Translation

Nov, 2002

Rukhsar was a girl next door. She lived in an other backward society with a general forward thinking. Hated her environment. She was 19 years old and I was just 13. A six years age gap but yet we were good freinds. She never acted like a neighbourhood sister. She always treated me as a freind as she had a modern thinking. It felt good.

I was fascinated to her because she loved books. She always wanted to learn english but she was a girl, a muslim and financialy weak. So she has has to satisfy herself with a hindi- urdu medium government college. Enligh medium school creates money problems, co- ed problems, skirt problems, religious problems and family problems. A muslim girl should be in burkha, they say. Who? Her parents, society and religion.

They say a girl should only learn sewing, cooking, home science, arts and religious texts. And yes literature, thank God they permitted literature to girls!

Anyway she had 2,3 Shakespeare books which were one page english- one page hindi texts. And in the same way she read Milton and Byron. She had plenty of story books and novels in Urdu. She was not good in studies at her school but always dreamt of living the lives of the characters in those novels. I borrowed books from her and read the english parts. One day I told her that these english parts are more richer than their hindi translations.

"I know, but how can I help it and I am happy with it. At least I am able to grasp the very soul of Miltons and Voltaires verses. But someday I'll explore their richness of the language. Their style of expressing... " she stopped in the midst and lost in dreams.

"Expressing what?" I asked.

"Oh, you wont understand!"

"And why so?"

"You are too young."

"Oh, shut up I know english well."

"My dear, you may know english well, but yet you can't grasp the concept, the soul of a phrase. Look, ok tell me the meaning of this line:-
'He looked at Raina, and she blushed in shame.'
yes tell."

I thought and replied, "What! a man looks a woman named Raina and just blushed in shame. That's it!"

"And why she blushed with shame?" she asked.

"Maybe she has commited something wrong any crime."

"And my dear what is that 'crime'?" she smiled.

"I don't know, it is not mentioned here, tell me!"

"Oh, you can understand it yourself once you grow mature enough." she pinched on my cheek and lost in books. I returned home.

I wrecked my brain and oh yes I knew! I knew that that crime was 'love'. And she wanted to read Miltons style of expressing 'love' in it's poems. But what's so special in this word, 'love'!