By Mushtaque B Barq
Thomas died tonight. The entire city as a mark of respect switched their lights off. And that was all what I had dreamt. Total darkness in the city. I strolled in the balcony and lit a candle and sat under its whirling flame to write a letter to my love. Why I opted this moment to jot down the folding of my heart is yet a mystery to me. With the dance of the flame reeled my pen. With every wax drops hitting the floor, mine salt was nursing the page in my lap. So the salt and the wax in the balcony had but unauthorized union. I placed a heap of questions before the deity of imaginations. The purpose was pure and simple. Is union a myth or reality? For the sun never meets the moon, never ever a day and night meets, unheard hitherto many other legends. What all my imagination piled before me was yet another mystery. In the meanwhile the merciless wax out rightly rejected the sea of my two sphere world. Two I mentioned not to impress the world that I live from North to South, leaving East and West untouched, not all but just to proclaim how limited my sky is.
I wrote: The night can no more be so densely packed with gloom as that of your wanton flicks on flawless face. I confess I did mention that she was the other side of the Helen that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless tops of my own minarets. Well! Ash is always an inspiring case in point for phoenix emerges out of it. Every word that I wrote was not deliberately put on the sheet, but a few casual sneezes and forced hiccoughs too are the part of the text, but an outflow of my emotions that I jammed on the page as a letter without any formal salutation or subscription may be picked for criticism. Why to be formal when under the gloomy blanket one was about to blacken the skin of the sheet. Contrasts add beauty, my black was not tedious against the sheen of the sheet, but the entire city was shrouded like my sense of duty for I should have mourned the loss, but then what is love if it does follow the conventions. Breaking is making. Poets mourn when the rest of the people are in jubilation and vice versa, so my casual approach may not be taken as disrespect. I can never mourn for Thomas because he is all the way in my cabin when the sun goes beyond my reach. I mourn only when a lamp on the bus stand goes missing.
For love needs neither grammar, or punctuation, nor a judge to pass that final verdict. His opinion is always final for the reason he is the one to wind the show up. The steady flame, What symbol of loyalty kept enlightened me that the wax of my passion solidified as the verses written under the murky night! When the world was mourning, the glow down the veins of vanity was vandalizing ethics as lovers down the lane were misusing the devastating dread.
Down the lane a car stopped just beneath my balcony. Nothing was visible save my candle that was burning like my crispy tissues to celebrate the moment that had two different theories to support. One that under the artificial light love looks ordinary, so the candle light that attracts every moth to end up as ash, I had taken a right decision to broadcast the blaze beneath the bruised breast. And the second that Thomas Elva Edison was no more in physical form in the city , but he was preserved in the bulbs as a living ghost with an everlasting flame in his majestic eyes. But under his watchful eyes, mine would have not dared to write, so the candle was the only preference. I preferred to do what others dare not.
From the car a lady with a candle in her hand by a nudge closed the door of the car. Hand in hand with a man walked across. From the balcony, it seemed that two ghosts had escaped their prison doors to register their freedom at least when the entire world was mourning the loss of a legend. A scene that greeted my wishful eyes. They stopped and placed the candle on the podium. The sheet of paper down in my lap slipped unwillingly. A gentle breeze kissed my cracked lips and gently passed the lightest frill over my face.
Then, something changed the scenario. Scenarios must be changed. Change is what brings change.
All of a sudden everything brightened; a strong gust of wind blew out my candle when down the lane she kissed her beloved and I only gazed how the darkness of the city vanished. The kiss was the key that unlocked the man who had switched off the lights for a cause.
Mushtaq B.Barq is a Columnist, Poet and Fiction Writer. He is the author of “Feeble prisoner, “ Wings of Love” and many translation works are credited to the author like “ Verses Of Wahab Khar” and “ Songs Of Sochkral”
