My father pesters me every day
With a single thought:
“When will you get married?” He says in a casual way.
I evade it every time turning the topic
To Kashmir politics and argue:
“There ought to be a direction to our struggle.”
He calms my fears with a genuine concern
“Look, son it has been there, and I too married.”
We enter into an exchange daily over the
Prospect of a good marriage.
My mother sits silently with a wrinkled
Face perhaps endorsing my views.
I don’t know what goes on in her mind?
She does not usually intervene.
“Women ought not to have an opinion,” she says.
Every night I retire to bed, strange thoughts
Begin to drip in my mind.
They feel raindrops falling on,
The roof of a tin shed making crash sounds.
Every night I think of ‘you’ and wonder:
"What if we could get married?
Would you be you and I still be- I
Would YOU and I be We when
We are different.”
I fear every night, I might steal
Your thoughts, or read your mind
And doubt yore fidelity.”
I fear if I can talk to the people with
Whom I have spent the cloudless nights.
I fear if you come to know by mistake
What goes in my head? The fact that
I love you as much as I love other women
Would be too much for you to bear.”
Each night I think of you and our marriage,
I close my eyes thinking perhaps
You would come to me and ask for more
Time to decide whether love exists
On earth or whether we are at a mutual
Play, playing our part and dancing
Naked in the absence of candles.
