Linespeak - Riverspeak

2011-03-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

বসন্ত আগুনের নাম।
বিদারিত আকাশের বুকে
জ্বলে যেমনি বিদ্যুল্লেখা,
বসন্ত এলে তোমার স্মৃতি
আর তোমার অধরা হাসি
জ্বলে ওঠে আমার বুকে।
বসন্ত আগুনের নাম।

বসন্ত প্রলাপেরও নাম
রাতে তোমার হাত খুঁজি
আমার হাতের ছায়ায়,
এই ভেবে শুধু, শীত বহুদিন
হলো চলে গেছে বাক্সের ভেতরে।
অন্ধকারে অভিযান
আর লোভ, প্রবল হলেও, সখী,
শুষ্ক গ্রীষ্মকাল অনন্ত হয়ে থেকে যায়
বুকে, কন্ঠে, হৃদয়ে,
আর খোলা জানালার চারপাশে।
ছাইপাশে বেঁধে রাখি গতির জীবন।
বসন্ত প্রলাপেরও নাম, সখী।

বসন্ত মৃত্যুরই নাম আসলে
বসন্তে আগুনছাপা অক্ষর
আকাশের কন্ঠ বেয়ে নামে আসে
দিনান্তের নিস্পৃহ নৈঃশব্দের মতো,
কাতর নির্ঘুম রাত্তিরের স্বেদের মতো।
বসন্তে প্রলাপ যারা গায় পথে ঘাটে
ভটভটি বোট থেকে নিশাচর বাইকের
ছবিকাটা অবশেষের অমিলতায়,
তাদেরও বলে দেওয়াটা উচিত
শুধু এক চিলতে বিকেল
আর কাঠফাঁটা রদ্দুরের মিশ্রন
এই বসন্ত মৃত্যুরই নাম আসলে।

SAFFRON METROPHOBIA - THE BOOK OF MAKE-BELIEVE NARRATIVES

2010-08-06T02:12:00.000-07:00

Another post for poetry. And this I had thought I would never do again. But Love makes fools of us. All the time. And about love I have one original comment, if it is actually that. I feel it myself that one can very well be in love with the idea of being in love.

Fantasies? Yes. That is very much an example of the act of fantasising. What else can you do? When fear makes us indulge in inviolate tomfoolery, we have nothing else to do but fantasise. And poetry remains, as usual, 'a way of happening', a way to 'survive' in the embrace of these fantasies. The poems that follow in this post on my blog as well as the ones that will follow in succeeding posts are just that, narratives of make-believe, of my fantasies, and also of my memories. Memories of things that happened, and of things that never did.

Blogging has always been a most refreshing sport. Always. Most of my books began their journeys as 'attendant lords' on this blog. After Bordering Poetry happened, I had resolved to stop doing this. But then, I could not resist the lure and so here is Saffron Metrophobia for you all.

All of you, my friends, my readers (the numbers do keep swelling in ones and twos), to you I give this bundle of stolen memories which resemble fantasies. Sometimes, I do not know which is the more apt name, memories or fantasies. And I leave it to the reader to finalise about it.

SAFFRON METROPHOBIA

MAKE-BELIEVE NARRATIVES OF LOVE AND LONGING

OF SAFFRON METROPHOBIA

All those fears of knowing too much,
all those moments of unknowing love,
all those stories and all those names
that are no more – I hold them close

as I always would,

a handful of light, or a lungful of smoke –
I nurture them all with one single eye
and name them all in the hours of the heart.
I call them the silent whispers of the night.

I name them sweet, I name them dead.
I name them hope and I name them red.

I call them the past, I call them the end,
I name them eternally, I have but one name

like Man and mankind, I name them thus,
saffron, so saffron – saffron metrophobia.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU AND ME

They call us friends, lovers even,
and that is definitely no mistake –

for polar properties vouchsafe our togetherness,
with all the difference in the world, in you, in me.

You steal poems like poets would steal a heart.
I watch them weep in those dark, distant clouds,
those living souls who had been rulers once
of nothing and had also been slaves of the art.

But I steal poems like Auden wrote shields.
I love them like I love myself, or even more.
I wait for the skies to write things anew
and still call myself the saffronised monk.

You would grow flowers of song and hate,
as you say, while I would watch them grow.

FOR MUSIC AT HARDWAR

‘Ad agio’

Only saffron eyes and all things other
than that remain, brown, black and
earthy and so green, green as can be.

Saffron peeks in like the mendicant
walking the roads of this holy town
with bowl and staff and iron tears.

And down beneath its holy facade
Lies holier thoughts, words unsaid,
unsung waitings and wanting too -

Saffron is a colour full of the darkest light.
Do not hate saffron – do not love its love.

