by Hema Nair
Commitment seems to signify a steady disposition and virtuous intent, but we don’t always see it translated to happiness in our lives. As much as it can give us joy and contentment, it can also wreak angst and desolation. Hema Nair’s poem attempts to define the different hues ‘commitment’ can take on those who have chosen to offer or reject it.
Fellow travellers having tasted love are paper boats
Floating in a flowing rain-water stream
When the current slows and the eddy settles
Draw each other close, bows kissing, hulls scraping
Did the stream conspire to push them close
Or allure draw them into each other’s hold
All kinds of love in this world you see
Brief interlude of pecking beaks and flapping wings
Soon to fly free to dissonant destinies
To stay in the shady bough could be your choice
While the wanderer wings it to the blue beyond
They each chose their mating, their separation
Their love and the end of it
Who are we to judge the depth of their immersion
Or sell them short for its transience
Then there are others
who stay wed in spirit and body
Not just in this life and the next, but for five more to come
Entwined for an age like the mango and peepl tree standing
In an eternal embrace in the temple foreground
Their ardour piercing the earth with deep roots
Steady, unshaken by the gale that whips their leaves
Love is sublime, calamitous; divine, tempestuous
Through all the nurturing and posturing
The bidding and bartering
It remains love still
Uplifting and destructive in equal parts
Romantics cherish it all their lives while the cynics deny –
The lightness of spirit it gives, or the tears they would cry
Enduring today but soon one day
Sure to maim, kill and all but destroy
Words not spoken is a wastrel landscape with an empty well
Parched of hope, empty of water
Cold shaft of a dagger lodged in the chest is honest, unambiguous
Dark pools of eyes, fathomless, dead – reflect lies untold
Promises broken, solicitude undone are binding ropes
Chaffing on the skin, abrasive, cutting, then healing with scarring
There is still a life left to live, a dream to build upon
Plumbing the depths of a desolate soul, you find
A treasure of insight, steel of strength, a balm of equanimity
Unravel the knots one by one, test your limbs
Feel the golden light of freedom on your face
And wander barefoot into the green grass of your peaceful haven
Hema Nair was an avid reader through childhood and youth, but her desire to study literature was thwarted by a pre-determined career in Medicine and better prospects. She juggles her day job as a cardiac anaesthetist, with ungodly hours spent writing prose and poetry. She has been published in The Hindu, and online magazines like Confluence, Madras Courier and The Good Men Project.
