The Love Song of Mugoo and Gugoo

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.