi

(sha’h : grace; be-Khudii : ecstasy; Ata: Benefaction/Concession; libaas : dress; barahnagi: nakedness; Khirad: intellect; bakhyaagiri: stitching; parda-dari: veil)

The grace of ecstasy has adorned me with the cloths of nakedness
Neither intellect nor a stitch on me, only the veil of hysteria remain

chali simt-e-ghaib se ek hawa ke chaman surur ka jal gaya
magar ek shakh-e-nihal-e-Gham jise dil kahen so hari rahi

(simt-e-Ghaib : from the unknown; hawa: breeze/wind; chaman : garden; surur : intoxication; shaaKh-e-nihaal-e-Gham : a branch nurtured by pain; hari : green)

From the land of unknown blows a breeze, that burns the garden of intoxication,
But of all that is green, is a branch nurtured by pain, called the heart, remain

nazar-e-taghaful-e-yaar ka, gila kis zubaan se karun bayaan
ki sharaab-e-sad-qadhe arzuu, Khum-e-dil men thi so bhari rahi

(nazar-e-taGhaaful-e-yaar : heedless glances of the beloved; gilaa : complain; bayaan : explain; sharaab-e-sad-qadhe aarzuu : hundred cups of wine of desire; Khum : decanter; bharii : filled)

In which words should I complain of the heedless glances of my beloved?
When the hundred cups desire filled in the decanter called heart remain.

woh ajab ghadi thi main jis ghadi liya dars nuskha-e-ishq ka
ki kitab aql ki taaq par, jo dhari thi yun hi dhari rahi

(ajab:strange; ghadi : moment; dars : class; nuskha-e-ishq : lessons of love; taaq : shelf; aql:intellect)

Those were strange times when I had taken the lessons of love,
On the shelf that it had lain before, the book of intellect still remain

tere josh-e-hairat-e-husn ka asar is qadar se ayaan hua
ke na aaine main jila rahi, na pari ki jalwa-gari rahi

(josh : passion; hairat : bewilderment; husn : beauty; ayaan : obvious; Jila: Luster; Jalvaa-garii: Manifestation )

The passion of bewilderment of your beauty has become obvious
Neither the mirror remains lustrous nor the displays of fancy remain.

Kiya Khaak aatish-e-ishq ne dil-e-be-navaa-e-”Siraj” ko
na Khatar raha, na hazar raha, magar ek be-Khatari rahi

(Khaak : ashes; aatish-e-ishq: fire of love; dil-e-be-navaa-e-”Siraj” : desolate heart of Siraj; Khatar : fear; hazar : care; be-Khatari : fearlessness)

The fire of love has reduced the desolate heart of Siraj to ashes
Neither fear nor care exist, But a feeling of fearlessness remain.

Lyrcis: Siraj Aurangabadi
Album : Rung
Performed by: Munshi Raziuddin & Troupe

Cucurrucucú

Cucurrucucú, what a beautiful sound, seems as if like someone clearing her throat before singing some pleasing melody, Maybe a maynah perched above some branches in the tree, half hidden, singing contently without any worries or a damn to the world.

But sadly I cannot digress anymore, This post is not about any other gutteral bird calls or a treatise on nature, Its just a mere translation of the beautiful spanish song, sung by the Brazilian great Caetano Veloso. THis song is beautifully potrayed in the Spanish Movie Hable con ella(Talk to her)

Before I start, Let me Thank the google translator for helping me with the spanish words and Two great translators from Proz, Mercano and Paloma Maciel whose translations gave me the insight into the poems and help me translate it on my own.

Cucurrucucú, Paloma

Film: Hable Con Ella (Talk to her)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Singer: Caetano Veloso
Music : Tomás Méndez

Dicen que por las noches
no más se le iba en puro llorar;
dicen que no comía,
no más se le iba en puro tomar.

Juran que el mismo cielo
se estremecía al oír su llanto,
cómo sufrió por ella,
y hasta en su muerte la fue llamando.

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ya cantaba,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ya gemía,
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ya cantaba,
de pasión mortal moría.

Que una paloma triste
muy de mañana le va a cantar
a la casita sola
con sus puertitas de par en par;

juran que esa paloma
no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que todavía espera
a que regrese la desdichada.

Cucurrucucú paloma, cucurrucucú no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
¿qué van a saber de amores?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú.