For saffron is all around and above,
wherever there was once pain
and now is nothing
but rich emptiness.

LAWS OF LOVE

Law, said Auden, is like love, do not like law,
for the law likes love, and love, so they say,
hates the law –

Law, I said, is not at all like love. Love happens
as a way of being, and is an act of becoming love
after all, when rituals die with the saffron air of joy –

Saffron, said I, is the colour we made love to
and were hated by, hated and laughed at and jeered at
by our shadows across corridors and stairs and guitars
and car tyres and crows on the heights of Olympus
that had been K. B.'s itinerant library and magnificent home.

Saffron, said I, happens with each breath.
So saffron shall be death too, and loved as Love
that shall die and be a speck of dust in the sky

SAFFRON METROPHOBIA AND OTHER POEMS

2010-06-04T03:02:00.000-07:00

Since I do not love roses
the way you are supposed to
love and hate them, I know
I am slowly turning sane.

Since there will no houses
waiting for the ones who leave,
I know the best way for them
is to walk around once and be still.

Since there will still be noises
in the dark, in the recesses
of the heart that is often lost,
I know I cannot hope to be silent.

O Captain, O my Captain

2010-05-29T02:20:00.000-07:00

ওয়াল্ট হুইটম্যান এর কবিতা

হে ক্যাপ্টেন,আমার ক্যাপ্টেন

হে ক্যাপ্টেন,আমার ক্যাপ্টেন,
সেই ভয়াবহ যাত্রার আজ শেষ চরণ -
ওই জাহাজ যে সব ঝঞ্ঝা জয় করেছে
লিপ্সার ধন আজ হাতে এসেছে,
তট সন্নিকটে, কত ঘন্টা নিনাদ
অদূরেই শোনা যায়, শোনা যায়
উল্লাসের জনকন্ঠ, দুঃসাহসী জাহাজ ওই আসে!

দ্রৃঢ়তম জাহাজ ওরে!
বজ্রদেহী জাহাজ উড়ে যায় -
তবে হ্রৃদয় আমার, তিক্ত ক্ষিপ্ত হ্রৃদয় -
রক্তে স্নাত হ্রৃদয় আমার,
কোথায় আমার ক্যাপ্টেন!
ডেকের বুকে পতিত আমার হ্রৃদয়,
আমাদের ক্যাপ্টেন, নায়ক সবাকার,
শবাকার আমার নেতা - শিথিল, নিরব, নিশ্চুপ -

2010-05-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

LANGUAGE MARTYRS’ DAY - THE INFAMOUS INCIDENT OF 19TH MAY, 1961, SILCHAR - A BRIEF RECONNOITRE OF ITS CONTEXTS

CONTEXTS AND CONDITIONS

The contexts and immediate history of the Language Movement in Assam go a long way back to the beginning of the sixties decade of the last century when at the session of the State Legislative Assembly held on 3rd March, 1960, the then Chief Minister of Assam, Sri Bimala Prasad Chaliha discoursed on the issue of Assamese being declared the official language for the state of Assam. There were of course other related contexts which date back to even as early as 1947, during the time when the first Legislative Assembly was convened in Assam. The present essay, however, studies an introduction to the incident of the infamous date, 19th May 1961, celebrated thenceforth by popular acclaim as Bhasha Shaheed Divas (Language Martyrs Day), not only in Barak Valley which had been the land of its origin but also in Bengali cultural spaces across the country and the world. Reportedly, in spite of his pro-Assamese hegemony stance, Chaliha did not directly present his argument in favour of the Assamese language. He stressed that only when the indigenous linguistic minorities of Assam would agree unanimously regarding the declaration of Assamese as the official state language could the issue be taken up in earnest and brought into effect. Chaliha stated that the issue of a state language was not to be decided on the basis of linguistic minority but on the firm foundation of acceptability. But the chief minister’s statement had quite the opposite and as history shows, a far reaching effect on the contemporary socio-political scenario. Overzealous activists who besought the predominance of the Assamese culture over all other existing cultural and linguistic groups within the territorial boundaries of Assam took up the matter and within a few days, the entire region was rife with propaganda for the institution of Assamese as the official state language. Non-historically, however, one can comment that Chaliha’s seemingly democratically laden statement had almost been a beckoning for such a movement to follow. But then, such conclusions are not the end of the present attempt.

