Saath Saath: The Longing, The Despair, The Closure

Note: My poetic tribute, dedicated to the soulful ghazals sung by the celebrated musical couple Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh jee

Image Source: Learningandcreativity.com

 

I don’t know how the kohl-smeared nights would dissolve

Into the fresh dawns, squinting into the day, when your voices

In the unison of duets, would waft in the lingering, dark silence

Of a bedroom with crinkled bedsheets and the recycled language

Of the two-in-one stereo, my unrequited wants, cocooned in

The sweet, fleshy cracking of your ghazals.

I knew not, at the end of those nameless siestas, when my senses,

Handcuffed, trudged through those uncertain mazes, how I would

Unwrap myself, lapping up your waves, losing myself in your shores.

“Tumko dekha toh iye khayal aayaa, zindagee dhoop tum ghanaa saayaa”…

 

I only knew that in my first love’s eyes, I was a washed out night raaga

From the flesh of your moonlight’s swirling melody, a raaga that

Would come back to you again, with my cheap tears of a love,

A tight embrace gone awry. I only knew that in my eyes clamped shut

In that clumsy bedroom, all by myself, I would hum, together with you,

“Iye tera ghar iye mera ghar/kiseeko dekhna ho gar/to pehle aake maang le

Meri nazar teri nazar…”, feeling my rib cage, my bones and the throb

Of my man’s Adam’s Apple, brush against the twilight music of a love nest,

A nest where our smudged syllables would one day, give in to stark, dead silence.

 

You both knew the trail, didn’t you, the trail of quivering, lovelorn hearts

Who hummed along, biting deep into the flesh of those lyrics in symphony?

Did you know the smog, seeping through your incandescent tunes,

As you sang, every strain filling through your own cracks, your own pores

While you couldn’t rain together anymore?

Did we all know, us, the sagging vines, hanging around

Your bestselling albums, that even melodies could gag,

In life’s unmarked road where you clasped tight

your tragedy, your only route to break free?

 

I come back to those nights in nameless, grey spirals, your ghazals

The cinnamon wants traipsing around them still, rolling slowly

In my senses, like a dream, forbidden, interrupted,

Which might make a lover out of me, yet again.

The Unforgettable Duo. Image Courtesy: MusicMyLife

Also, visit this link to listen to the soulful melodies by this classic duo: