Page 13 - Musings 2020

That Library Bookmark of 1971
[ Dedicated to everyone back in the ’70s. ]
Dr. Rupam Goswami

December 5, 1971.
Longewala, Rajasthan, India.
O’ Moon of the distant East,
I can hear not your silent complaints!
A week since your last letter and
I can only long more of your bangles’ clinks!

You must know.
I can rhyme in Urdu now!
( Thanks to a bunker mate )
Your songs ring in my ears…
the ones you sang
at your cousin’s wedding
on that wintry night…
The December fog veiled the stars
or was it the January fervour?

There’s cruelty all around, Fatima!
I wish they simply end now!
Mothers and wives bleed,
and houses burnt to ash.
Fear is a currency
and I see no humanity.
Alas! I can fire just one gun!
The soil call for a final fight
which I shall not deny
for more than the war we fight,
it is a question of acting right!

You must weep not, Fatima.
I shall be beside you by the summers.
Together shall we recite in Urdu
from the book that had first bound us…
that book I had stolen from our college library.
In my bunker, I have it still.
It carries that ugly but sweet bookmark
On the withered page, sixty-seven,
where rests our favourite lines:
“The world shall die one morning,
and we shall still be together!”

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