Sujata's Poem

Behind every book in my life hides a story. So obviously I love all my books… well, some make me tremble and some make me crumble with shame. But despite all the different emotions peeping from behind these books, I love them all. And the one I love the most is the one that brought us together.

That day was like any other day and I was in my room reading when my mother called for me, ‘Tushar! Tushar! Come down. Come right now.’

I got up reluctantly and shouted, ‘Yes, mummy I’m coming.’

I was still lost in the mesmerizing words of Wodehouse when I entered our drawing room. She was there with her mother and turning the pages of a magazine and the way she sat it was obvious that she was bored.

‘Sujata wants to look at your collection of books,’ said mummy, ‘take her upstairs.’ Well, I have known Sujata for more than ten years now but never talked to her. She is the daughter of my mother’s best friend. Sujata Chatterji. A girl with a face that is almost round. A girl with big dreamy eyes. A girl who is my age, has come to our house at least thrice every year for the past ten years and never once talked to me. Well, this is how things were in my small town. Girls and boys don’t talk to each other unless their parents have asked them to. And today was the first day my mother asked me to take her to my room.

‘What happened?’ asked my mother, ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘A story,’ I said, and then looking towards this friend who wasn’t a friend as yet, ‘Come, let’s go.’

So that day I led Sujata to my room and showed her my collection of books. There were hundreds of novels there and she skimmed over the entire list and chose one that was actually passed on to me by my grandfather and had been sitting quietly in my collection waiting for some attention.

‘That one is on trigonometry,’ I said.

She said, ‘I love mathematics.’

We were both in school for another year and I was the one who had a lot of physics, chemistry, and mathematics to study for my exams. I didn’t know she too was an aspiring engineer… and well, this could be interesting, so I asked, ‘You want to be an engineer?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I just love math. And I am not a science student.’

Ah! So she is not a science student. I was relieved as this could have led to more unnecessary meetings and possible discussions where our performance in the exams was compared. Comparisons generally resulted in long lectures and the need to study and do well… and I hated them. So I smiled and asked, ‘So why study math if you don’t want to be an engineer?’

‘Because numbers are what I love. They dance and create patterns that I love,’ she said. This was somewhat abstract for me as I had never really seen numbers dance and I told her, ‘Dance? I think numbers are like villains in a movie and are always looking for some stupid reason to come after you.’

She laughed and for some inexplicable reason I liked it. This was rather strange because I was one of those sorts who had addressed another girl a couple of years older than me as ‘aunty ji’ and got the dirtiest stare from my grandfather. I was told later that she was his friend’s grand-daughter and had just joined college, ‘She is your age and not an aunty ji!’ I had nodded and promised that I’d be more careful with girls now.

Yes, I liked it when Sujata laughed and I was relieved when I was able to control the urge to say, ‘thank you aunty ji’ to her as well. These things have happened to me so many times that half the stress in my life is because I do what others think is stupid and uncalled for. Like the time when I volunteered to make tea for my mother’s friends. My mother stared at me and her looks said that I needed to go to my room and be with my books but I sauntered to the kitchen and prepared tea… and even committed the stupidity of serving it in a Borosil carafe and small Borosil glasses. The year was 1970 and people just used ugly mugs or even cup and saucers for tea. Rotomac and its ‘sab kuch dikhta hai’ (everything is visible) tagline was non-existent then… and so I got a lot of nervous titters and funny looks from those ladies. One of them even said, ‘He is so much better than my daughter. She prefers flying kites with the boys.’ I’m sure the discussion must have triggered a long discussion of how girls were getting boisterous and the boys shyer and introverted.

‘Are you fine?’ Sujata was saying as she looked at me and my deep-in-thoughts posture.

‘Yes, I was wondering what you’d say if I say that I like painting,’ I asked.

She seemed happy to hear this and even volunteered to flip through my drawing file. ‘They’re good,’ she said, ‘better than any I have seen so far.’

‘And you don’t think I am a girl simply because I paint, right?’

‘Boys also paint,’ she said and then she kept that book on mathematics aside and began scanning the rows of fiction that I had. I was proud of each of those books and loved them more than anything else. She picked up Eric Segal’s ‘Love Story’ and flipped open a random page and after a few moments of silence began reading aloud…

I give you my hand!       

I give you my love, more precious than money,    

I give you myself, before preaching or law;  

Of-course I knew those lines by heart. I had read the book ten times and had even bought Walt Whitman’s book of verses to read. But these lines were unforgettable and simply too tempting to not speak aloud and so I too joined her as she went on…

Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

‘I’ve read poetry for the first time,’ she said and I could see Sujata was overwhelmed by the sheer emotion in the lines.

