An evening of desire and passion compelled her mortal birth,
Only those responsible chose to retire from the crudeness of life thereafter,
Abandoning her to the mighty Ganges, they rode into the infinite.
Like an aristocrat of immortality, she had shown onto the shore,
With a squeaky little cry, a cheeky little grin, with impish perseverance,
She seemed to have come to raid mother earth from years of endless grief.
Entangled in the moment, emotions ebbed in the flow of that primitive arrogance,
Her tryst with life thus began; indecisive, imbecile like any other.
Protagonist of her own mysterious play, in the world with wounds,
And grief with intermittent rays of hope amidst the sea of sorrows.
In walked a hope, with a seemingly resistant force from the unknowable.
She bore the reckoning of all the mighty memories of mother Earth,
Of turbulence and triumph, of wars and lands, of pen and the sword.
A treasurer of all of humanity’s dreams, to unison with the un-raised Sun,
She owned the alarming incoherence of the world around with a will;
Strong as that of a seasoned hunter itching to get to the prey
Like fish to water, she took to earth — like a sculptor to a seductive stone.
Not another passenger of life she was, from space to space — all ephemeral
Not another traveller of life she was, within the paths and sands of time.
Her abode set in the frontiers of eternity, her kinship to mortality seemingly forgotten,
Her vastness of thought stretched into the universe of soul and space,
She embraced the towering possibilities and augmented her own plan on fate’s.
But cruel thing life is, sucked and lured her into the trenches of lust,
For matters inappropriate, she stretched everything in her for the bodily desire.
She adopted life’s horrors, made them her own destitute, in transient pleasures,
She gave in, her spirit intact though — only she had now forgotten the purpose.
Or not care enough now — for stroking a man’s genital ego gave her material gain;
In turn the man himself, a slave to her delightfully firm but sombrely sex appeal,
Shapes the figure of this dream damsel, to indulge with during the unborn nights.
Hope’s child gave away into a trophy, so alluring that she formed a cult
In the witchy, dark, heartless terrains of Calcutta, cosmos set its secret hand.
As a prude she was reborn, the trademarks of hope fell either side as life took over,
The land’s ego joined its destiny child, a conspiracy that was carefully plotted.
Gloom seemed to have spread into those endless corridors of hope,
The crystal doors that would let her out, seemingly chained and guarded.
By strange powers and influences that were said impossible to be won over,
It seemed at that unceremonious moment that it was the whole plausible truth.
The evil fancies of life could always be caged, serpentine they might be;
In the far avenues of beyond, mystic forces were believed to have been present.
Those that transcend every spec of time and space, their energy channeled,
Through marvellous curtain of hearts, into all realms and into the undreamed.
Strange powers exist in this multiverse, vibrant with possibilities unchartered.
One such dawned upon her, replacing the separated sense of mind and heart,
Possessed now, she seemed to be with the unexplainable mystic force from beyond.
Devdas, the streets called him — once the sight of his and his dame lovelier,
Than anything around them, drawing all nature into their embrace.
Their hearts grew into meeting the unspoken words and the hidden motions,
Loud whispers were, air glowed with magnificent scent and hues celebrating them.
Whatever our hearts conceive though, our frugal world undoes, Dove they did;
Into the tyranny of pride, not knowing how to stay afloat, scouting and fighting,
For fresh air to bloom the garden of their romance; the dame succumbed eventually,
To the invisible evil charm of pride, through faultless motions of mortal mind.
The bond broken, out he wandered — wounded, dissatisfied yet nearly Herculean,
Dwelling in the pathless woods and the heartless jungles. Surrounded by ghastly
whispers of vindication from the dame, the hopeless man, walked at the hope child’s doorstep.
She welcomed him like any other, letting the seductive goddess in her unto him,
The comradeship of many men, taught her exactly how to own the kind.
