My heart is wrung with iron claws which speak of a hellish cold, I can’t breathe, I can’t move, I can’t think.
Oh what am I to do? The one soul I yearned to know has departed from the earth.
What should I call you, you dreamer of heavens, you chronicler of woes intemperate, you lover par excellence of humanity. Should I call you Suraiah, Madavikkutty, or Kamala Das?
Oh what does it matter now?
I never got to meet you, but did I know of any one more close to my heart?
I dreamed of being near you, sitting at your feet, looking at that beautiful and serene face, those dark and wonderful eyes….
Hearing that soft and childish voice speaking of the most inane of things,
And saying ‘yes mother’ whenever there was a pause.
I didn’t ever come did I? Even criminals came and sat at your feet. You touched them with your heart and fingers; they were like lambs before you.
You said:
I don’t think these boys raped and murdered any one, how could they do that, when I touch them it’s like I am touching my own children. They are so helpless.
How could you know anything about the world, you sweet dear, and how could you not know?
Oh how beautiful you really were.
But you thought you were not beautiful didn’t you, you silliest of all beings? You thought yourself dark and ungainly once, didn’t you, you timeless romantic?
Was there anyone more beautiful than you? Was there any being more charming than you?
You were perfect. No woman can be more beautiful than you.
Yours was a beauty otherworldly, yours was a beauty of soul, thou visitor of the heaven worlds.
What did they tell you when you went to those places in your dream states?
Did they chide you, did they make you cry, and did they call you graceless?
They wouldn’t have dared, not with me as your son.
Now when you go, go past them, go into the realm of love and peace that you couldn’t find here.
Go past HER that is eternal to HIM that is unbounded love. I know you were with him till that curious childishness took over you and brought you here.
You searched among our stupid systems to find true love, didn’t you? Oh dear, why did you not look inside, but you could not do that, could you, you were the nature itself.
How I riled against you for being inconstant in your choices, but nature can’t be constant can it?
Oh, thou eternal child, why did you come to visit us, we did not deserve your beauty, kindness and genius. We live here by cutting each other’s throats, raping each other’s mentally and physically, not thinking of love, not learning of love, thou lover infinite, why did you deign to be called human and to live amongst us,
You could make a tin drum sing like a lark, you could weave a web of mystery with the most prosaic of words. At your single touch words stood up and spoke in tones that we hear only in rarest of dreams.
You were Nonpareil, Undisputed……..
You were the real mistress of art. You could write like a goddess and then say,
I am a poor woman and I am living off my paintings now.
How it made me smile and to hear you say so…..
Only you could say it with candor that:
Aren’t we all liars, all that we write is a lie. The more beautiful the lies are, the more delighted we become.
You wondered: Why are these children so timid? Imagine you are writing the best literature ever, and it will be so. You know, I read pulp magazines, the serial stories they write, oh how beautifully they use words!
You divine enchantress, you mother literature, would there be any authority higher than you to say it.
Oh the beautiful lies that you wrote! There was never such as you in my language, even the greatest acknowledge that, yet none gave you any accolades. We are a heartless bunch; we don’t ever give credit to where it is due.
May be you felt it too at the end, maybe it was very tangible, maybe that’s why you left us.
In fright we ran to you and begged you:
Please don’t desert us; we love you, every one of us.
You told us that you would be back. Yes you are back now, in a shroud and in the chillness of death, you are back, in our midst, in our memories about the few words that you ever wrote, may be you would stay now forever,
And bless this most miserable of all people.
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