In Memory of Begum Akhtar
(d. 30 October 1974)
1
Your d**h in every paper,
boxed in the black and white
of photographs, obituaries,
the sky warm, blue, ordinary,
no hint of calamity,
no room for sobs,
even between the lines.
I wish to talk of the end of the world.
2
Do your fingers still scale the hungry
Bhairavi, or simply the muddy shroud?
Ghazal, that d**h-sustaining widow,
sobs in dingy archives, hooked to you.
She wears her grief, a moon-soaked white,
corners the sky into disbelief.
Ghazal, that d**h-sustaining widow,
You've finally polished catastrophe,
the note you seasoned with decades
of Ghalib, Mir, Faiz:
I innovate on a note-less raga.
3
Exiling you to cold mud,
your coffin, stupid and white,
astounds by its ignorance.
It wears its blank pride,
defleshing the nomad's echo.
I follow you to the earth's claw,
shouldering time's shadow.
This is history's bitter arrogance,
this moment of the bone's freedom.
4
One cannot cross-examine the dead,
but I've taken the circumstantial evidence,
your records, pictures, tapes,
and offered a careless testimony.
I wish to summon you in defence,
but the grave's damp and cold, now when
Malhar longs to stitch the rain,
wrap you in its notes: you elude
completely. The rain doesn't speak,
and life, once again, closes in,
rea**erting this earth where the air
meets in a season of grief.
(for Saleem Kidwai)