Love In The Late Sixties Poem by Bipin Patsani

(a story poem)

Ours was letter love, since love letters
were the main means of communication
among lovers those days.
Nothing digital, no email, no WhatsApp
nor messenger, we communicated through
those sweet smelling letters, her letters
replete with emotionally charged words
of love, care and concern
which enthralled me in their lyric charm
like her sweet voice when she sang.
I pinned those letters in a tag
and read them again and again
to breathe in life and inhale
the fragrance of those divine moments
of pure perennial bliss we so lovingly shared.

There was nothing physical in our love.
It never occurred in our minds.
There were dreams and plans, all green and clean,
inspiring one another, family talks often familiarizing
our respective worlds to each other.
Even our words used were purely vegetarian
with their ecstatic aroma of colour and smell.

We never held hands, Eve and I.
That opportunity we didn't have
in the inhibited air of that suburban school
(near Bhubaneswar in Odisha)
like K. C. Bidyapitha, Janla, with Victorian Morals,
where talking to girls, that too juniors, was nearly a taboo,
though our affair was the talk of the campus
and every corner was aware of our emotional involvement.
We talked once face to face
when I enquired about her performance
in a Paper just after her exam.
How suspicious the girls looked
when I walked directly to her!
All eyes amazed as if Heaven would fall.

On the day of the Saraswati Puja that year
an informer told my maternal uncle, himself a teacher,
that we exchanged something somewhere.
She was called to the Office of the Headmaster
of the adjacent Middle School, the much revered
Mr. Bhubaneswar Dash who was our Hostel Superintendent
and the Joint Secretary of our High School.
When the Honorable Headmaster asked her
to handover my letter to him, she was bold enough
to tell him that since she had not read my letter,
she would give it to him if she got the opportunity
to read it there in his office.
That is what she readily did.
My uncle too took her letter from me
so that the Headmaster would be able to show it
to her maternal uncle, her local guardian,
who had complained against me of an one sided affair.

The Headmaster told me later in his persuasive tone,
'You are the pride of our school, Bipin.
Set your mind in your study only and we would be glad
to see you shine. We would be delighted if you could
be there in 'The Best Tenth' of the Secondary Board Exam
and bring laurels to our school. So, don't spoil your life.'

'Nastasya Kanya Gati', a few teachers would taunt
expressing their speculations and worry.

Her love and firmness made me so stubborn,
made me so strong that nothing could stop me
get a First Division in the High School Final that year/1969,
retaining my usual First Position in the school
with sixty percent marks in English and ninety seven in Maths,
though a rival, one Pati Rath, had made arrangements to spoil
my Optional Mathematics Paper through threatening goons,
hired to disturb me just before the Exam began.
The Paper was not so difficult, but to my dismay,
I wrote it in conflicting minds apprehending confrontation

God knows what would have happened
had not my uncle, Rabindranath Samantaray,
come to my rescue that fateful afternoon!
It was a great relief to see him there at Unit-1 Centre Gate
and my last Paper went well.
The goons, turned out to be his old students,
stood subdued and calm, cobras calming down
to enter their cane crates subdued by the snake charmer.

The year I joined the local college, I would go
to the village Post Office before the Post Bags were opened
and would search for her letters with great anxiety and ecstasy
lest her letters should fall into wrong hands.
Her letters were my treasure, my pleasure.
So precious were our letters to us as we poured into it all
that was there in our heart and the wonders of our universe.

Alas, a day came as in most unsuccessful affairs!
Her letters stopped coming, I know not why.
The link was snapped, the link was shattered.
Our dreams dried. Our dreams died.
Did I say anything wrong anytime to hurt her feelings?
Was she taken to be kept under strict vigil
in some unknown destination, I knew not where,
like Prospero carrying Miranda across the ocean
sailing to an unknown island? I am not sure.
I was left to stumble and be humbled.

She must be seventy now,
happy in her world with lots of grandchildren
and I am seventy three, happy too with mine.
Though we are destined to live apart,
I am glad that she didn't have to face
the strains my wife came across living through
and managing to adjust in our strenuous days
with her simplicity and home keeping art,
the graceful daughter of a rich Landlord
with richness of heart,
amusingly accepting and digesting my Bohemian Part.

A poet doesn't die in despair what may come;
his creative zeal keeps him warm,
keeps him unwavering and firm.