Love & Poetry
A year ago I received an official mail asking me for an article on something I would love to write. The mail also broke my heart when I was referred to, in the mail, as “Dear Samvartha.”
Yes, of course it is my name and I have identified myself with that name all my life. But the person on the other end, who was writing the official mail, was someone I knew personally though silence and distance had come between us from some time. So it was strange at one level and beautiful at another level to receive an official mail from someone who had been a part of my very personal world and mindspace.
The person, never once before had referred to me as Samvartha. I was Sahil and just Sahil to this person. Sahil is a name I chose for myself and a name with which not just me but also my poetry in Hindustani/ Urdu got identified. But there was something special when this person called me by the name Sahil, a name I had heard several times earlier. It felt like someone breathed poetry into that name and breathed into me a life not known/ felt before. The way this person called me Sahil made me feel alive more than ever and it made me see myself as a person different than how I saw myself before. It made me realize what Gulzar felt like and what he meant while saying/ writing, “You called out to me, ‘Gulzar’/ It was as if a pearl emerged from its shell / I now had a meaning / Oh, this is a beautiful name / Call out to me again!”
Shakespeare needs to know that not just in name there is a lot in pseudonym too.
This person over a period of time and over a series of word exchange became so much a part of my life my emotional world that I declared the person to be Urdu in flesh and blood for me. So when the same person wrote to me, after a long time, its not just the formal tone of the mail and the formal nature of the mail being written by this person which made my heart ache silently but also not being called Sahil by this person. It felt like the part of me which weaved poetry had got disconnected with its language, with its Urdu. It felt like a name which breathed life into me had lost its meaning. I felt a part of me die within me, when that side of me that name of me went unidentified or unacknowledged by the same person who made that side of me that name of me more meaningful and more beautiful an experience.
When I look back at the 17 years of my poetic journey in Hindustani/ Urdu it is in the last one year that I have written the least. No, it is not a conscious decision I took following the above narrated incident to not write as a rebellion or as a depiction of some devdas syndrome. But somewhere poetry did distance itself from me. May be I took my pseudonym very seriously or may be I took this person concerned very seriously or the matter itself is a very serious matter. I dont know. But I know that I have written less in the last one year and the person who once breathed meaning and value to my pseudonym Sahil, is not responsible for it.
Like there can never be a convincing and clear answer for why one writes poetry there can never be a clear and convincing answer for why one reduces or stops writing poetry. Its the same with love too. Nobody knows why we love someone or why we cease to love someone.
Crazy Mind's Eye 