baat karnī mujhe mushkil kabhī aisī to na thī
jaisī ab hai tirī mahfil kabhī aisī to na thī
le gayā chhīn ke kaun aaj tirā sabr o qarār
be-qarārī tujhe ai dil kabhī aisī to na thī
us kī āñkhoñ ne ḳhudā jaane kiyā kyā jaadū
ki tabī.at mirī maa.il kabhī aisī to na thī
chashm-e-qātil mirī dushman thī hamesha lekin
jaisī ab ho ga.ī qātil kabhī aisī to na thī
- Bahadur Shah Zafar
Chapter 3 (1)
Abraham Cowley famously says--
A mighty pain to love it is,
and ‘tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all the pains, the greatest pain,
is to love, but love in vain.
Unrequited love must revel in a very particular brand of masochism, she mused, as all the world faded in her eyes save the man who stood on the stage surrounded in the halo of golden light. As the gravel of his voice caressed each of Faraz’s words and whispered them conspirationally into her ears, she shivered, feeling traitorous goosebumps erupt along the expanse of her skin. A scorching, vibrating thrill coursed through her frame as she listened on with the eagerness of one who is wild for the caress of love. Each time he paused for breath, her heart paused its rhythm in tandem with his voice, and then violently beat inside its cage when he resumed. Except this time that he paused, he never resumed. And her heart ached in protest.
When silence stretched into neverending moments, she blinked in confusion, realizing that Arnav was distracted. He was purposefully not moving on to the next verse, and knowing the ghazal full well by heart, she was certain that there were several more left to it. Why wouldn’t he continue?
It was then that she followed the direction of his gaze, and her eyes fell upon the source of his distraction. She looked around herself and found all eyes riveted upon the girl who stood at the door under the soft light of the bulb that was lit above the entrance. Apparently, it must have been a noisy entry, noisy enough to have captured the attention of the entire hall, but Payal had been the only one to have failed to notice. The girl was strikingly, achingly beautiful, with large, almond shaped, kohl-rimmed eyes that were trained fixedly in the direction of the stage.
The stage.
Payal tore her gaze away from the beauty towards the beholder, who seemed enconsed in a similar trance, his gaze meshed inextricably with his intruder’s. In that moment, the two of them seemed to be lost in a distant world of their own, to the exclusion of all others. Love does not take kindly to exclusion, and unrequited love is cursed to be constantly haunted by paranoia. In a moment of inexplicable panic, Payal found herself reaching towards her cellphone and flashing its torchlight in the direction of the doorway. Raising her other hand, she snapped her long, slender fingers together, meaning full well to break whatever spell it was that mystically bound two gazes to one another.
*
It was as if someone snapped her out of a dream. With a startle, Khushi broke her gaze away from the stage and towards the harsh glow of white light that beckoned her from somewhere to her left. A click of fingers soon echoed through the silence of the hall, and it was then that her eyes zeroed in upon the sillhouette of a sophisticatedly attired woman who was gesticulating at her to follow the direction of the light. When her eyes adjusted better to the darkness, she noticed that the woman was fairly young and very beautiful, and wore a warm, graceful smile on her lips.
That was all the cue Khushi needed. With a frantically beating heart and a dazed mind, she hurriedly lifted one foot forward towards the reprieve of darkness, well aware of the weight of a pair of eyes that continued to be trained upon her from a distance. The heat of his gaze scorched her, the eerie familiarity of him disconcerted her, and his voice continued to ring inside her ears even in a fertile silence of awareness. Admonishing her raipdly beating heart to get a grip over its impudent rhythm, she had taken but one hasty step forward, when the delicate silver anklet that adorned her foot decided to come undone and used the kick of her step to fling itself forward in the air and upon the marbled floor of the hall leaving a noisy protest of tinkling ghungroos in its wake.
Alarmed and mortified, she swooped down and picked it up, grasping it tightly within the confines of her clenched fist. It appeared as if the universe had conspired to have her on the spot that day, every which way. Not lifting her embarrased gaze to meet anyone else, Khushi slipped into the darkness towards where Payal was seated.
Perhaps, if she had turned to look at the stage just one more time, she might have seen the visible disappointment that flashed across Arnav’s face in that one defining moment when his eyes finally lost sight of her.
*
“I truly apologize for the disruption,” Khushi whispered to her savior. “It was very kind of you to guide me to this seat. It’s so dark in here that I-”
“Hush, no need for apologies,” Payal silenced her with a kind smile. “You could call it my selfish desire to have the performance resumed. I am bartering your rescue for his voice, for he seems to have lost it ever since you stepped in.”
A faint tint of red splashed across Khushi’s cheeks, after which both women fell silent and refocused their attention towards the stage.