‘I also write poetry,’ I said, a little hesitatingly. In the Sixties and the Seventies, boys were simply not expected to paint or write poetry. I remember my father telling me, ‘You want to become a painter? You want to starve to death? You want to paint cinema boards and smell of varnish all your life?’ I had held my breath and said nothing. Yet another time my father had flung the novel that I was reading and shouted, ‘Now you say you want to become a writer. A journalist. You will have to beg for food like that friend of mine… that journalist from Lahore…’ I later came to know that one of his friends who wrote for an Urdu paper in Lahore before partition, was now going from friend to friend and city to city just to spend a few days with anyone who tolerated him.

So writing and painting were things that fascinated me and I did both, without making it too obvious and with the door of my room bolted from inside. I was, therefore, naturally hesitant while admitting to this girl that I was both a writer and a painter.

‘That’s lovely,’ said Sujata, and then suddenly asked, ‘Can I borrow this book?’

I didn’t say anything but merely glanced at the hand-written warning that I had pasted on top of my book-shelf. It said: I don’t lend my books.

Sujata stood there reading the short sentence and then burst out laughing, ‘It is for others and not for me, right? I love your paintings and I like it that you write poetry.’

This did make a lot of sense and I just nodded a yes.

Sujata came to our house more often now. She also had free access to my books and every time she was with me in my room she would softly recite Walt Whitman’s lines from the first novel she had read… and I would join her at the same spot.

I give you my hand!       

I give you my love, more precious than money,    

I give you myself, before preaching or law;  

And this is where I always joined her fascination with words that let your imagination go wild…

Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

This went on until one day I said, ‘I’ve written a poem for you.’ She looked at me and just asked, ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ I was confused and frankly didn’t know what to say. I don’t think I was in love with her or that I had thought of anything like marriage. I was still in school, dammit, and relationships are things that school boys never cared for. But school girls did… and her question probably searched for an answer that would confirm a relationship. What I said then was not what she expected to hear, ‘I just wrote a poem when I was thinking about you. So I think it is right that you hear it before any of my other friends do.’

‘And why do you think I ought to hear it?’

‘Because you might,’ I began saying and then just didn’t know what else to add.

‘I’m listening,’ she said patiently.

But my mind was like a moment when a light bulb knows it has blown and will never light up again… and there I stood in front of holding my notebook where I wrote all my poetry, waiting for my mind to light up or for her to do something. Yes, it is always girls who need to do something at such moments. So she said, ‘You wrote a poem for me. Right?’

‘Yes,’ I answered feebly.

‘Then tear that page from your diary and gift it to me now.’

I slowly tore that page and handed it over to her. She took it and went away. She didn’t come to our house after that. The words of that poem are still there inside me, waiting to be reborn. No, I never tried to write them down again and I never will. But I know they are there within me and I remember each line and every punctuation mark I had put.

What did she really want? I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I said that I loved her. But listen, the truth is that I was not in love with her. I was really not in love with her and was just writing poems with different people and different situations planted in my mind. There is this something about poets that non-poets will never understand. Poets just psyche themselves out over something or someone and get themselves in a trance… but only to be able to write a few lines. This is a bloody difficult thing to pursue, my friend. Poetry really teaches you how to create the right environment for a short while and then just throw it out like a woman throwing out a man’s ejaculate from her vagina. It is then time to go in search of another subject, another trance. There is nothing permanent for a poet… and they are wanderers forever.

But let me return to my story.

Sujata’s poem did teach me a vital lesson. It taught me that poems written for girls must never be given to them wordlessly and in silence. You then lose the poem and the person.

No, I didn’t try to write more poems to be given to more girls. Yes, there were love poems written but they were all for an image that actually had no face. Yes, there was always a girl in my imagination and there was always a story with a beginning and one that needed a poem. There were funny poems, poems with a lesson, poems that went on to tell a story, poems that defined love or romance or even hurt. They were all poems written for no one in particular. I now believe that poetry inside you just needs a cue to call the right words and then your instinct starts putting them all in a form.

Poets are forever learning new ways to write their poems. I, Tushar, stumbled upon the ease of syllables and adopted them for my disciplined lines of poetry. The complexity of iambs just doesn’t impress me. But hey, let me get back to my story now.

Ten years went by and I was happily learning the art of salesmanship as only an accomplished engineer can. What else could I have done with an engineering degree and a post-graduation in marketing from one of the leading B-schools? Yes, I was selling soap. And I was writing poetry for my presentations too. My bosses were impressed.

Sujata was not in my thoughts at all.

This was when the office assistant came and said I had some guest waiting for me in the meeting room. This was normal and so I just grabbed the page with the newest stanzas that I had penned and walked with it into the meeting room.

‘Hello,’ I said and then as she turned to face me, I exclaimed, ‘Sujata!’

Sujata smiled and stood up. We were silent for a while and then I said, ‘Please sit.’ We sat and I asked, ‘Should I order coffee for you?’

‘For us,’ she said.

‘Ok,’ I said and after the office assistant had gone, I asked, ‘So you’re in Delhi?’

