Ichamati…a river’s song.

The hour was close to a crescent moon’s midnight,
The darkness had engulfed Ichamati from my sight.
I lay awake, counting the splashing of the waves beyond,
I was hearing a rivers’ lore; I was struck by a magic wand.
Wearing the midnight’s cloak, the river sang a forlorn song,
Of pain drenched waters, creating ripples, gently flowing along.
I listened to the silent river, I was under its dark spell,
The story of a divide, a story the river herself could not tell.

Her two banks were hurting with piercing barbed wires,
She cried in pain as her bosom burned with seething fires.
Her shores had been divided and given different names,
To tear Ichamati apart, it was a cruelty soaked in shame.
Ichamati wanted to flow free, gushing ahead with the tide,
Yet the boats floating on her waters chose to take a side.
Two countries claimed a river, the river was but one,
Divided into two, it no more knew which way to run.
The sun, the moon, and the stars above were all the same,
But Ichamati’s two banks were called by different names.
They called it the borders, Ichamati knew not what it meant,
Her water still flowed deep, not sure which way to bend.

Not very far, flowed another river, a silent meandering flow,
Kalindi was its name, tying two countries in a shimmering bow.
Kalindi did not sing as loud, for it had seen Ichamati’s fate,
Two rivers, drew unmarked boundaries, on an invisible slate.
The rivers raced through the night, humming their soulful tale,
For in the shimmering golden dawn, unsung stories often pale.
Ichamati and Kalindi melts into the Mohona day and night,
The rivers meet and get drowned forever, unseen in open sight.
Together, they give all their tides, of waters high and low,
To birth a new river, Vidya dhari, and gently set it free to flow.
Vidya dhari flows, unaware of how boundaries on a river grew,
Vidya dhari would never know the pain Kalindi and Ichamati knew.

In the darkness of that night, my Ichamati had come to me,
A river bound by many chains but with the strength to set free .
Through every night, for centuries, the river sings this song,
Whispering tales of fathomless pain, yet she gently flows along.
Tales of unending greed, power, shame, and man’s darkest side.
Those sad tales washes away with every hours surging tide.
At dawn, Ichamati breaks the spell of the night and becomes a meandering river,
At dawn, Ichamati is the Goddess, Ichcha -mati, the benevolent giver.