WITHIN

for Aditi Mangaldas

You emerge — from within darkness, your face

                                    sliding into light —

you squirm virus-like in a womb,

draped blood-red,                                 on black stage-floor.

                                    Around you, others swirl about

dressed as green algae,

                        like frenetic atoms

            under a microscope in a dimly lit laboratory.

Art mirroring life — reflecting the pandemic on stage.

Your hands palpitate,

                        as the sun’s own blinding yellow corona

cracks through the cyclorama.

            People leap about — masked, veiled.

                                                You snare a man’s sight

with your fingers mimicking a chakravavyuh —

                        you are red, he is green, she is blue —

trishanku — life, birth, death —

                        regermination, rejuvenation, nirvana.

Everything on stage — as in life —

                                                moves in circular arcs.

Irises close and open, faces veiled unveil —

            hearts love, lungs breathe — breathless.

Lights, electromagnetic —        knotted, unwrapped —

                        music pulsates, reaching a crescendo,

                                                            then silence.

Time stops. Far away in the infinite blue of the cosmos —

            I look up and spot a moving white.

I see a white feather

                                    trying its best to breathe

in these times of breathlessness, floating downwards —

and as it touches the floor, in a split-second

everything bursts into colour, movement, the bols/taals

                                                try to restore order,

rhythm,            both contained and free.

The backdrop bright orange,

                                    the silhouettes pitch-black.

As you embrace another human form,

            the infinite journey of timelessness might seem

                                                            inter_rupted,

but now is the moment to reflect and recalibrate

immersed in the uncharted seas, in the widening circles,

                        telling us —                  others matter,

the collective counts.

I examine minutely the striated strands

                        of the pirouetting feather, now fallen —

its heart still beating, its blood still pumping,

                                                its white untarnished.

Life’s dance continues — with or without us —

only in the understanding of what is,

                                                      is there freedom from what is.

*