‘No,’ she answered, ‘I’m a copywriter with Lintas and in Bombay.’ I gave a puzzled look and she went on, ‘We have your account and the brief you guys sent for the new print campaign was full of poetry. I was curious and wanted to meet the engineer who wrote in rhymes… and when your name came up I simply had to fly down here.’

‘To meet me?’ I asked.

She looked at me silently and said, ‘Yes, and to ask you the same question yet another time.’ Saying this she took out a carefully folded piece of notebook paper that I immediately recognised as the one on which I had written that poem years back. She asked, ‘And why do you think I ought to hear it?’

The same words and the same smile that was on her lips that day. The past came hurtling towards me and I could see a school girl standing there asking me a question as I simply stood there not knowing what to say. Words had failed me then… and words seemed to be failing me even today. Some questions have the power to unnerve you completely, it seems. But I was no longer a school boy from a small town. I was a professional and a management graduate from a premier institute… and I was much bolder than I was then. And though there was no numbing dark flashes in my mind, words still failed to show up. I stuttered, ‘This was such a long time back.’ After a pause I managed to add, ‘Did you read the poem?’

‘No, I wanted to hear you reading it out to me Tushar. So I just kept the paper with me knowing there will be a time when you would know why you really wanted to write this poem for me.’

There was something so starkly honest about her conclusion and her conviction that I could say nothing. Could I really tell her that when I wrote the poem she was just one of the reasons that I sought then to put me in a trance so I could write? And that this wasn’t the only love poem I have written since then? There is another thing about poets that you simply cannot miss to notice and this was what I did next. I told her exactly what I thought the reason was then. I then added, ‘The poem was indeed written with you in mind and so it was for you. But a poet looks at words quite differently from how a non-poet would.’ Poets are strangely quite direct and prosaic in the way they converse… I mean that is precisely what they are when they are writing. They measure each word and each emotion and don’t have any qualms about leaving a few emotions dripping in blood and left to die in some remote corner of their mind. They choose the best and use the right ones and I’m sure most poems look at their creators and say, ‘This bloody harsh bastard is my father!’

Sujata was looking at me all this while and asked, ‘You’re again in a world that seems far away from here and yet a world that isn’t so difficult to understand.’ Saying this she offered me that poem I had written years back, and said, ‘I’d love to hear the poem now, please.’

And I read the poem out to her:

As I sit here on my desk
I look at words peeping out from unread books
From behind them and from dark nooks

And I ask myself:
What are they waiting for today?
And I know they will stay

Where they are until
The thoughts and images in my mind
And their purpose in life converge to find

A reason to come together.
Words wait for these signals, their cue
As I wait here for a smile from you!

I heard Sujata sigh. I saw her look at me without blinking her eyes and I saw a thin moist film slowly form a curtain there. I said hurriedly, ‘I know I was not following the syllabic system them and this poem is just banking on rhyming words.’ She blinked, smiled and said, ‘This poem is what I have been longing to hear all these years. These are the words I thought this paper would have.’

‘Then why did you just disappear that day and never came back.’

‘I wanted to be sure that it is you I wanted to wait for.’

Boys and men don’t talk this language ever… even if the man that I mean happens to be a poet. I wiggled my toes in my shoes and stifled the sigh that was desperately trying to burst out. Then Sujata straightened and said, ‘I did not come back but you were always in my thoughts. And all these years I too have attempted to write poetry.’

This came as a surprise and I said, ‘What? A mathematician writing poetry? I don’t believe it.’

‘Not very often. But I have written whenever I needed to control myself from rushing to you.’

‘Ah! So here is yet another reason for poetry to be written,’ I said with a smile.

She then opened her laptop bag and took out a notebook. I asked, ‘Your poems in there?’

‘For you.’

I opened her collection of poems and silently read the one of the first page. I then looked at her and asked, ‘I’ll read it out for you.’

‘And why do you think I ought to hear it?’

The same words spoken again… but this time they did not block my mind nor did they splatter a black numbing cloud over my senses and I calmly answered, ‘Because what you write is so like what I write.’

‘Really?’

I read out what she had written:

Not a day goes by
Nor a night without a sigh

But I know I must wait
Until my fate

Holds my hand and leads me to you
And only then a new

Equation I’ll discover
It’ll be this math or never!

I smiled and said, ‘So here you are now a strange derivation of mathematics and poetry. But tell me why did you distance yourself from the words of mathematics and get closer to the mathematics of words?’

‘I think a part of you was always there with me. And I just had to reach out to that part,’ said Sujata.

It is strange but the truth is that people come closer only when they are ready for each other and the very logical part within me agreed. I believe poets are actually logical beings because poetry goes about in a rather precise manner and never meanders into long-winded narrations that prose often does. No wonder then that poetry and mathematics tend to like each other and probably cannot exist without the other being near enough.

No, this wasn’t what we discussed sitting there in the meeting room that day. We had just got up and I had ostensibly gone out for an executive lunch with the copywriter from our agency. And we did discuss plans, didn’t we?