Arnav continued to the next verse, except this time, there was something subtly different about his delivery. Not just that he looked a little absent and bewildered, but even the pace of his recitation had quickened - as if he was in a hurry to finish it off. As if suddenly, the words he had viewed previously with detachment now held to them a distinct meaning that he dreaded to pause and acknowledge. As if previously innocuous verses now sounded to him as if they were meant to be whispered in dedication, in worshipping adulation, in loving veneration. As if but for caution, they would come alive and consume him, mock him for being unworthy of their association, chastize him for the hypocrisy of his lips, the dualty of his mind.
The hall erupted into applause when he finished, most in the crowd having found nothing amiss at all in this latter half of his performace. They remained enchanted by the enigma of his voice and the allure of his persona, too dazed to have noticed any inflection in his speech. Payal clapped her hands softly with the rest of the crowd. If she had discerned something peculiar, she refused to acknowledge it, or atleast didn’t allow her misgivings to show upon her face.
The lights came back on in the hall, and Arnav stepped off the stage and seemed to disappear thereafter. Payal turned her head to look at Khushi.
“So, what’s your name?”
Khushi didn’t realize her eyes had been following him as he made his way through the tables before a voice snapped her out, once again, from her disconcerting fixation with a complete stranger.
“Yes? Oh, it’s Khushi. Khushi Ayeza Khan Gupta.”
Payal’s eyebrows flew up a little at that. Khushi laughed, all too familiar with the reaction.
“I get that reaction very often to my name.”
“No I’m sorry, it’s incredibly beautiful. Just a little..”
“Dramatic? I know. I get that very often too. What’s yours?”
“Payal Sengupta. Just that. Bland and ordinary.”
“Not at all, it’s very beautiful. Thank you once again for your kindness. I should be looking for an empty table now that the lights are on.”
“What did I tell you, your gratitude is misplaced,” Payal shushed her once again. “You’ve come alone, right? Why don’t you join us at this table?”
Khushi shook her head. “No, I am actually with a friend here, she’s looking for a parking space for our car downstairs. We got horribly late what with the dreadful peak hour traffic, so she insisted that I come up first and save us seats. This place is really packed, I wasn’t expecting these many people to be here. It’s a wonder how you have even this one seat unclaimed at your table.”
“Actually,” Payal smiled, “it isn’t really unclaimed. The man who just stepped off the stage had been sitting here. It’s his seat. He was up on stage so I called you to sit here for the while.”
Khushi looked stricken at that revelation. “Oh. I didn’t- I mean, I would’ve never - do you know him?”
How was that important, she thought wryly to herself even as the question left her lips. What she needed to do was to vacate his seat as fast as possible, instead of striking up a conversation on his acquaintance with this kind woman.
Let alone being perturbed, Payal seemed to welcome her curiosity. “Yes, he is my friend. I mean, our friend,” she corrected herself and gestured towards the other two men at the table who had not yet made their introductions. “By the way, this is Nilesh Kapoor or NK as we call him, who performed earlier tonight before you came. In fact, he is the reason why all of us are here in the first place. And this is Aakash.”
Khushi smiled politely at the two seemingly friendly faces that smiled back at her. Without forgetting the urgency of her circumstances, she turned once again towards Payal, “I should get going now. I really do owe an apology to your friend. First, I interrupted his performance in the most embarrassing fashion possible, and now I’ve managed to usurp his seat without his permission. Please apologize to him on my behalf when he comes, I am truly mortified.”
Payal’s eyes lifted from Khushi’s face to somewhere above and behind her. Before Khushi could turn her head around and follow the trajectory of Payal’s gaze, she felt the shadow of a presence behind her. Payal spoke, without looking at her -
“Well,why don’t you say it yourself, he is standing right behind you.”
*
“Arnav, meet Khushi Ayeza Khan Gupta. And Khushi, this is Arnav Singh Raizada. I’ll let you both know that just this one line of introduction has exhausted my tongue.”
Khushi hastened to her feet and spun around. The grip of her fist slackened and the anklet slipped out from its clutches and fell upon the floor. She didn’t seem to notice, but his eyes followed the anklet’s journey to a spot beside her feet, then leisurely came back to rest on her face. Up close, the heat of his gaze was as overwhelming as it was intoxicating. And up close, the effect of her beauty was as disarming as it was devastating. They stood facing one another, closer than they had ever been and yet much farther than they were destined to be, finding themselves yet again bound in silent communion and a wordless dance of interwoven gazes.
*
Part 2 of Chapter 3 to follow very soon :)
This story is going to have a lot of poetry woven into it. While I may not put up translations to each sher that I quote within the chapter itself, I would hate for anyone genuinely interested to know their meaning and understand their depth to feel excluded by reason of a language barrier. Please feel free to ask me the meaning of any word or any verse and I will try my best to shed light upon it to the best of my humble abilities. Also, as must be obvious from my comments on this thread, I wholeheartedly welcome all poetry discussions and contributions in whatever language that poetry has managed to captivate your imagination :) Nothing would delight me more than to have this thread as a celebration of my favorite art form!
Edited by Whats-in-a-name - 4 years ago
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