On 16th April 1960, following the movement that had surged up in the Brahmaputra valley, a call for a counter movement was launched in Silchar by the local populace to protest against this infringement of constitutional and human rights. It took the form of a public assembly that was attended by scores of local people and almost the entire intelligentsia and political community of the Barak valley. Other similar activities followed and throughout the rest of that year, several public and socio-cultural organizations launched their own efforts to this effect. In the month of July that year, following a police attack on a students’ demonstration in Guwahati (3rd July 1960) in which a student named Ranjit Barpujari was shot dead, the entire Brahmaputra Valley region erupted in flames of communal violence. Thus began the infamous Bongal Kheda Andolan(“Banish the Bongal” movement – Bongal being the name for Bengalis in Assamese, often used in a derogatory sense) which resulted in the mass displacement of thousands of Bengalis across the state. Arson and public murders marked the so called ‘patriotic’ movement. Non-Assamese, mostly Bengali, students in the University of Gauhati, Dibrugarh Medical College and Assam Medical College were forced to flee with barely their lives. Such was the intensity of the zealots that they spared not a single head which had not been shaded by the gamosa (a symbol of Assamese identity, a small towel like piece of cloth akin to the Bengali gamchha) and which claimed not the Assamese language as its mother tongue. Throughout the next few months the unrest continued to fester and spread. Meanwhile the counter movement in protest against the Bongal Kheda Andolan and the predominance of the Assamese language as the state language continued unabated in areas like Shillong, Karimganj and Silchar. These were non-violent protests which obviously could not stem the tide of the violence directed against the non- Assamese populace of the state. In October that year, following a visit by a committee of parliamentarians under the leadership of Sri Ajit Prasad Jain to Assam, the central government at Delhi delegated Sri Govind Ballabh Panth to visit Assam and work out a solution to the communal unrest that had by then engulfed almost the entire state. Sri Panth participated in a series of meetings with representatives of the state government and leaders of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee as well as with those from other agencies like the Silchar Bar Association, Cachar District Congress Parishad and relief committees formed for the succour of victims of communal violence from the Brahmaputra Valley. But all that was in vain since all conciliatory efforts were shunned by the state government. In spite of all such aims towards a placation of the violence and the unrest, on 10th October that year, Sri Bimala Prasad Chaliha proposed the plan for what became the Language Bill later. In spite of efforts on all fronts, the influence of the Language Bill favouring the Assamese language exerted itself on all levels. What followed as a result was a mass protest against the biased attitude of the state government. People from all walks of life participated in vehement protest against the government’s dictum.

19TH MAY, 1961 – BHASHA SHAHEED DIVAS – THAT RED DAY

On 14th April 1961, the people of Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj observed Samkalpa Divas (Resolution Day) in protest against the injustice meted out by the state government against non-Assamese, particularly the Bengali speaking community, in Assam. A procession on foot that would span a major region around Silchar and Karimganj was organised and flagged off on 24th April. The satyagrahis who participated in the procession walked for miles during the next few days, crossing several villages and chalets till the final day on 2nd May. The procession lasted for nearly two hundred miles and was welcomed back at Silchar by several public leaders and hundreds of common men and women. A similar procession was also organised at Hailakandi later on. On 19th May, a call for a bandh was announced by the Cachar Zila Gana Sangram Parishad. What had begun the previous year as verbal or peaceful protests was now on the way to assume the status of a full fledged revolutionary movement. Picketers and volunteers on behalf of the Parishad sallied forth in the early morning of 19th May to ensure that the bandh was successful. Though the administration made every effort to curb the movement and to thwart the bandh yet the effort was a huge success. The police made mass arrests and tried to quell the revolutionaries. In Tarapur Railway Station, a crowd of satyagrahis had assembled on the railway tracks and were facing the repeated lathi charges of the police without giving up their place on the tracks. At around 2:30 pm, a Bedford truck bearing nine arrested satyagrahis from Kaatigorah was seen mending its way across the crowd in front of the railway station. The satyagrahis who till then had maintained their peaceful composure were instigated on seeing the administration’s treatment of their fellow activists and they broke out in loud protest. On seeing the situation take a turn for worse the policemen escorting the vehicle as well as the truck driver disappeared from the scene. Seizing the opportunity, someone (it is not known clearly who) set fire to the truck. A fire rescue team from the nearby relief quarters (housed in the premises of Sri Dhirendra Mohan Dev’s residence) rushed to the place and tried to bring the flames under control.

