Eyes

         Peering within my own tumultuous mind, a simpleton maze, perhaps a child’s play, I find pastures of myriad colours.  The hues that look monotonous and monolithic are coloured in mysterious ways, of love, of hatred, of dismay, of solidarity, of such thoughts that reflect my benevolence and promiscuity in the same tone…

I look back to those tones and think, like others, like inordinate selves around me, those colours reflect something grotesque, but art is grotesque. Yes! I am art, a work of a divine construct but of infinitesimally less abilities. I spurt from the underbelly of a struggle to shine bright, to feel ecstasy, yet crash in the abyss of conventions and contemporaries. I am different; I am the hackneyed difference that you will never perceive. Yes! I am lecherous, I am respectable, I am egoistic and proud, I am forgiving and humble. Can you see the shades? No! You can’t. I can’t find the shades myself.

I stare down my throat and I see something torn, something vitiated and undulated. Not my soul, could be my resolve, could be what you call as loyalty. My heart, as they call it, goes many ways, trapped in an abstruse maelstrom, it remains in flux, falling prey to follies. It beats for you, but it beats when you are not there, it beats when I do not want you, it even beats when you walk away. So is it loyal? I don’t know, I cannot say. I don’t utter the words of love, I don’t sing them well, but my heart beats rhythmically, in strange ways it beats, mostly for you, but yes, it always beats for me. Your eyes do not arouse me, your voice does. Sometimes your eyes do too. But when you touch me, I see reality, my heart beat screams, and it arouses me, always. But my heart beats without you too. I am not loyal, but my heart beats for you a lot.

Last night, when you touched me softly, I could not feel your finger. I felt something press against my skin, like a gale blowing violently into my face. I could not understand that touch. Did I want someone else to touch me? But my heart did beat aloud once. It settled down when I spoke to you, in my thoughts, as always. Do you think it beat for you? All the selves floating around me, in my sky, that blue, blue sky, seem so faceless. Which one are you? I know I am not the same as you touched last night, may be slightly different, may be a bit stronger, a bit more loyal. Yes, that is I, another me residing in your mind, you touched that me last night, but my heart beat when you touched that me. Perhaps, I am that me in your mind, and this me too, who woke up here. But then, my heart beats otherwise too. I choose not the think, those floating eyes in my sky, like two terns flying south, make my heart beat. I call out one by your name, both look back. But both are not you! Did I call out the right name? I do not know what is that named I called out, but they both looked at me, with a smile. Yes! Two pairs of smiling eyes, different, yet they answer to the same name. May be, my heart beats for that name, a name I do not remember, yet I call out whenever I see those eyes flying south. But my heart beats for a voice too, not the voice that touched my last night, yet it replies to me when I call out your name. Who are you, whose name I always call out?

The sun has set in my sky. It is still bright outside, bright enough to find minute thoughts streaming down to the tip of my fingers while I write your name on a dusty, parched mind. I saw another pair of eyes, bright glassy eyes in my sky irradiated by a dusky moon. They did not answer to your name, but kept smiling at me, kept pushing at my systolic heart. They left awhile later, smiling as ever, a heart not beating that hard, but I felt it was not meant to beat, because it would beat only for you, yet those eyes felt warm.

I stared down my throat again; there were remnants of unknown eyes, and echoes of strange voices. My heart is loyal, it beats for vestiges I cannot remember, eyes I cannot see flying south in my blue sky. There is a new tern flying in my sky, it also smiles back when I call out your name. I do not know whose name is that. My heart is pounding today. I will always remember your name, under blue skies, under orange ones, sometimes under starry ones too. There is a new tern flying south, a happy tern. I do not know if the other terns are still happy. Are you happy?

Untitled

Perhaps it was the anguish in the blood of those who lost their minds to betrayal or ecstasy, or merely the ultimate wish to die, hidden in the garb of insanity, creating private hospices in their own minds. Whatever be the reason, Rajjo never seemed to qualify as the common insane kept away from the world in the murky depths of a women’s asylum.