Cucurrucucú, Dove

It is said, in the darkness of the nights
All he ever did was cry
They say, food he didn't touch and never did eat
All he did was drink to die

It is sworn that the sky also trembled
As it heard him so bitterly cry
How without her he had so long suffered
That he called out to her as death did pry

Ay ay ay ay yaa, he would so sing
Ay ay ay ay yaa, he would so cry
Ay, ay, ay, yaa, he would so laugh
and of a mortal passion he did die.

What a sad little dove it was,
so early in the morning sang to him
To the tiny little house, the lonely house,
with the doors open wide, little but prim.

It is sworn that this little dove
is no other than his very soul
And with bated eyes, he still waits
For her to come back and be together

Cucurrucucú, dove;
cucurrucucú, dont cry;
Never ever cry for a stone, dove
For what ever do they know of love?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú.

Crime and Punishment:

Disclaimer:
This is one blog which I cannot call my own.. though the story is mine.. it is inspired by a short story, which I had read before.. 'The meek one' by Dostoevsky and various others by Maupassant. The title is obviously stolen from Dostoevsky's famous novel. Dont know when they slept and I wokeup to dream their dream.. or is it that they never slept???

Crime:
My wife was hanging from the ceiling. Her face was distorted with the neck broken, eyes wide open with the sad, resigned look she always had.Her hands were clutched shut with the remains of the mangalsutra dangling dangerously from it.The saree was pulled a bit up and I rushed and tried to iron it a little and cover those beautiful, revealed thighs before the police came and saw her in that position, What a shame it would have been for my family if her thighs were so displayed it to the public.She was always like that, thoughtless, never caring for anything I liked.. yesterday the eggs she had prepared had pepper in it, having told her thousand times about me not liking pepper, she had put it just to irritate me, was sure of it.But she was beautiful... May be I had married her because of her gray eyes and auburn hair, or was it because of the sweet fruity smell of her hair or the jasmine scent of her body.

I dont know why I married her.... but now I was no longer married.Her corpse was in my bedroom... Her alta clad feet was still in front of my face. The feet were heavenly... so shapely.. She had the red circle at the centre of her feet, to ward of evil, and some more small dots sorrounding it, and her toenails.. those were also painted with the alta red. She may have done these for prolonging my life, yesterday had been savitri amavasya(Orissa's Karwa chauth) and she had fasted the whole day. I just clinged to those and had cried "on" her feet... Why not I loved her so much... I had told you so.. right? I was in love with her.. maybe thats why I married her. But why did she die, I was a good husband.. Wasnt I? I loved her.. I worshipped the ground she treaded on.. I never looked at another woman.. never said no to what ever she wanted.. then where did I fail her.. Did she not love me?

I decided she didnt love me then. All these fasting were just to fool the world and herself of her true feelings, I decided. I was sitting at the bed and her feet was touching my cheeks.. I gave it an angry push and tried imagining with whome was she cheating me with. I couldnt make up my mind,may be it was Ahmed or was it Santosh... I couldnot decide who it could be.. It could have been anyone in the world, she was sweet to everyone.. to me too. She had that winning smile that she sprinkled on everyone who ever had the fortune of being on her path. She could smile at that 80 year old man, in the dirty rags and unclean yellow teeth, the rabid dog which had an arm aputated and cooed at the neigbour's kid which could have won the ugliest kid contest if he had even enrolled. She was sweet and was the perfect hostess with all my friends(and also enemies) won over by her altruism. I would have been jealous with a vengence, save for one fact which I knew.. She loved me... I had told you so.. right?

She did love me.. Dont ask me how I came to know of it... I can feel it in my bones.. Maybe it was the way she smiled at me when I was hogging the food, the way when she kept looking at me when I was looking at the TV, maybe the way she held me tight before just going of to sleep, maybe the way she kissed me goodnight, kissed me good Morning, kissed me good day... kissed me every hour, every minute every second. We were so much in love but still she was dead.. instead of lying on the bed she was hanging from the ceiling, you may laugh at my desperation but what could I do it was 3 Am in the morning.. and i have been sitting with my dead wife's feet all over my face for an hour or so. Her feet was cold and I was missing her warmth, her smell, her.

