ONE of Tagore's most celebrated paeans to nature was written when the poet was most overtaken by grief—the death of a favourite son. Nature's joy seemed to hold no bounds as he grappled with his loss. Why does one live? Why does one die? Why does pain run like an underground stream in both life and death? Why? Why? Why? Ajeet Cour's vignettes of a life "that is nothing but the din of pebbles in an empty tin drum" make us ponder over those "shreds, tatters and patches" that go to form it.
Peer Makki ki Gali in Lahore. Between the rippling breezes, the azure skies and the balmy sun stood heavy bamboo curtains. "Girls do not peep out from behind bamboo curtains," the six-year-old was firmly reprimanded each time she felt the need to feel the open and the free air. And so the mind wandered—and thrived in the realm of the imagination. So what if there was no Hans Anderson or Alif Laila?
A room crowded with heavy steel trunks which had lengths of plush gold embroidered silk, satin, velvet, brocade whispered with magic; the first peek at a graveyard for 'goras' tingled with excitement; the smell of fresh, frothy milk. And in a house of "fresh air and infinite sadness", the child would encounter death—the parents of Muan, her next-door neighbour, had passed a death sentence on their tuberculosis-stricken daughter because it was too expensive to treat her.
Then came Partition and the loss of "my small room", her entire horizon where she had sought solace in a painted fish and pens with smooth writing nibs. Thus began the "wayward, unbridled" meandering of a wanderer. First to Shimla, then to Jalandhar, to Delhi. To college. And Baldev, her English teacher. The two years with Baldev would "spread all over my life like a drop of ink dissolving in water". Through Baldev, Cour would delve into Ibsen, Tagore's drama Chitrangada and become "aware of the fresh air, the fragrance of the thirsty earth" among the dwarfed trees and the bushes of Delhi's grassy ridge. "To have Baldev's love was akin to have come face to face with God. It was like being in the presence of all that was elevated, beautiful and free from guile." Only, she misconstrued love in a moment of madness and lost it all.
Between Baldev and Oma—the other love of her life whom she lost as well—was a nightmarish marriage, and two lovely daughters, Arpana and Candy, who "alighted a bare branch". Because of whom, she had the courage to pick up the strands and set up home, which brought its own perils, alone. Where there was freedom and light—"the first thing I spent money on was the light. I put two bulbs of 100 watts each"—space to think, write and draw.
And just when life offered a glimmer of hope, there was a trial by fire. The death of a daughter in a faraway land in an accident that snuffed all meaning out of life: "How a loved one recedes into oblivion step by step and you remain standing there. And you still remain alive, alive with such obstinacy."
After Candy's death Cour had a strong impulse to cast away the rag that life is. "To fling it away, to burn it. But I couldn't. How could I make Arpana orphan? She was all I had left in the world." Slowly the pain could be shared, though never extinguished. "Life, after all is life. Diseased, leprous, it goes on limping even when a whole limb is amputated from its body. Shameless, brazen, obstinate, this life." Ajeet Cour's original in Punjabi called Khanabadosh won her the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1986. One hopes that Masooma Ali, who has translated Khanabadosh with such feeling, also helps us reach out to the second volume, Koorha Kabaara, which has recently appeared in Punjabi.
