NILAMATHI... effort to translate Agara Muthalvan..

Moon of Earth

     Agara Muthalvan's Nilamathi

                Yesterday became the longest day I was with her. We were conversing as if the spring walk of youth descended from there and woke up in both of us. Effortlessly her eyes swayed as getting wet willfully in the drizzle. I was counting her strong live fingers. Those moments still startle me. In the disfigured life we had been like the grey pigeons flying in moving firmament.

                There were cooked edibles and two shirts in the parcel  given by Nilamathi at the end of our last meeting. The weight of our parting tiredness weighed hard in that parcel invisibly. Whenever i go on leave from the war field i used to meet her. This meet had always been powerful. The tears lit in her eyes torment me..

                Our separation is torture of time. She understood that. I had already prevailed on her a lot of times not to plead to God for my immortality. To fear to die in our living land is like getting bored to live. i told her: " Nilamathi I stand in  warfront. Do not think about me. I feel humiliated and worried when you who think i will die a martyr's death one day, is tired. i am in movement only. You are the love of a warrior.  Do not cry over wounds and deaths"

                She stoked on my mouth telling " Do not talk like this"

                I kissed her cheeks. Tears moved. it was like the bloom of a flower on a bad weather. When her tresses scattered in blush, it looked as if the waves of the ocean pulled me all over. When we were exchanging kisses, war crafts roared piercing the wind. War planes which were exclusively meant for death roamed in skies like giant birds holding gigantic bomb heads. Shivering like the scattered figments of a life, Nilamathi crasped my hands..

                "Mukilan, Don't we have any peace for our own in this earth?  Do we have to live amidst all like this?" Her questions soaked in cries subsumed in the life destined to be cursed.

                I hugged her. Sympathy becomes intense to questions which do not have any answer. Over our head, time driven shades exhausted in twilight. Nilamathi’s bidding farewell time was waiting in front of her. She yearned to discuss more in this place which had already started to become dark.

                “Let’s go. We spent a lot of time”

                “Let’s stay for some more time, Mukilan”

Like small wounds, stars were glittering in the dark sky. Birds converged on the top of tree where we stayed. The worst silence of earth frightens the atmosphere. The long breath of the night merges with wind in a strange sound. Like a flame her breath spread on me. I kissed her to honor this night. Darkness of earth ate Nilamathi like dermite when she went on showering me with kisses shedding tears ceaselessly.

                She is saving me inside the darkness of star studded sky. Shedding off the sand from her skirt  she rises and walks along in the single road tightly embracing me. After this meet, the wetness of her feet would bloom as pasalai in the sands of wild date palm trees. The movements of her lisping stories stay cool in my lower ab. Her cheeks glow like yellow badges. Longbreath swelled, spread and filled her eyes.

                “ I pestered you like a child , Mukilan. Sorry”

                “Nilamathi, you have rights for everything. All these adoring thoughts of you stay rooted pleasant in me. When the unripe wild dates scattered in the place where we sit and chat ripens, your kisses will lie there as nectars”

                “ Mukilan, when will be the next holiday?”

                ”what question is this? Can we date the holiday from a warfield? I will meet you when i come. Do not think about me. If i die, that will be a valiant death”

                When we parted, autumn showed in our eyes. My agony was like the wings of long breath song of the wild sparrow. Her looks were like the child dreaming in the midst of heaped miseries. It hid from me those startling moments in the dream. We becoming lovers exchanging flowers in the lawns where bullets and bombs explode is the cruel shade implanted on fate. Nilamathi, we search and get breeze in the tempest fields. Our lives glow with blood and wounds both inside and outside. In our routines death is generous like flowers..

                “I am whirling inside the smokes of Warfield like the withered leaves of summer. I can feel the meaning of all your turbulent deep fears. Under this sky, now i part from you..For everything, we have to live with the death. Tomorrow at dawn, i will stand under the sky with my gun”

                Three months had passed.

                Like a warrior hates a silent war-field, she too would not like my being away from her. In the continuous war raged for four days we lost two of our comrades in our team. Our deaths are dreams to the sleep of the earth. Those love messages leaked between her fingers clasping me, bite me like vipers. Inside my bunker, my fingers are continuously on the trigger of my gun. She is thinking of me who is raining bullets to sustain the land and respect. I have the body carrying the life readied for death. Her life is also with me. As if to take stock, loud bangs of bombs establish itself every morning.

                Yesterday at midnight there was heavy fighting. Military has made a leap forward shattering our check barricades. Militants fought hard standing in the front. Bullets and bombs flew like firefly all over the field. All those trees which saved us fell. Like guns, midnights are also for warring.