I had to know why she died before I called the police.. I clambered around the closet looking for some clue to atleast let me know why? I scrambled across the room empteying every drawer, reading across her diaries.. her papers but found nothing. Then I found at that letter, where I least expected to find, on the table in the living room with the TV's remote acting as the paper weight. The letter was short...
A,
Dont make it tough for me.. I have to do this. I cant go on with you.. nor without you. Sometimes I wished you had a mistress.. sometimes I wished you u came home drunk and bruised me.. sometimes i wished u didnt love me the way u do... sometimes i wished I didnt love u the way I do.. sometimes I wish...
We have loved each other while ignoring each other.I wanted us to be a couple and not each other's habit.
But today when am expectiong, instead of being happy i feel sorry for the baby yet unborn, our unborn baby.
Will we be just a potemkin family, seemingly in love? while unknown to the world, the truth would be different.
I dread myself.
The food is in the fridge please heat it up and eat it.
Sorry for I killed your baby and your wife
Love
W

I looked around.. the feet was still alta clad, the feet was still cold, and I had tears in my eyes. I kissed her feet, my tears wetting those pale feet. The red circle, that was supposed to wade the devil was distorted now with the devil's tears. I picked up the telephone and called the police.

Punishment:
The pundit was chattering something in sanskrit, and was demanding my utmost attention. How could I give my attention to the bald pundit when my love was sprawled across the floor and my heart still not distangled from her. My umblical chord still tied me to my wife and all the pundits hogwash just reminded me of the vaccum my wife's death had created. My sacred thread had changed their directions... from a householder, i had become a sanyasi and then a pariah whose wife was dead. She was clad in a new red saree, my relatives were admiring her beauty.. some old uncle contemplating of times when she had shown her face to him the first time, a moon clad in a veil, he reminisced. The moon was at my feet now.

They asked me to pour water in her mouth. I poured water in those lips, zombie like... Wanted to kiss those half shut pale lips.. but just poured the water.. Ganges.. some said. I didnt care, nor did she. She had some half smile smacked on her face.. may have heard my old granny thinking of getting me married to the village balle. Another victim, she may have thought and thus the smile. We were carrying her now.. four of my friends... i was given a lamp to carry and show the path to the dead.. to the dead or to the alive? I walked in the front leading the way... I walked fast trying to do away with the rituals..

The graveyard was in the corner of the city.. near some god forsaken railway line.. the line to maybe nowhere. They put her in the pyre so lovingly prepared by her husband and the pundit. We had arranged for sandalwood.. the pundit had looked shocked when i had asked if we can burn her along with the jasmine flowers. She smelled of jasmine not sandlewood, I reasoned. I was a hero there... the world reasoning that my love for my wife was just next to shahjahan... She was lying on the top of the pyre.. her auburn, fruity smelling hair shining in the sun. I was asked to stand up and a pot full of water was placed on my left shoulders and was asked to make an anticlockwise circle of the pyre, the pundit made a small hole in the pot while I started walking, the water wetting my back.. The receeding water were filling my heart with all the unspoken wails, unshed tears. I was all welled up but i couldnt create a scene.. my family name would be ruined. I was given a torch smelling of kerosene, and without looking back I lit the sandlewood pyre.

My wife, the one who smelled of jasmine, was burning in front of me. I had killed my wife with my indifference and then I had burnt her with my so called sense of duty.

The world had sympathised and empathised and had proclaimed they understood what I was going through. I smiled.. the smile of a senile man.. The world left, leaving me with my wife who was still burning. The smell of the burning flesh was repulsing.. but for me it was still the smell of jasmine. She, with her sweet temperament was not actually the burning type, so she burnt with a little help from me. I kept on poking at the fire, the passing breeze helped. It was actually romantic, me alone with my wife, in a dilapidated graveyard with a old rail line passing near by, the pleasant breeze and the cool sun, only my burning wife took the romance away.

She was all ashes now. I kept collecting her unburnt bones. I filled the silver urn with bones, with ashes, stones and burnt wood. The ash didnt smell of jasmine as I had expected.. I took the urn and went back home. I placed it on the TV stand and sat on the sofa. The TV was blaring but I kept looking at my wife's ashes, actually the urn. I wanted to be near my wife. I took the urn and held it as I saw the news. I was missing my wife's touch. I remembered when we used to watch movies, with ourselves entwined. She was right, she was my habit, but didnt she understand that i didnt look at her but I wanted her to be near me, so that I could hear her breath, feel her sighs on my trembling hairs, bathe in her smell, now when her urn didnt provide that warmth and all I could do was cling to her memories.

The police found my body, two days after, hung from the ceiling, all covered with my wife's ashes.
Their report said, I smelled of jasmine.

