Retreat

 यह रात है जब तारे एक अकेले चाँद का अनुसरण करते हैं और परियां नाव में कूद जाती हैं आकाश में घर लौटने के लिए अंतिम नौका पकड़ने के लिए। मैं बेदम हूँ हवा का पीछा। गति कम करो; मुझे पकड़ने दो। चलो भागो नहीं। बारिश मेरी पीठ पर वार कर रही है; मैं लथपथ हूँ, हड्डियों से काँप रहा हूँ। अविवेकी, बारिश का स्पर्श, एक सारथी की तरह अभिनय किया, मुझे आपके शब्द का अनुमान लगाने के लिए कह रहा है एक सुराग के लिए सिर्फ एक स्पर्श छोड़कर।

  THE RISING OF THE MOON· It has been a while since the rising of the moon, a moon that shines on the bogs and valleys, and the sands of the deserts that burnt in the day. It is luminosity, a sheer delight The light has conquered the dense body of the tree, The light finds its way into everything dense as does water breaking through the surfaces of rocks. The moonlight comes in waves, in tides, and swirls around the earth. Nothing is left untouched. The moon on certain nights is determined to conquer the sky and the earth, the sea, the sands and the rivers, and bind them all in a harvest sheaf using every strain of magic in its band. On one such night he came with a torch, and flashed a shaft of the light on the tree trunks and the roots scanning the surfaces and delving deep into the roots. In one hand the torch, a magic wand in the other, he was stunned to find a different world. A distant tower beyond the lake had cast its shadow and the ripples smiled in peace. A butterfly, li...

  Hadn't been for an Afghan connection, the history of Indian beauty products might have been different, including the name of the first Indian beauty cream. The year probably was 1919. The world was trying to recover painstakingly from the damages of a devastating war. The Spanish Flu had added salt to the injury, and India wasn't exempted from all of it either. Mohammad Zaheer Shah, the last king of the Durrani dynasty of Afghanistan came to India. An item in his tour itinerary was a meeting with Indian merchants in Bombay. Among them was a perfumer from Rajasthan called Ibrahim Patanwala. He had brought a gift hamper of perfumes, hair oils, talcum powders and several other products of his company for the king. Among those was a tiny bottle of a thick, pearly white liquid without a label. The curious king asked what it was and came to know that it was the newest product of the Patanwala perfumery which was yet to be named. He took a bit of the cream from the bottle and said t...

  "Saaqi chaman mein aa ke agar benaqaub ho, kalian bane surahian, shabnam sharaab ho." "If she came to the garden in spring and lifted the veil awhile the buds would be my chalice and the dew of the morning would be wine." And she came, a distraught being, the saddest creature in the garden green. A self portrait by an artist who refused to paint with the shades of idyllic dreams. The woman who saw her own visage, and reflected back on the sky the light that shattered the mirror. A trial at being herself, a trip across the planes, introspective, are bound to dissolve the mist. She stood among the thorns and touched the rose. She stopped the hand that held the chalice thought to be a glass of wine. She snatched and spilled the contents to the root of the rose and the woodbine.