I always wondered how mad men and women saw the world. Anyone could have figured it out for the inmates, but not for Rajjo. She never differentiated normal from insane, weird from commonplace. All she did was to stray away in the depths of oblivion, may be stars, or newer moons floating in the cosmos of her officially deranged mind. But, was she mad? I guess she had some story to her, like everyone else. For example, there was a woman in her 50s who was dumped here a few years ago. She tried to burn her family members alive. I wonder what could be the circumstances under which she was driven to do something like that. And then there was another, a beautiful and young woman, who tried to kill herself repeatedly. People say she was driven to madness by her in-laws. All of the inmates had a story to validate their present condition. But, what about Rajjo, do they know anything? All they know is that on a warm evening she was found sitting at the asylum’s gate wearing nothing but a flimsy kurta and a pajama.

It was the year 1946, a cold winter somewhere in the Punjab district. India had still not been divided then, the Muslims, the Hindus, and the Sikhs were still living in some sort of assumed harmony, and Rawalpindi was still a small city. It was Rawalpindi where Rajjo lived. We know that because she told the authorities of the asylum herself. Yes! She could talk, make coherent statements, and answer questions as they required to be answered. Then, what was wrong with her? Why was she there?

The story behind Rajjo was small and stark. Her story was similar to that of a million others who got severed at the heart by the Radcliffe Line. But that wasn’t the whole story. Rajjo came from an impoverished Muslim family living in the outskirts of Rawalpindi. A family of only daughters was not a boon to a poor barber in the village. Rajjo was the youngest of all, but not the most loved one. In fact love was inexistent in that family. All they could serve every night over supper was some cold dismay heated to palatable tolerance. Rajjo was beautiful with a dusky, unblemished skin, glossy lips, but with dried up cheeks and a sweaty worried forehead. She cared for her overworked father and her sisters who were to be married off in respectable families. It, however, did not go as planned. She got married off to a rich man in return of some favours. This man was old with three sons and enough assets to feed an entire village, a part of which went to Rajjo’s father too. But Rajjo did not complain. She did not complain when she was reduced to an old mop that lapped up every refuse, or when she was stripped naked by every eye that turned to her in that house. It was not a family, but a barn yard where a lone sheep is left to a multitude of rams waiting to be ravished. She took it all, occasionally calling out to Allah for either ending her or ending her, but that end never came.

Once lying on a hard bed out in the yard, she felt something warn on her neck. When she turned her head she was shocked pale to see one of the sons staring at her. He gave a smirk and walked away. She was not used to that. It was fine when she caught the middle aged men staring at her bosom, and not shying away even when she noticed. But they never came so close before. She could feel it was because the old man was dying and she feared the aftermath of his death. She did not have to wait long to discover the horrors. Her husband died leaving her like a road kill to the vulture like sons. Turn by turn the three raped her, dousing her screams in the grave silence of the night. She stopped screaming later. Even the servant took his chances with her breasts or her hips. She kept quiet because she had a young daughter to bring up and out of the hell she was in, she could not afford insanity. Independence from the British raj was imminent, but that did nothing assuage her personal sufferings, the three sons of the deceased old man, Rajjo and her infant daughter had a last momentous moment in life. In the chaos of the partition when violence occurred outside, some of it occurred inside too. The three sons went at her for the last time, to please themselves, while she fed her daughter.  They were drunk in lust when one of them slapped the child off her breast onto the floor bursting its head. The others pinned her down and started chewing onto the frail remnants of her soul while she witnessed her child bleed. She was stunned to quietude, while the three men ingested her body. Suddenly she came back to her senses and banged a heavy charcoal iron-press onto one of the son’s head. Warm blood splashed everywhere.  She then ran into the kitchen and fetched a butcher’s knife and cut off the phallus of one and the throat of another. Together with her daughter, they all bled to death, and she bled to liberation.

It was the independence of Pakistan and India. She gained her independence too, but like many others, paid a price for it. She did not go mad with that incidence. She just wanted to leave the normalcy of the normal world she was living in. That was her madness.