Daljit Nagra

Mugoo was a sweeper boy and the cleanest of the sweeper caste. He would leap at the blush of dawn to clean the paths and the steps spotless. Gugoo was a bootmaker girl who made boots. Gugoo was higher caste than Mugoo. By rights he was the floor and she was the foot that trod. Yet after work, while the boys and girls played at tug of war, wrestling, or archery, shy boy Mugoo and shy girl Gugoo would draw the boys and girls. The children smiling at the shining visions would hug Mugoo and Gugoo. Then that couple would bury the drawings for fear their elders feel scandalized. In manhood for Mugoo and womanhood for Gugoo, how hard that Gugoo thread boots for her father when she had no golden stitch for the gaping hole in her soul. How hard that Mugoo scrub the lanes! Who dare be swept away from the law of caste by the foul stamp and passport of besotted love? Yet the hairs at their ears, their nipples, bomped by a mere sultana breeze. Then the swirling night when they’d escape for Arabia than stay near-far    ... In Mugoo and Gugoo Love was a rabbit leaping on a radish when they became runaway lovers! Like hares under the sketched moon they bobbed in the grunch wind before the tossed river. Timorous Gugoo to timorous Mugoo, “Is it not said the pure of heart are able to turn water into solid crystal orbs?” “I have heard it Gugoo. Let us swim till the waters turn dot by dot into crystal orbs, slowly mounting up for us a solid path so we can bobble across.” That cub-like couple held on a first-ever daredevil cuddle. Then snuck a parched kiss! And fell into their dive across Punjab’s muggur of an ogre — the river Ravi! They were soon to learn the blunderous water was bigger than they; they were dabbing onwards on the spot; directionless comical pups; pawdawdling    ... Only Death was woken by their swallowed screams. At the sight of a cutesome pair brinked for his maw Death’s thin lips aah’d and coo’d. To tickle himself Death tipped a witching shriek in the eardrums of the ferryman, Charan, who was rank in a dream. Charan swore at Death, “What bastard panchod is unheroing my dream? I was the River God riding the turmeric sea when the fisher king’s red bill fished me up a buxom masala mermaid!” Death hushed Charan. Bundled him into the boat. Charan, still swearing, fished for a scream-trail, for bunny-like feet in the sudden dead-stop river    ... Next morning, by the prophecy of the snake-priest, the villagers arrived at the shame-faced riverbank. Charan, in his guzzy saffron turban, was blaring at the crowd about a passion crime. Huffing too had arrived the muscly cobbler and sweeper fathers. All heard Charan, “I am my own King of the Sticks! I row two weeks that way to the flowers of Kashmir the gold-haired men with their bloated bags of honey, and one week that way for the spices of Samarkand with the red-fingered sellers of kalonji, saffron, jeera. Today I catch by the feet a fresh parable of a kutcha- pucka business. I sing it for only one rupee each!” All looked down by Charan’s sandal’d feet. Dared to be rolled in the same shivering blanket (like a chapati rolled around saag paneer) yet fearing to be parted, yet tenuously panting were Mugoo and Gugoo! The frail couple like shy red squirrels, “O father, we love you. But. Most we are    ... loving this: this that is my soul’s mirror. Mugoo is my Gugoo: Gugoo is my Mugoo.” The bony youths clung sauced together. Stiffed for the glooping apart. The bootmaker father been crunching his own fists, the sweeper father been hurling daggers from his eyes, as the crowd fell silent, the fathers spoke as one, “What draws them out of caste, their underhand idle drawings. Such fancy is inking good for nothing.” Gugoo and Mugoo raised their necks, “If all hearts were good for nothing, could love from each for each blow as one?” The apricot breeze blew a soft cadence but could it push the dominion of the communal mind past its bound and daily utility? Could sweet nothings clear the world free of blood fear? Of sweet-faced Mugoo and Gugoo in a threadbare pleading, “Do not part us.” From their mild rhetoric and politic of Love the hills and valleys had swooned into blossoms of heaven, and had set the scene with gaudiest cheeks. So who dare part them? O Love, be roused, take arms and wound for the cause of love! Or at least shackle the shadows that deepened into that tinsy couple.