In a matter of a few minutes, the entire area around Tarapur was transformed into a veritable battlefield. Military and paramilitary forces arrived on the scene and began serial lathi charges against the gathered satyagrahis. Many of them tried to escape by fleeing for the nearby railway station. In the meanwhile, the police and other forces also assaulted the satyagrahis who had assembled on the railway tracks. Suddenly, without any prior warning, the armed forces opened fire on the unsuspecting and terrified satyagrahis. It was exactly 2:35 pm then. One after another, eleven people succumbed to their bullet injuries and became martyrs for the cause of their mother tongue. It might be noted here that the time elapsed between the commotion to break out in front of the railway station and the armed forces to arrive and open fire on the satyagrahis was astonishingly minuscule – only five minutes. The precision with which the entire operation was carried out by the armed forces makes one wonder at the apparent mechanism of it. The eleven people who died were –

1. Kanailal Niyogi 2. Chandicharan Sutradhar 3. Hitesh Biswas 4. Satyendra Deb 5. Kumud Das 6. Sunil Dey Sarkar 7. Tarani Deb Nath 8. Sachindra Paul 9. Birendra Sutradhar 10. Sukomal Purakayastha 11. Kamala Bhattacharjya

There were several others who fell under the assault of bayonets and lathis and were rushed for immediate treatment at the Silchar Civil Hospital. Many of their names and their details are no longer available. Though they did not die that terrible afternoon yet many of them were disfigured or maimed in that ruthless attack. The afternoon of that 19th May did not end with the terrible bloodbath. Within minutes of the shooting at the railway station, Hemanta Majumder (then a Subdivisional Officer at Silchar) declared curfew in the town. Accompanying him was Revati Paul (then Town Sub-Inspector). The dead and the wounded satyagrahis were rushed to the Red Cross Hospital and to the Silchar Civil Hospital by the people present there then while the news of the terrible act spread throughout the town. Local leaders like Sri Mohitosh Purakayastha and Smt. Jyotsna Chando made their way to the scene of violence with the Municipal ambulance. Six of the dead satyagrahis were dispatched to the Civil Hospital in that ambulance while many of the other wounded were rendered first aid at the residence of Sri Satindra Mohan Dev by a few doctors. The hospitals had started overflowing with the wounded or dead satyagrahis and the hospital compounds and corridors with thousands of indignant people, shocked beyond belief at the senseless violence perpetrated by the administration. All restraints had been abandoned – even the declaration of the curfew had had no effect on the inflamed spirit of the masses who flooded the streets to watch and to render their salutations to the great martyrs of the day who by their selfless sacrifice had ascended the portals of paradise and the mere memory of whose names had become hallowed. By that evening nine dead bodies from the firing at the railway station had been assigned to the custody of the hospital mortuary. The next day saw thousands of mourning people descend onto the streets to accompany the dead bodies of the martyred to their final resting place at the local crematorium. The air resounded with a drone of thousands of voices announcing their protest against the heinous and terrible act of dishonour that the administration had carried out the previous day. The nine dead martyrs received their last rites at the hands of a race which would forever be indebted to them for their sacrifice. These nine were Kanailal Niyogi, Chandicharan Sutradhar, Hitesh Biswas, Kumud Das, Sunil Dey Sarkar, Tarani Deb Nath, Sachindra Paul, Sukomal Purakayastha and Kamala Bhattacharjya. On 21st May, the day next, two more bodies, those of Birendra Sutradhar and Satyendra Deb, were rescued from the pond at the railway station and on the next day, they were carried to the crematorium in a befitting manner with hundreds of people following them.

Those few days of the language movement passed in a flurry of incidents but the impact of those few days has altered forever the lives of the people of this valley. Even today, with every passing year, the people of this valley await the achievement of the ambition that had been marked out by the satyagrahis so many years ago in 1961 - that of the recognition of Bengali as the official language of Cachar and other Bengali dominated areas of Assam. And very year brings them closer to the great Eleven, as every child, man and woman of this valley knows the martyrs; in feeling and in passion, in their love of the mother tongue.

2010-04-18T05:38:00.001-07:00

Arjun Choudhuri | Create your badge

2010-03-30T00:55:00.000-07:00

The poems in the post below are translations that I have created. Please read and comment. The book will be out soon. Hope you will buy a copy or two too...

2010-03-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

“All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”

William Butler Yeats, Easter 1916

___

DEDICATION

All that has changed
and all that has not.
we revere and we hate.
Barak,
wildest, capricious Borobokro,
beloved mate
of unsung days,
we narrate you

The translations in the present volume have been produced with the necessary consent of the original authors, or their successors. The translator attaches no claim whatsoever to the original texts but asserts his intellectual rights over the translation attempts / translated texts reproduced herein. The rights of the original authors over their respective poems remain uncontested.
No part of this publication may be reproduced anywhere in any medium, electronic, digital or print without the express permission of the translator or the publishers. In case of research oriented publications, proper acknowledgements, citations and references to the text must be used.
Parts of the translated poetry from this volume have been used as archival material at the website www.unishemay.org

