Breathless- Shankar Mahadevan

When I met someone, it seemed to me that
a season of songs, a rain shower of colors pervaded my whole world;
the whole atmosphere now scented by a whirlwind of fragrance,
all the breezes now staggering drunkenly.
and someone in every direction, every element.
All the world's ways were altered.
Elation waking, throbbing in your breath;
love songs on your lips;
dreams in your eyes;
in your dreams all those past moments
when someone came, and I recognized her (as my own).
This someone settled into my heart; how can I explain to you
how I found her?
The locks of hair scattered over her lovely face;
it seemed like behind that cloud-like mass
suffused with dewdrops, a flower bloomed.
Like a moon hidden in a cloud,
and the moonlight emerging
like luminscent dawn from the shade of night:
an ocean of dreams in her eyes,
love overflowing in waves, like a sheet of stars,
speaking words like showers of pearls,
like somewhere the moon's anklets jingle,
Like a tinkling glass goblet.
or the playing of sitaar and flute,
like singing in a moonlit night,
like the soft speaking of a secret.
What words they were,
what meetings they were!
When I didn't know how a heart could be destroyed by someone's gaze,
and what sort of goal it is to obtain one's desire,
and how a moon can come down to earth,
and how, sometimes, it can seem that the darkness of heaven settles right here.
She told me, she explained to me:
we who meet, were destined to meet like this;
we who bloom, were destined to bloom like this;
the bonds of many births, the relationships of many births:
we're soulmates, so we meet like this.
This flowed into my ears like honey;
it washed into my eyes like the meaning of my dreams.
How beautiful was that world of dreams, how splendid
what what the world of dreams had to say! But in reality, it didn't exist.
The dreams passed, my eyes opened, my wits returned;
I saw, I knew, the one who'd sometimes come.
I recognized her, I fixed her in my heart.
and now my heart shall stay lonely, lonely.
I know neither desire nor longing;
no longer have I any dreams.
Now, my days, my nights,
in them is only pleading and in them is only talk of the pain of grief
and cries for help.
Now I have nothing;
just myself and the memories of love...


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