Life !
Explore Beautiful Pakistan
O life of mine!
I have no grievance against you
None, whatsoever
There’s nothing that hasn’t changed
Nothing that I’ve not acquired.
Why is it then that I don’t feel happy
A feeling of distress haunts me
A briery, prickly notion makes me restless
I feel something is amiss in my life
A smoldering fire, I apprehend
Will flare up into a conflagration
My home and hearth
My peaceful existence
Would come to an end.
I am a bulwark of defense
around my near and dear ones
I’m at ease with my environ
Satisfied with my children, my husband, my family
Content with their going and coming time schedule
Their presence on breakfast table or evening tea
I’ve no gripe against in-laws
No grouse against kith and kin
Nothing, indeed, that might create tension
Cause distress.
My home is a paradise incarnate
A refuge and a shelter
Peacefulness, placidity is my own creation …
I always thought my life was a sheltered haven
Harmony and restful quietude is the norm
In my day to day life … but
For some days
I have been feeling a thorn prick my heart
A burning itch, as it were, getting sharp
An itch that perhaps]
might, for a moment, be bearable for me.
Was it a bitter dream or a hallucination
I felt as if my wings are my own creation
That giving up all that my day to day routine
All that I have cherished
I was soaring high above in the void
And in doing so
I am indeed happy …
God only knows why I felt so.
Then it was
That all of a sudden
A beckoning call, a cry from below
Made me wake up, pull my down …
Down into a chasm, a gorge of dejection
I fell down and down
I got entangled – finally losing myself.
No longer am I a distinct ‘self’ now.
No longer do I have any relationship with any one
No affinity at all.
In a house I am, but
The house is not my own.
I have nothing … indeed, nothing at all.
Why and wherefore did it happen?
Indeed, I don’t know.
I don’t know at all.
Translated by Satyapal Anand
