Lovingly, Never Yours | 2
2.
Two people deserve a special place in hell for their unforgivable creations: Ben Schneider, for The Night We Met, and Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, for Lag Ja Gale. They should be haunted by the unbearable pain their songs bring every time they’re played.
There is a time bomb ticking inside me. You are leaving in three months. My heart will blast after that.
Thus, I am frantically searching for coping mechanisms I haven’t yet exhausted. Apparently, Bombay Sapphire is a terrible choice. My confidantes are clueless about how to help. They listen, bewildered, as I break down the details of my precarious situation. They say they’re sorry but just as lost. Even God—the last resort—offers no relief. I have knelt down and begged God to make me indifferent to your existence, to set me free from this agony.
My heart flounders like a fish gasping on dry land. The cicadas around me have grown louder, as if trying to drown out my thoughts, but their efforts are in vain.
Rosemary's scent grows stronger near the mosques. On the night we met, we shared a deliberate kiss beside one. If the shaykh had caught even a whisper of our deed—two believers pressed against the mosque wall at night—he would have stuttered through his prayers, asking for forgiveness on our behalf.
Tell me, how do I stop myself from sharing every trifle with you? You are my first instinct, my preferred happiness. I rushed to the zero points, the farthest corners, booked another ticket, and another, thinking distance might separate me from your pull.
As I stood at the water’s edge, toes sinking into the sand, the tide nearly pulling me toward Pyu's land—I realized the futility of it all. Escape is impossible. I carry you within me. I carry you everywhere I go.
This sharp pang is intransmissible through language; no syllables can carry its sting. Even if they could, you are too reticent to receive it. Anyways, I do not wish to burden you with my existence, so I offer only the palatable phrases of longing, chosen with moderation.
In a tragedy, one has to depart first, and the other has to put up with the vacuum. O' my incandescent summer, how do I explain that I love you to the point of my own ruin?
No, I only want to tell you that it is impossible to imagine a life that excludes you. Life in a world where you exist, but unfairly far beyond my reach. Somewhere inaccessible, out of my sight. Where I cannot hold you. Where I cannot pull you into my lap, run my fingers through your ever-so beautiful, dense hair inside our little tent, and sing in the dark:
Lag ja gale, ki phir
ye haseen raat ho na ho,
shayad phir is janam mein
mulaqat ho na ho...
There is no better composition that fits the context.
If only you allowed me, I would have built cathedrals just to carve your face into the stained glass.
Would have set sail on a ship with no destination, only the certainty that wherever the horizon ended, you would be there.
Bards would have sung our tale with voices quivering, and believing it a talisman against squalls, sailors would have traced it into the salt of their skin.
And still, if you asked for my heart, for once, I would place it in your hands—
beating, breaking, yet
Lovingly,
Never yours.