Dear Ice

Dear Ice. 

Wherever you are, I wish you good health and comfort. My hands are trembling while writing you this boring piece. I can't make it interesting; I am not the creator but creation. Life is a complex subject. While comparing, I find calculus, economical mathematics and coding more easier than this whole subject. But, there is something I find between mathematics and life. This is you. I must acknowledge that no human can know another human in its totality; not even if they are life partners. Our life has many episodes and only a few are exposed to the world. This is true with every human being existing. The years, months, hours or minutes we shared have engraved a deep impression on me. From the beverage to the fast food, from Plato to Edward said, From Meer to Jaun, From Muhammad SAW to Qur'an, From Islam to Hinduism, From Hegel to Focoult and from Jamia to nighty Cannaught place, all I have come across with you - establishing you as a sound learner and myself just as a loop to continue the cycle of love and learn. To love through books, ideas, and knowledge is not boring but of achieving liberation. We all are disillusioned by post truth events, caged in the neo liberal world but what liberates us is one idea, one book and one conversation. You came like a liberator to my life. I embraced you like none other than my departed soul reuniting. There is something in your voice which has a magic. From those heavy words to soothing prose, all encouraged me to take a deep dive into the ocean of Love, knowledge, wisdom and uncertainty. People say to me that I know where you are. My love, I don't know. When I am not in your heart - all I am is a person with aged eyesight and blurred vision. Can a person with aged eyesight see? You know the answer well. I often dream of your curly ruffled hair, moving with the flow of breeze, touching my face, while we were on the staircase of Ansari Auditorium. Curly ruffled hair, for me symbolises 'Revolution' - a revolution against injustice, hatred and tyranny. A revolution which is more feminist. The world needs the care of feminism when it is divided on the line of hatred, lust and power. The more curlier the hair, the more impactful the revolution goes on. I dreamt this most often. Perhaps, the sky seems more beautiful from far or it is just a dream. When people ask me, how beautiful you are? I always fail to answer. I just smile back and skip it. How can I explain your beauty? Should I say, like the moon or the shining ice sheet of himalaya? Dear Ice, I cannot speak of you metaphorically. You are unique. The Brits have failed to find a fitting metaphor for your beauty. Once they told like "Princess Diana". No, my dear ice. You are unique. Princess Dianna embraced an unfortunate death. I do not wish this for you. I complain to God of your metaphorical description. I complain because I fear that this plagiarised world will mimic your beauty in art and graphs. I fear they will sale those art and graphs for monetary value. No lover in this world wishes to be corrupted. And if corrupted then there is no love. For my life and all good deeds, I asked God not to recreate your beauty. Moon is nothing when I think of you. You are unique. When you left me in the midst of Delhi's muggy weather, heavy traffic and myriad dreams - I broke like anything, into pieces and pieces. The confidence, the courage, the hope - all shattered in minutes and seconds. I do not remember how much exact time I needed to restart all again, perhaps two calendar years or more or still swinging in between emotions. I don't remember. Few people say I have recovered; few say, I still remember you. I do not want to focus on this. I consider it, a sort of price I had to pay. The price. Even integrity has a price; so love. I fear to love people again. I do not have the courage to talk about love.I fear and perhaps fear is not baseless as psychologists claim. I went through hills and flat lands to get away from you. I chose to be in monk mode again and again. I failed to be so. Whenever I gather a strong conviction of not remembering you, somehow the world brings me near to you. That's life and that's heartbreak as well. I don't wish to talk about myself - one will say its boasting. I saw you living the life of feminist portrayed by Majaz. Though, you are halfway to it. But, I saw you and I dreamt of this fulfillment. "तेरे माथे पे ये आंचल तो बहुत ही ख़ूब है लेकिन,तू इस आंचल से इक परचम बना लेती तो अच्छा था". This is who you are, dear ice. Have you heard of Benazir Bhutto ? Her response to religious bigotry stands straight. The courage she carried, I sense it in you. You too have courage and one who is courageous wins all odds of life. This is where the task of 'Believing oneself' comes. Sometimes, I fear how fragile it is to believe in oneself for a long time. I fear the fragility of the string, hopefulness amidst hopelessness and uneasy embracement of odds. Dear ice, in your absence, my trajectory of life changed. Hope, courage and conviction realigned but destiny is still a blur. Through the whole discourse of Histories and personalities, I find my life in line with Bahadur Shah Zafar - The emperor who failed to get "Even two yards of land were not to be had, in the land of the beloved (दो गज़ ज़मीन भी न मिली कू-ए-यार में). Zafar died before the city, though raged and raged against the dying of the light. After his defeat, capture and exile to Rangoon, Zafar never wrote a word. He was denied pen and paper. The poet that he was, he must have dipped his finger in his bleeding heart to write "junooń ki hikayaat-e khooń chakań. But they were buried with his mortal remains, in 1862, in an unmarked grave, in a qabristan far away from his koo-e yaar. Why did this happen to him? Because his beloved, the city, the civilizational unity and Empire was still alive. I do not wish to be so. I wish to die before you die. I cannot see you die before me. And perhaps I won't be able to stop myself from marking the grave where you would be lying - to say the unsaid, to recite the Qur'anic verses, to do dua-e-maghfirat and perhaps to weep like a child. This is how a lover would destroy when the news of your demise would come. Shivering. Trembling. I do not wish to die after you. All I could have written more on you, perhaps a voluminous book, an anthology or something but I fear the world may recreate another you. I do not wish to be so. 

न किसी की आँख का नूर हूँ न किसी के दिल का क़रार हूँ

जो किसी के काम न आ सके मैं वो एक मुश्त-ए-गुब़ार हूँ

(My life gives no ray of light, I bring no solace to heart or eye

Out of dust to dust again, of no use to anyone am I)

I wish you a healthy and prosperous life ahead. A life worth remembering, living and inspiring. A life you dreamt of less but I prayed more for you. 

Take care,