Quid est veritas?
“What is the truth?” said Pontius Pilate.
The truth lies elsewhere.
So it is with the texts presented in this volume, these poems that are narratives of a time that is gone, of a time that will be and of a time that is now. There are borders evident in these poems, borders that bear testimony to many a rite of passage, borders that are not only geographic in nature but also psychological and cultural in origin. These borders have been an essential part in the knowing of the home we have called Barak Valley and they continue to be so even now. I will not discourse long on this, for much has been written and said about this unique epiphenomenon of belonging, especially when it comes to Barak Valley.
I will not defend my translations in the present volume. But I would definitely seek clarify a few points in context here. I had to read these seventy-odd poems over and over again in the guise of a reader-writer before I could actually touch them as a translator. Whatever happened after that escapes my memory right now, and I watch only an ontogeny taking place in the immediate past. Translation is an art, definitely and there are theories of reception and production that govern it. But I beg to differ with those who would consider a translation to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. No translated text can be either good or bad. One could consider using the words ‘adequate’ or ‘inadequate’ in this case. About the present anthology, I consider myself to be answerable for this inadequacy or adequacy, as the case may be. For apart from the inter-semiotic transference/ transmission that occurs in an act of translation (technically speaking – the communication between the ‘target language’ and the ‘source language’), there is the production, institution and stabilisation of a third space that remains liminal, and just that. This liminality focuses on impossibility, possibility, sense, knowing and reception-transmission dynamics to produce itself as a distinct ‘space’ and it is in this space that the bordering of the text in direct encounter with the pre-existing language begins and continues. The same has happened in this case with BORDERING POETRY. These are new texts, not just because these have been re-composed in an alien (though not so alien) tongue, so I affirm. These are new texts because their intercourse with the reader’s psyche begins anew. BORDERING POETRY just happened as ‘a way of happening/ a mouth’. Let us hope that it will serve its purpose well.
I am grateful to Amitabha Dev Choudhury for providing the prolegomena for the book as well as for the fact that it was with him that the germ of this idea began its growth. It was again he who provided the compilation at hand many outlets and sources, of acceptance and rejection, of knowing and growing which ultimately led to the production of this volume. I am also grateful to all the poets whose works have been published here in translation for their consent. Their rights to their intellectual property remain inviolate. I am obligated also to Soumen Bharatiya for the present genesis. Apart from that, there are friends to whom I owe my thanks, but who would rather see me bound and gagged hand and foot before they would accept any gratitude from me. To you, Shoubhonik, Goirick, Nilaksho, Ishan, Jean, Kristian and Michael.
Last but not the least though, I remain grateful to Dr. Dipankar Purakayastha for earnest discourses in a house from the past, about the homes of the present. His words about transference and translation have never been in vain, from Wordsworth’s Prelude in on the university campus down till now when he often speaks about Tagore. Thank you for signatures in time, sir.

Let there be light
But here there is no light.
Let there be no more wild rivers
but here there is only that, a river
and nothing more but that, a river

ASHOKBIJOY RAHA

THE NAGA QUEEN
After dinner last evening at Deshmukh’s bungalow,
I returned quite late.
He is writing a treatise on hill tribes, a worthy man he is.
He read out a chapter from the book – “The Nagas’ Dance”.

Deshmukh’s eyes suddenly glow with a strange light
‘The Nagas indeed are a warlike race.
I will show you a wondrous relic tonight,
my most treasured collectible, only do not
let anybody know about it.’
Speaking thus, the man exits the room
with the speed of a typhoon.

And soon again he appears,
a wild, unknown light sparkling in his eyes,
What was that in his hand? A wig?
Deshmukh smiles a mysterious smile –
‘That is the hair-relic of a great Naga queen,
a young Amazon she had been, a Naga Joan of Arc.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
she would be seen often, astride a white steed,
at the head of a band of warriors.
In eighteen battles she won her victor’s laurels
but laid down her life in the last.’

I listen, awestruck – and gaze in wonder –
On the point of a bamboo-filigreed chonng,
the reddish hair skilfully was hooked.
Seen from afar, it looked as if the hair
descended naturally from the chonng, as if
it was a cascade from a living head.
I touch it – soft, silky hair it was
but so very cold to the touch.
I clasp the hair in my fist and sit there
with my eyes closed and for quite long.
I want to feel the soft throb of the Naga queen’s young heart
I see the vision of the Naga hills –
a white steed flashing by – with Joan of Arc.

NIGHT ON A HILL (DOLOO)

MOONLIGHT

I waken suddenly in the deepest night.
Stony skies and the moon’s gold light.
Crystalline waves on the lake’s eye dance.
Someone carved them by sheer chance.
Silvery fish leap out suddenly there.
Sapphire trees rise afar, and here.
The ghat in red and emerald is dressed,
with a hundred and eight rising steps.

