Aaschi

a promise

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Thank you, from the deepest part of me!

‘Aaschi’ is a beautiful and unusual Bengali word. It’s used when you are leaving home - for work, for pleasantries, for whatever. You say it to the folks you are leaving behind. Instead of saying “I’m going” you say “Aaschi”, which means “I’m coming back.” And this one simple word becomes a promise to return, a pledge that the parting is temporary. In its intonation, meaning and feeling, it’s an intimacy.

She looked back and said “Aaschi”

and closed the door behind her.

Maybe it was just reflex,

maybe hope,

maybe, unwittingly, a promise.

Before leaving she’d sung a song.

She’d asked whether we wanted a happy one or a sad one.

I’d replied “A sad one.”

And she’d said “But I warn you,

it will break your heart.”

And I’d said “It’s already broken.”

How could I tell  her that as she sang,

it broke again.

.

So much of our life is a scurrying from ourselves,

so much of it is merely plucking its guitar string,

that when intimations of a full life come,

it becomes unbearable.

.

She’d not being particularly forthcoming,

nor had she volunteered intimacies,

she was just there, a beautiful presence,

sentient, searching for meaning,

even as the party’s whirlwind became a cesspool

and sucked individualities.

We saved ourselves by being the frayed edges,

by secretly knowing ways of surviving trajectories.

It’s then that she saw me properly  - 

kindred souls, she said, and laughed.

The vortex around was subsiding

but we already knew how to keep afloat -

we could recite Heather Nova lyrics by heart,

we both cried whilst reading poetry,

our favourite pastime was lying curled

in bed

reading.

And then we differed -

she said intent was rarely rewarded

that we are all driven by fate.

.

When the singing started, as it does at the end of

drunken evenings, in this city of intermittent joy,

we laughed through it all,

and I asked her to sing.

She asked whether I wanted a happy song or a sad one.

I replied “A sad one.”

And she said “But I warn you,

it will break your heart.”

And I said “It’s already broken.”

.

It was four in the morning, when she disengaged

from our conversation.

There was still someone strumming a guitar.

She got up and said “I have work to go to.”

And she smiled.

I’d never felt so fully alive in my entire life.

But I remembered what we’d not agreed upon,

so I asked “Will we meet again?”

She smiled, said nothing, picked up her purse.

She looked back and said “Aaschi”

and left.

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If you enjoyed this poem, here are some more, which talk of the infinite tenderness of love -

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