Sep 07, 2024
Sep 07, 2024
What is in whose kismet? None can say it about. When will it shine? When will open the key to kismet? But here the maazra is somewhat different, a girl named Kismet is before us. A Hindustani girl, how to introduce her? Whose kismet will open when none can say it. Is the poem a personification of Kismet described as Lady Luck or she may be a roaming Roma. Whatever be it, the poem may be about a court girl. It may be about a courtesan. It may be about a nautch girl. Second thing is this whose kismet will take it where none can say about it. Where will it lift to or where will it dump upon?
What will she say it to the lord sahib as her fate is already damp and down? What is to say to? Who brought her from where? How was life to her? What class or community does she belong to? How her aristocracy or heredity? She does not all these things.
Stealing her heart, where has he pushed to and dumped? A ganjeri, bhangeri is he who can sell it all for. A sardar of a gang he seems to be, a chieftain, a ringleader. You do not any harm to him. Leave him.
How does innocence get spoilt? How are the buds crushed? How are tender hearts broken? How do situations change it in life? What will happen it to whom none can say. None can talk about human manna.
Such a thing it is in The Fakir of Jungheera, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hunger, The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street, The Purdah Nashin. Such a thing Khushwant Singh has in his columns while discussing about the red-light areas of Lahore. Is the girl to live under the purdah? How to distinguish in terms of the janana and the maradana? Do not misinterpret the Lakshmanrekha and the agnipariksha of Sita. Do not quote you the tale of Draupadi otherwise. Was Draupadi so? We made her follow the wrongly spelt words, giving her the company of a male-member-dominated family. We too destroy goodness as for our weaknesses and compulsions. A rotten egg rots it all.
While reading the poem, we get reminded of the Bai Nautch of Bhojpur and the Muzra of the Kothawallis. Who is of whose and who is from where? The lover of an innocent girl may turn out to be a ganjeri, a bhangeri or a piyakkad. A meeting of the Europeans and the Hindustani girls, how to describe it?
What to say it about blackmailed, love-lorn, misused or dissatisfied ones? How will be one’s conditions and situations of life none can say it.
What it in introduction? How to introduce her? What about her whereabouts? Just take you for a girl. She comes, comes as usual. This Indian sardar is responsible for all that, thug, badmash, chor and characterless, moral-less. A gambler, he is a queer fellow, lethargic, idle and superstitious and inactive. It is none but he the debauch who has brought it here.
My lord saib, if you must blame, blame me, my cursed lot, who the else to be blamed for? It is but her kismat.
ASK me not whence I came, lord saib,
Or what my name; I,
I, I know nothing: how should I?—
I live in shame.
But this sardar here, smoking bhang,
Knows whence I came
And what my name:
I know just this— I live in shame
He stole my heart and brought me here;
He calls it fame,
To sing and dance: I can't but feel
I live in shame.
Yet blame him not, I beg lord saib,
He's not to blame;
He's not, indeed: my kismat 'tis
To live in shame.
20-Jul-2024
More by : Bijay Kant Dubey