                The noise of arms has ferocious chapters. Like the thoughts of Nilamathi encircling me, throughout midnight bombs had surrounded us. Rockets poured as continuous downpour. Blood of the militants flooded. We started to retreat. Abandoning in the bunker, the food prepared by Nilamathi and the shirts brought by her, i started to withdraw. I am going to lament over this forever in future. I have accepted loss of blood and loss of life. But i should not have abandoned this. A warrior has to preserve and protect his love gifts as he protects the country.

                I became deeply worried. Clasping Nilamathi’s hands i should kiss her and tell that i left the shirts she brought for me, in the warfield without wearing them even once. First she will burn like the dry and fiery coco tree with pseudo anger and then would bloom like a red hibiscus to kiss me and compensate all the losses done to the earth.

                If i could get leave i can tell her. Perchance i die a valiant death? I can not understand me. Like the words of debris, i hear my own name. In the middle of sea of death i am the life unswum. Silenced war sounds are only temporary. I am not going to believe that silence has grace. I do not have any silence. This torments me like the painful cry of the little sparrows caught under the broken trees. Moments of her startling eyes crying on my thought , shake me. Her image falls on me like the light of a sniffer.

                Sun sets red in the sky. i have to eat something in the available rest. We have withdrawn. To day night there will be more fire. Only the earth is getting dark. Not our lives. Enemies change guards. Sound of the choppers reveal that. This is the front clarion call for war. Three militants have joined me. Their eyes are full of light. Efflorescence of courage!

                “I am Mukilan. What is your name”

                “ karumukilan”

                “ Vanarasan”

                “ kanal maran”

                ”Have you stood in the war previously?”

                Kanalmaran replied: “ i am only new bro. These two are in the warfield from Mannar”

                “ i just asked. Is it not good to know? Karumukilan, i heard that you fight standing tight. Seems army will proceed. Our sources let us know that the army will wage a small fight this night. Let us not budge an inch. We will fight tight”

                It happened so. But the war started from planes. In the front there were four warplanes aiming at us. They attacked us with human size bombs. The night was torn into pieces by the atrocity of arms and flew pages by pages and buried. Bombs fell and exploded to kill the life of earth with rigour. Embracing our guns on our chests, our team was taking biscuits in the bunker. Even before recovering and reassuring from the attack of warplanes, enemies started firing on us. I felt that our retreat yesterday had given a new vigour to enemy. Bullets met each other in the war. Our guns always move in a rhythm. We can not operate a gun like a small boy going in the dark with fear closing his eyes. Our concerted shoots go towards the direction of attack.  Missiles fell spitting fire. Militants injuring becomes the dawn at east in the warfield. Fight started to open its wide mouth. As if there is no trace of darkness in the earth light spilled from the continuous explosion of bombs.

                Militants fight with blood oozing ceaselessly. Walking on the pool of blood unwounded militants proceed forward. I order. Proceed. Vanarasan fell with his neck cut like a blade cutting plantain tree. He was killed by cluster bomb with a size of a dining plate. I lifted my head when he fell and in between us the shiver of Nilamathi infected me. I moved away from there. This is how our life passes bodies. Wounds filled up.

                Enemies were retreating from one side. We proceed even after falling. “Attack. Attack.. the pain of loss will be seen in war. Beat.. beat”. Orders fly like bullets. Tanks of the enemy move as if the fat leg of war walks along. Raining of bombs.. Rain wets the earth. But kills us.

                We pass the burning lands like fire. We proceed. Reach the abandoned place. After some time we still proceed further and recover more places. “ Hear.. hear the sound of retreating tanks” wind sooths the ears.  I proceed in the war field. Under the protection of a tree i wage fight. I hear that Karumugilan fell in the war. Life and death is filled with informations.

                I proceed towards the abandoned bunker. There only lie the weight of Nilamathi’s parting tiredness in the form of edibles and shirts! It could have been captured by enemies. This present state insults me. I have lost my love’s gift to the enemies. Flame of war grows tall. War planes change directions to attack. Guns of militants continue to fire from the galaxy of blood. Corpses of enemies lay burnt. Our proceeding legs cave in to bloods.

                I take shelter in a tree to operate my gun. Besides my right eye i feel pain like stone pelt. Sand figments could have gone in. I felt numb.. Tears or blood? Tears are not red. It is blood. When the earth was lit with fire it became dark to me. My eyes alone converged darkness. I tightly embraced my gun with my chest. When my arms loosened and my breath disintegrated i perplexed in blood. Sand stuck me like Nilamathi. Like I abandoned the dresses brought by her and the edibles she made for me,  i also abandoned myself in the war field. When the swaying figure of Nilamathi spread on me like fire, war broke out more fiercely.