But no ordinary comrade he was, to lay in the bare embrace of her boundless appeal,
Rebuked her forces not once but many times, he did, but couldn’t shake her off,
From his spirit’s dream, aroused by a serendipitous unison with his boyhood,
He persisted; the contradiction so refreshingly pristine from what he’d been brought up with,
Before fate’d let him into these dark avenues of life, a listener to universal speech he was.
Now an unwilling whore to her magic whiteness; she to the silence of his soul.
Unabashedly a spell had been cast on both, universe playing a still audience to their act,
They caught each other’s echoes, their rhythm-beats rubbed into a unified spirit of hope,
Giving them wings to fly into the conscious blue infinity — their new found purpose.
A change now witnessed in the children of fate, for the upcoming new and the unknown,
They heard each other’s secret voices now, words that were so strong in their mute strength,
That lesser beings can only be told, but could never feel, comprehend and appreciate. Concept,
Too fine and beyond their grasp — Strange raw emotion touched their lives. Limbs filled up with
An immortal joy, she loved him, with all the sweetness and primality of the child that she once was.
His each happening, a deep experience, an epic colloquy, a sweet temptation. Awakened,
For the first time to an unearthly familiarity and closeness, she let herself out — exceeding all else.
His heart though beat no more at any touch, his old flame carved out a void in him so deep,
Paused all his judgements and muted all his worlds pushing him into a motionless peace.
He chose to sit unaccompanied in the eternal calm, seeking a house in memories — a hard one,
To be built since it saw a little of this vast sky — bounded, earthly and cramped to reciprocate love.
Her purity of thought, her sorcery of emotion though triumphed — unerringly an inexplicable.
She now became portions of him. Driven by the need to not give in, he resisted to be swayed.
Futile attempts they were for he was already charmed and his heart housed the illimitable her.
In she walked, hope’s child, now pure and immortal again, Chandramukhi; Effort too lasting,
For his mortal nerve, all in a moment seized and consumed in the adventure of that climb.
Could no longer be shielded from the powers she veils; Long he had traveled in solitude.
For the first time on this uncertain earth he felt the pure ecstasy of unison — a perplexing thought.
A momentary reverie and he gathered himself up again — all that felt impractical again.
Far again from the glorious deeds that his youth still demanded, he retracted into loneliness.
And forcibly led her out from his sight and from the depths of his heart — familiarity for him.
After all, how would he ever tell his Paro that his heart suddenly started looking elsewhere?
Chandramukhi though, knew him as if they had ever lived a life of togetherness.
She measured the movements of his soul, gauged the depths of his heart, that dim abyss.
She thought to herself — `he who seemed capable to conquer the immortal seats, his glory fell.
Oh the sweet marvel of heartbreak and pain! Strange strange things you do to us`.
Reluctant to further his emptiness, the malignant hollows of suffering and sorrow,
She let him wander to the flame he, oh so desired, since all the time he could ever remember.
He, on his part, made a promise to return unwittingly oblivious to the mystery of fate!
This mortality is our biggest foe, it slays our happiness and others’ — But nothing he learned.
An idiot hour of spur destroyed the castle built by infinite moments of romance and reverence.
The unison was never to happen — he can no more be heard, felt or spoken to. A memory now,
In the same fort of memories he had wanted to once live in, he now dragged Chandramukhi into.
The courageous warrior that she was, embraced it although with an expression as if from the unwritten.
There was no visible foe to her, only the unseen anguish that she can’t win over. Must face the fight.
And she did. The struggle already felt, the unseen vast price already paid for. With all else settled,
Her heart’s marge’ now, so delightfully home for love. One that could heal a universe of suffering.
She would continue to fight an inner war that she could never escape from, a war of abandon.
Yet a strange light had invaded her conscious, binding her internal pain to an all giving love.
She started to labour on, for her work had just been started, refusing to have world’s blows bend her.
My Chandramukhi that! unflappable and invulnerable in her soul and spirit, her heart un-slain.
Her stature now transcending all emotions of mortals — dolorous pain and overwhelming bliss.
She lived on to tell a story of love and to write one of her own. My Chandramukhi, that!
