Love has a way of happening

(My poem published in Focus on Indian Writing in English in Muse India 35. Jan-Feb 2011.)


[Read some other poems:Tejimolā Forever; Mother Goddess Kamakhya; Manufacturing Memories; For Nilikesh da, Shot Dead; End of Ennui; From Exile (1); After This Sky; Tryst; Would I Be A Poet Still; elegaic; A History of Violence, Fearless, The Rains Come from Behind the Curtains, Love has a way of happening]


Love has a way of happening at the most unlikely places.
For Rajen ata and Banalata it happened on a wooden bridge 
Across the crazed Pagladia during turbulent times 
Over handfuls of sanasur sold outside school
Shared in silence from a soggy piece of newspaper
That perhaps brought news of anti-immigrant riots.
From where they sat, they could not hear
Annunciations made in new centres of power
The din of displaced memories across far away borders
Birth pangs of twin states, breaking of a sub-continent.
Bonds of race, language, native land were nothing
Before the brush of shy fingers against soft hands.

Love has a way of ending in the most likely ways.
For Rajen ata and Banalata it ended 
When indigenous livelihoods and cultural superiority clashed
Refugees are not to be trusted, his father said
Recounting how they had lost their all
To wily immigrants who exchanged a bag of salt for 10 acres
‘We will not concede another inch of our land’.
Her migrant father said these natives live
On culture borrowed from us 
We have lost our homeland, our dignity remains.
An individual is slave to history
So they left their love at that.


***
Love has a way of happening in the most unlikely times.
For Dulu mama and Shipra it happened amidst
The most troubled circumstances, during volatile days
When the uneasy camaraderie of prolonged coexistence
Between communities was broken by a confused logic 
Of entitlements, a climate of coercion.
He could not tear himself away from 
Either the romance of jingoism or the love 
That lingered from a childhood spent 
Swimming together, cycling to school, climbing trees, 
Stealing robab tenga from his father’s backyard
Peeling the fruit, popping into her mother’s kitchen for mustard oil
And green chillies, mixing it all and feeding each other 
In the shade of the bakul tree.

Love has a way of enduring despite political turmoil.
For Dulu mama and Shipra it endured despite his leanings
Towards an ideology of hate, clothed in a glamorous pat xaj 
Of nationalistic fervour, a greater love. It takes a while
To remove the veil from the face of evil
But love finds its way back home. They pulled him back,
The years of togetherness, even though the glamour wore off
From ultra-nationalism and youthful love.
His mother would not take her in – it was the climate –
They eloped, had children and reunited with the family.
A new politics was born.

***


Love has a way of happening quite naturally.
For Sumon and me it happened on the telephone
Over conversations that veered dangerously close 
To intellectual discourse about intertwining histories, 
Divisive politics and reshaped identities.
History no longer had a hold on us, we need not forfeit
Like Rajen ata and Banalata. Our politics wasn’t muddled, 
We did not vacillate like Dulu mama and Shipra. 
Lost love, redefined politics came to fruition 
In a confident generation, globalised as far as suited us
Localised as much as was enough
To hold on to our ethnic identities over smoking cups
Of cappuccino and latte, feeding on pizzas
While in the background played
Rabindra Sangeet and Bihu songs.

***

[Notes: ata: grandfather; sanasur: mixed savouries; mama: maternal uncle; pat xaj: silk dress of Assamese women; Rabindra Sangeet: songs of Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali treasure; Bihu: the cultural marker of Assamese identity.]