STORM
The black cloud-serpent rises suddenly in the skies,
with upraised hood; it hisses, snarls and amok flies.
The moon dies out – the mountains fade away
afar resounds aloud the demon’s horrible bray.

A little later that storm arrives, with rains,
gnashing, gritting jaws and iron chains.
The hill raises its trunk suddenly to the skies
and like some fiery beast the lake emits cries.

DEBENDRA KUMAR PAUL CHOUDHURY

HAFLONG HILL

While on the train, I have often heard
the call of Haflong Hill –
not a free moment I had to spare then
to be a guest there at Haflong Hill.

I have heard it call me – days grow
into months, months become years.
So many waves have passed slow
overhead – I have forgotten now
how Haflong Hill had spoken to my heart.

In this monsoon evening’s light
we meet at last in this daak-bungalow, tonight.
I hear you are one of the hill-folk
and yet you are not one of these hills.
Gently, passionate, yet so very slow,
your body like a wave does softly rock.

Your bosom heaves, its peaks draped
in a lately fashionable green-hued saree
from Bombay mills – its veil waving
in the breezes. A procession of clouds
descend down the sides of Haflong Hill.
Nobody else is here tonight, in this house.

You and I – alone we are tonight
in this daak-bungalow. The others
are far off, busy, complacent even,
with their typically jaded discourses.
Let us sit then – side by side,
Look at that, how the metal pin,
shining, bright, polished, forces
the skies into the darkly evening.

Sleep-heavy, the lamp posts doze,
tonight we shall bide at this house.
Tomorrow, we shall say our farewell.
The mind loses its steadfastness and
memory sings its subtle song.
Only this much be our reminiscence,
how this night came with hospitality
granted to us by Haflong Hill.
THE LEAFY CREEPER

As a gentle child wrapped in a singlet would run up to me,
I see it, one-legged, standing firm beside my cottage,
that leafy, dense creeper.

On the eternal journey of time, one slit in the fabric of mystery
gave birth to this leafy creeper – once on the go, it has stilled
its roots with love for the earth.

Now, around it surges the immense scope for powerful oblivion.
It hungrily laps up the sweet milk of the earth’s rising breast
with its manifold tongues, its roots scattered everywhere.
Its foliage waves in the bluest skies, in the dream of sunlight,
clapping like so many hands, at the rising high above it,

this leafy, dense creeper.

WONDROUS ASHAADH

In these collyrium-hued clouds of Ashaadh,
I quest for that unseen magic that plays on,
ever dark bodied, pristine. I creep alone
in these woods therefore, wooing
these dark clouds in sentient love.

In Ashaadh blooms the Kadamba flower,
the Juthika and so many others.

I quest for the one whose fragrance
clouds my senses and beckons to me.

I see the one for whom I quest,
in my mind’s eye, the easy breezes
wafting to me that soft fragrance.

SUDHIR SEN

THE RIHANG DANCE

Her hair was not shaded by the nightly darkness of ancient Vidisha.
Her face was not carved in the likeness of Sravasti’s sculptures.

Yet she entered the floodlit stage and readied herself
slowly undulating in the motions of her dance.

A striped, bright saree draped her limbs
like some snake, as if she had arrived from afar,
crossing the wild wastes of the Tripura forests.

A half-filled bottle of water balanced on her head, she stood.
And a tin lamp too, cleverly perched on the rim of the bottle’s neck.
Her hands held two plates one in each, twirling and whirling at ease,
not at all encumbered by the possibility of failure, or a fall.

She lifted herself and placed her feet on the rim of a brass pot.
There she stood, transfixed like some idol, a leg outstretched behind,
like a longish tail, hands on each side spread like some bird in flight.
The twin plates in each hand kept whirling.

She was that and this too –
a young maiden whose name was not known to me.

IN A WORLD OF BIRDS

The neighbourhood cockerel’s crowing stirs my restive sleep.
Crows shuffle on the roof above - a thudding, cawing discourse.
I stretch my limbs and rise to the smiles of the olive-tinted dawn.
Draped in a wrap of dew, someone plays a vivid seven-hued note.

The minstrel dances in the yard, a pair of dahuks chase grasshoppers,
a triad of parrots merge with the mango leaves cackling to themselves,
the chirping sparrows, the troubadour doyels and other birds unknown,
the shaliks fly and perch all around while the crows and drongos
engage in a noisy brawl on one side of the courtyard, all apart.

The kingfisher perches silent on the dead branch shading the pond,
on the banks walk the cranes, the falcon flies high on the other side
of the clouds, the cooing pigeons roost in the luxury of the terrace,
- the entire morning passes thus, revelling in a world of birds.

