उपान्त्य - You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life" by Rebecca Hazelton

 उपान्त्य (Penultimate) - मेरे अंत से ठीक पहले वाला प्यार हो तुम … 

by Rebecca Hazelton

मुझे बिताने हैं कई,

पर नहीं ‘सारे’ साल तुम्हारे साथ। 

जब ठसक के मैं बोलूँ कि, आँखें हरी हैं तुम्हारी। 

वो आँखें जो स्लेटी के अलावा कभी कुछ रही ही नहीं। 

जब सेक्स इतना मुकम्मल हो, कि नीयत ही ना भरे। 

पर उतना बेहतरीन नहीं जितना हमारे घर के बग़ल के घर की दीवारों से छन के आती आवाज़ों में होता है। 

जब छोटी छोटी चीज़ों में प्यार शुमार होगा। 

जैसे बिस्तर से मेरा गीला तौलिया उठा लेना, 

और फिर एक दिन उठाना बंद कर देना, हमेशा के लिए। 

जब मैं उतना अच्छा ना लगूँ, 

जितना मैं लगता था तुम्हें, तुमसे मिलने से पहले तक। 

और भरोसा जो पहले मुझमें था बेइंतहाँ,

अब मेरे बेतरतीब गिरते बालों पर भी ना हो। 

जब तुम मेरे लिये मेरी मनपसंद वाईन लेके आओगी,

और फिर टोकोगी भी, कि कितना पीने लगे हो तुम। 

उस उपान्त्य में भी कुछ तो है, 

मुझे वहीं उसी जगह थामे हुए है। 

शायद, तुम्हारी, भूरी आँखें ? 

-x-

"You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life" 

by Rebecca Hazelton

I want to spend a lot but not all of my years with you.

I will remember your eyes as green when they were gray.

Sex will be good but next door's will sound better.

There will be small things. I will pick up your damp towel from the bed, and then I won't.

I won't be as hot as I was when I wasn't yours

and your hairline now so untrustworthy.

You will bring me wine and notice how much I drink.

But there's something holding me here, for now,

Like your eyes, which I suppose are brown, after all.

—

(I took extreme liberty to translate in Hindi, few excerpts from the captioned poem as it felt very intriguing and different. Any translation loss is purely due to my lack of skill and craft) 

Love, that’s taken for granted!

Love that’s taken for granted. 
Does not die an immediate, clean death. 
It persists, chokes, gasps and hopes. 
Staring into the dark, searching for a stray ray,
That might show the way through the chasm. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Does not realise that sometimes a star-less gap in the night sky;
Is because of a blackhole. 
That exists in stealth-mode. 
Not letting any shred of goodness get past it. 
Not even of hope. Or destiny. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Forgets that once there were signs and symptoms,
Long before there was apathy and neglect. 
Or excuses and de-prioritisation. 
Long before there were arguments that deserved a discussion. 
And silences that deserved the cushion of companionship. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Has nowhere to go. 
Except inwards. 
And scratch and burn and cut and bruise. 
As it digs deep. 
But eventually rest, with rest of the regrets. 
And emerge never again. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Is the soil on which will grow. 
Tomorrow!

Time & Value

As a kid growing in 90s, one of the most inseparable part of our schooling was this subject on ‘Moral Science’ which while felt unnecessary then but today feels like the most important ingredient of overall personal growth and character building. Spread across several years, it touched upon some of the key facets of a rewarding life, internally and externally. One of them was Time & Value.

 

What the chapter broadly said could be summarized as – “However busy we are, we always end up finding time for things or people we value”. Value here is the operative word and not love or affection or even desire, which is so profound all these years later when I think about it. People who I truly value; my default setting just embraces them in a capsule where they have an almost unlimited access to my time. Yes I do have my zones that require long spells of concentrated focus on other things such as work or well-being or even vocations but when the call is placed by these people on me, I usually just clear out all the bandwidth intuitively and re-divert my attention back to them. Sometimes this backfires badly but rarely has it not gone a step ahead towards making the relationships stronger and more loving. 

 

Why this line of thought now? Because due to something imperceptible lately, I realized that while this is a shade that’s been ingrained into my subconscious for decades, there are times when either I trip on it or I get extremely uncomfortable if someone else errs on it, mostly knowingly. Somehow, over decades, the tacit value of relationships has gone down substantially and there is a sense of shallowness that has crept-in the very way people engage with each other. Somehow it has become acceptable to not find time for relationships and still call them being valued. This is an anti-thesis to the entire logic of how it should be in a well-meaning world. In a well-meaning world, we attempt to understand people by investing in them and then bet long term on them. The only logical explanation of this aberration could be the fact that maybe people are no longer sure whether if the aforementioned relationship is for keeps or not. Maybe they do not have the concept of ‘leap of faith’ anymore wherein at times we do not have the full journey mapped ahead of us and still choose to pursue that path because as Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena ji said – “लीक पर वो चलें जिनके चरण दुर्बल और हारे हैं; हमें जो हमारी यात्रा से बनें, ऐसे अनिर्मित पंथ प्यारे हैं”. And in my opinion this quest is the most wonderful thing about the journey. What fun in knowing everything about someone before travelling together? Some journeys are more about the road than the destination. 

 

Nevertheless, circling back to the original chain of thought, however busy one is, it is important to find time for those who we value. Life is all about the choices we make and our people; we should choose carefully and then keep choosing them every single day.

इस रात की सुबह नहीं …

इस रात की सुबह नहीं,
इसमें कोई शुबह नहीं,
मैं ढूँढता हूँ उस मुक़ाम को,
जिसमें कोई गिरह नहीं,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

सूरज है मध्यम तेज आज,
पवन है सुप्त सेज आज,
रास्ते भी हैं भरे,
देव पीड़ा को हरें,
क्रांति की है निशब्द आहट,
पर मुझे कोई खबर नहीं,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

मैं हूँ रश्मि पर सवार,
हर दिक् में कर रहा स्वछंद विहार,
है मन ये मेरा सारथी,
हृदय विनम्र प्रार्थी,
ना रोक है ना टोक है,
ना भय है ना किंचित् शोक है,
ना ग़लत है ना कुछ सही,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

मैं स्वेद रक्त से चूर हूँ,
विश्वास से भरपूर हूँ,
भुजा में अतुल्य दंभ है,
भृकुटि में ना कोई प्रतिष्टम्भ है,
ये महारण का है पाञ्चजन्य,
कोई व्यक्तिगत आह्वान नहीं,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

इस रात की सुबह नहीं  …

—

#IcarusSays