That familiar face:

I hoped it was her. It looked like her.. How could I be even sure... It was long time to the day that I had seen her for the last time. Actually didnt even saw her then ... just saw someone who pretended to be her but it wasnt her.It could not have been her... the lady I was saying goodbye to, wasnt smiling, she just looked like a dark shadow of the lady I knew and maybe, at sometime, liked. Coming back, some 20 years from the past, to the same city where I had met her last, Bhubanswar, hadnt changed at all but I think I had and maybe, so had she.

I kept on staring at her from a distance... a eye on her and an eye on the date of mfg of some biscuits which I had no intention of buying. She was buying some grocery items... butter,flour and cereals, oil, which by the way was Dhara ... i smiled ... it had to be her. I still had not thought if I should go ahead.. and talk to her.. I didnt know what I would say, what could I say?? Things that had needed to be spoken had remained silent... it was loud for all to hear but it had remain silent. I still carried those moments with me... the puchkaas(paanipuri) near RDWomen's college, the walk along the desolate roads in Saheed nagar... the ride on the pedalboat in Nicco park, where only I had pedalled and she had enjoyed sitting like some rani and not helping at all. The memories made me smile... I still could see both of us fighting over the last piece of pastry that we had ordered and had shared, and the grimace that she displayed when i dived in and ate the puchkas that had kept piling on the plate when she was struggling to put even one in her mouth. Those half eaten puchkas were falling, the masala water was dripping from her mouth, the lips were looking so enchanting with the "dhaniya leaf" still struck to it. She was trying to wade her disheveled hair with the unused left hand, but they were still falling on her face, a few streaks of those hair were covering her pretty eyes from me. I couldnot but sigh then and think how wonderful she looked. Her eyes were watering with all the chillies that we had put in the puchkas and her nose was moist but she still had looked so beautiful... so very vulnerable... but still so very beautiful.

The lady I had been following had moved to the next section, buying some soaps cosmetics and all... I continued to stare from the magazine section... She seemed alone.. she seemed unhappy and I was so sadistically happy... I remembered when I was playing with her ear rings that day... they were bright and seemed to hang from her small ears, they jingled when she shook her head for something... her smile was so fascinating, so full of innocence. I remembered staring from a distance when she was blabbering and chattering like a monkey along her thousands "double chotied" friends near the school canteen, she looked so enchanting, with so many people around, with the distance between us, she was so very close to my heart. Today when she was so near, she looked so distant, so far away. My heart ached again, the familar feeling was rising again... the burning sensation and a pain that was so difficult to even tolerate, even then, even now.

I was still following her... same like I used to 20 years before... but then we used to walk separately but still togather but today we were standing so near yet we were so far away. I could relive those momemnts as if they had happended just yesterday... but I was always silent about it...Whome do I say... What do I say???? Even if I try how can I even imagine talking of that smile which had so luminated my life... about those eyes which so used to pierce my heart...about those silences which so used to fill me with fantasies... about those soft hands which are no longer in mine. It may not matter to anyone but me.. the difference of "Lucy's death" is only to me.

She stood there in the queue waiting for the counter boy to give her the bill, I still stared ahead unashamedly... She was wearing a pink salwaar today... a color which she had liked and me hated..I still remember when we had met in the park.. another place I always hated to meet her... and ironically had to meet her there for the first and last time. Then too she was clad in pink... had applied god knows what makeup but she was looking so pretty, she told me of the impending marriage and how she had agreed to it.. I have to marry someone, she said... and looked at me , I had no answer... I kept on talking crap about how we should follow our heart but I said nothing that she wanted to hear and may be nothing that I wanted to say. I just kept on going and she kept on listening and we parted with her saying, "I dont atleast dislike him ... maybe I will just grow to fall in love with him... ". I had no answer to the double negatives. I kept silent... I was shattered but still remained silent... I was so afraid of myself... I was so afraid of everything...I am so like Naim in Manto's Barren... I am just incapable of love... I am in love with love itself, but so incapable of falling in love, maybe just incapable of accepting being in love. I could again feel the burning pain shooting in my heart but I just stood silent.

She was going away... walking towards the parked car... She must have settled in bhubaneswar then, but hadnt she told me that she was to marry someone from Mumbai. I looked ahead... she walked towards the black Corolla, a small kid jumped on her... a smile flashed across her face. A bald man coaxed her from the drivers seat to make it quick... she gave a weak smile at him... put the things in the back seat,kept on hugging her son... climbed the front seat and drove away...I still stood standing at the supermarket. I looked ahead.. The man at the counter was asking me if I needed some help... I shook my heads and walked away from that place.