Though near, they do not know the complexities of the world of men.
With images and symbols they build shelters, though someone often
aims a disturbing stone at the nest.

LOVE

The coupling bodies carved on the walls of Konarak –
Let us go and see – the beauteous ocean there.
Walking towards the kitchen, you stopped and left
only a single word for me: No.

Then let us go this time to the blue peaks of Nilaachal
and quest for some lost horizon there.
stirring the sugar silently into my teacup, you smiled
a hint of a smile and said: No.

The Kojagori night smiles, let us go then to the solitary terrace
and sit there, and read the epistles of the starry skies.
Eyes downward, your hand resting on an incomplete woollen,
you uttered in a soft tone: No.

Of late, once, I returned home and casting aside
my lonesome exile, I said: You are a stranger, too!
Lifting your eyes filled with the mystery of the stars,
the seas and the skies, you replied with that astounding ‘No’.

ANURUPA BISWAS

THE SWAN AND THE BELOVED LAKE

The swan will no longer come to the waters
of the lake, its shuffling feet in wading motions
will no longer bob from shore to shore, its breast
will no longer touch the streaming current.

The lake is guarded by the excesses of time
Last night saw a tumult occur here, on this shore
The wet clay helplessly now wipes its eyes.

Love’s lonely lake –
And there yet remains a relic or two,
scraggly feathers, white, torn, bloodied
and a few tufts of soft breast down.

The anklets tinkling with wounded pride
that some young girl had clasped onto those feet
have sunk to the depths of the lake.

THE NIGHT FAIRY

The night-fairy slumbers in a dense bamboo grove
What words these are that resound across these leaves?
Down below cascades a spring across the slope
with a soft murmur, its sweet nothings drawing shivers.

Daylight to this grove barely comes, the nightly sky
peeks through the slight openings in the dense foliage
like some filigreed fence full of regular holes. This night
breeds a mystic mesmer that suggests something more.

The trance that this darkling nightly hour delivers
beckons, calls out from afar with a secretive sign.
Why does the woman become a fairy in this hour?
The restless peahen dances amidst the veils of the mind.

The clear moonlight showers all around in a silvery colour.
The bodies of memory undulate like those fragrant fumes.
In some far off dark grotto walks the restive musk deer,
the night-fairy’s desires are filled with a deep melancholy.

19TH MAY, 1985.

Much have I gained from you,
and yet I know there is more to be gained.
The spotless sky and the loud guffaws of laughter unbarred,
a pledge as it were to discover where the source of bliss lies.
Everything is gone awry, ahead stretches the rolling sandy shores,
a caravan of camels, ships of the desert, the thorns of the date-palms,
a popular legend is all that I see.

SHAKTIPADA BRAHMACHARI

THE NINETEENTH OF MAY, 1961, SILCHAR

Those ten brothers each a Champak blossom,
one sister they had, a beautiful Parul bloom;
they tore out their hearts and wrote on the skies
‘This, the Ishan quarter, laughs, weeps, cries -
what is that tongue, hark, listen with care!’

Here, you will discover, if you have not heard it,
all the crimes those vile machinators have writ –

Listen to how thirty hundred thousand hearts thunder –
‘Bangla is my mother-tongue, Ishan-Bangla my mother.’

THE DIARY OF THE DISPOSSESSED

He who has seized my home has seized also my fears,
the sky’s vault above me the imprint of my name bears.

Now will I wage war against all violence without error,
for I have been gifted a tambul by a mekhla clad sister.

In a university great that of languages knows nothing,
I have now been endowed with only love’s schooling.

Bangla is my mother-tongue; the world is my shelter,
Prafulla and Bhrigu each for me is a clan-brother.

MY MOTHER COULD HAVE SAID THUS

All that balderdash that you write, what’s the use of it,
I do not understand, I often see you chewing the pen’s end,
muttering silently all to yourself, there is sound all around,
all pervasive, omnipotent, a network intricate of sounds there
and here and everywhere, meaningless sentences these,
one day, the Sound will gobble you up suddenly.

Buttons missing from your shirt, uncombed hair all awry,
why do you have to stare at the sky listlessly and trip
all over the place everyday – you have read a lot, yet
you could not become the senior Babu of some office.
They had called you to a post in Haridaspur, but you,
of course, had to turn it down, that lucrative offer.
I do not understand what you want to do, these books,
they have been your doom, last night I heard you mumble
in your sleep, who was it? Do you know even the person
whose moniker it is, this name of the lotus leaf?

That girl who used to come to you every day, where is she?
Is she married now? A household and a husband, all good,
you know it, I presume? May everybody else be well and
may you ever lie awake with calm, bright eyes bathed in light
across the four quarters, silent, solemn; you would gather up
those grains of mustard scattered all around. I will be there
to bathe your face with the unguent of the milk from my breast.

