سنڈیسے آتے ہیں Sandese Aate Hain — The Messages Keep Coming

The messages keep coming, and they torment us. A letter arrives, and it asks and goes: when will you come home, when will you come home? Write when you will come. Without you, this house is empty, empty.

The refrain does its work with the doubled words. Soon a soona, empty empty, is the sound of a house with one person missing from it, and the doubling is the song's signature. The question is asked twice, ghar kab aaoge, and then sharpened, likho kab aaoge, write when you will come. The messages tarpate hain, they torment, and the torment is the love: the question is unbearable precisely because it is the only thing the letters contain.

سندیسہ sandese

messages sent with somebody travelling

چٹھی chitthi

a letter

سونا soona

empty, with nobody in it

Some darling one, some mad one, has written to us and asked us. Someone's breaths asked, someone's heartbeat, someone's bangles, someone's bracelets, someone's kohl, someone's garlands. The fragrant mornings asked, the restless evenings, the lonely nights, the unfinished words, the longing arms, and the longing eyes asked too: when will you come home? Write when you will come. Without you, this heart is empty, empty.

The passage turns the beloved into a catalogue of her own parts, and every part asks. The device is the folk song's list, and Javed Akhtar extends it until the list becomes the woman: breath, heartbeat, bangle, bracelet, kohl, garland, mornings, evenings, nights, words, arms, eyes. Each item is a small metonymy, and the refrain's answer changes in the last line: this time it is the dil, the heart, that is empty, not the house. The beloved has moved the emptiness indoors.

متوالی matwaali

one who goes about intoxicated with living

چوڑی choodi

a glass bangle

کنگن kangan

a heavy bracelet, usually metal

گجرا gajra

a string of flowers wound into the hair

The loving ones, our friends, have written this to us and asked. Our villages asked, the mango shade, the old banyan, the raining clouds, the fields and threshing floors, the tired meadows, the spring vines, the swaying vines, the swinging swings, the intoxicated flowers, the bursting buds, and the lanes of the village asked: when will you come home? Write when you will come. Without you, the village is empty, empty.

The passage does for the village what the last one did for the beloved. The catalogue is all geography now: mango shade, banyan, clouds, fields, vines, swings, flowers, buds, lanes. The village is a list of the places a boy grew up in, and each one asks the question that only a soldier hears. The change in the refrain's last line, gaaon soona, the village empty, widens the emptiness from the house to everything, which is the passage's point: the soldier is missed by the geography itself.

کھلیان khaliyaanon

threshing floors

بسنتی basanti

of spring; the yellow of mustard flower

بیل belon

creepers, vines

چٹکنا chatakti

bursting open, cracking apart

Sometimes a letter of a mother's love, of love's own Ganga, arrives, and it brings with it my childhood days, the games of the courtyard, the shade of the dupatta, the tika of kohl, the lullabies in the nights, the softness in the hands, the love in the eyes, the worry in the words. Scolding from the outside, love from the inside: that is what mother, the goddess, does. And in every letter my mother asks: when will you come home? Write when you will come. Without you, the courtyard is empty, empty.

The passage is the song's heart, and it earns the position by what it carries. The letter of the mother brings the whole childhood with it: the games, the dupatta's shade, the tika, the lullabies, the soft hands, the worried words. The line about the scolding is the song's most precise portrait: bigaadna upar se, mohabbat andar se, harsh on the outside, love within. And the mother asks the same question everyone asks, but the refrain's answer changes once more: the courtyard, aangan, is empty. The house, the heart, the village, the courtyard: the song has moved the emptiness back to where it started, which is where the mother is.

ممتا mamta

a mother's love, as its own kind of feeling

ٹیکہ tika

a mark set on the forehead

کاجل kaajal

kohl, made from lamp soot

دیوی devi

a goddess

Oh wind that passes by, tell me, will you do this much for me? Go to my village, give my greetings to my friends. In my village there is a lane where my beloved lives: give her the cup of my love. A little further from there is my house, and in my house is my old mother. Touch my mother's feet and give her her son's name. Oh passing wind, take my message to my friends, my beloved, my mother. Go and deliver it. I will come back, I will come back, to my village, in its shade. I will keep the promise made by a mother's dupatta, the village banyan, someone's kohl. I will come one day.

The passage is the soldier's reply, and it is entrusted to the wind, the one messenger that cannot be stopped at the border. The route is drawn precisely: the lane of the beloved, the cup of love, then the mother's house, the feet touched, the son's name. The wind is asked for the two messages, and the vow follows: main vaapas aaunga, twice, then the promise kept in the currency of the earlier passages, the dupatta, the banyan, the kohl. The song's last line is its answer to every letter: main ek din aaunga, I will come one day. The question and the answer are the same length, and the answer is a promise, not a date.

دلربا dilruba

the one who steals your heart

جام jaam

a cup, the wine in it

پیغام paighaam

a message