BIMAL CHOUDHURY

STORIES

A night like a picnic
Deepak, Satish, Rathin
and I
From east to west
and from north to south
stretched the spring breeze
overflowing with the moonlight,
small plants casting long shadows
stand in a row, unmoving,
like so many trees.

With a perfectly rounded face
plastered all over with satiation,
like it is in Noni Paul’s household,
Reba’di had asked her husband,
‘Then it is I
who will have to be the guinea pig?’

O heart,
let your vessel be filled to the brim
with the ambrosial dregs of memory.
The picnic of the night –
wherever one looks, it is a warmth-less time,
Deepak, Satish, Rathin
and I.

BENEATH BARAK BRIDGE I STOOD

In the evening’s last light
as I stand beneath Barak Bridge
shining above me like a lamp lit
in the honour of the sky, staring ahead
towards the becalmed sandy banks of the river,
you might be shopping, for all I know,
at some decorated shop in the heart of the town,
saying – ‘Six hair clips, please.’
A certain budding actress had once told me,
‘The colour white, the song of the birds,
and the fragrance of the Jui bloom,
these are my favourites, indeed.’

These days there always is a furore
and a lot of voices around the tea table.
Ranajit, a strapping young man now,
after scoring many a victory
in his arm-wrestling bouts
was polishing off some cheese payesh.
He was saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe this,
three girls at the least write letters to me,
addressing me as ‘Raja’. I remember,
how a veteran player had once advised me
‘As long as you are on the crease, keep playing hard’

The spring breeze overflows with the tuneless strains
of the drums and the flutes from the wedding-busy houses.
Somebody croons in the Kalavati raga,
‘My heart-beloved, you know not the pain of my heart’

A retired political leader had once told me regretfully –
‘I lost in the end; I could not win this battle for my pride’

MY BIRTH

Have it inscribed, the ninth day of the dark fortnight
in the month of Margasheersha, a calm, unruffled voice,
the hour, the astral conjunction, latitudes, longitudes all.
The pregnant darkness is pierced with a beam of light.
My mother’s hand lies near my head in its respective poise.

Close by the tulasi-altar towards the pomegranate tree’s shade
the womanly tinkle of a melodious ululation all so auspicious
the chilly autumn evening with the aromas of the husked grain
wafting around in the centre of the courtyard with the mats
and all that banter that frames life, exchanging betel, welcomes.

Burnt mustard seeds splitting with a fierce odour and there lies
the room where are born babies forever, loved it is by this
the collyrium-shaded creeper and a pair of antlers from some deer.
There are sounds sempiternal that are melodious in their uniqueness.
Those wrapper clad labourers laugh and laugh at all and this even.

There was a glowing moon for everyone’s birth, o mother,
the slight waves on the Talpukur ripple, as do my reminiscences.

KARUNASINDHU DEY

O BOATSMAN, O SAVIOUR

I will go indeed, o helmsman, to your ramshackle skiff
and build therein a home of luxury past compare,
I hear when the sounds of tinkling armlets drift from afar
and the dangling nose ring, and child-like laughter,
as well as the intimate presence of a well-bought wife.

I will go indeed, o helmsman, to the tumble-down sails
of your mast, destroying-building senses, and that swallow
bright-plumed shall alight on the humbling Bakul to sing
its pitiful strains above our heads; a beautiful oblation
with wafting incense smoke and an awesome ambience.

Steady your clasp, vigilant helmsman, on the helm,
for you know not when the traitorous winds and the waves
so treacherous shall conspire together to drown your fates.
Like a shrewd woman, the river raises bouts of poison
on its tongues with the thunder of a thousand clouds;
many a carefully arranged homestead, many a home
is shattered, you, o helmsman, remain witness alone.

O helmsman, save the day.

BECAUSE IT IS TIME

It is time that I must go to the depths, so I shall.
Limbs flying around with the force of the joy
that rushes on and on till the ills of the household
I discard in the raw sunshine and burst them asunder
in the guise of a firework that speeds sparks while I
roll in the dust and the smoke that descends all
around: if then these paths are fled, so what?
I desire to destroy my fates at will, so I shall.

Fiery breaths, breathing flame, my hearts shall I open
to the meanderings of the fire and weld onto it this joy.
But you, longing-love, are fled like a destitute in difficult times.
He whose youth decays slow, he suffers long, he suffers hard,
now it is either gold or the clouds of ash in the crematorium.
Who would try to bind me in the clutches of their powers?
A pair of hands strong, a curtain of dense hair, no knowing
of right and wrong, they will stand afore, rooted in their courage;
I have known at my head how these killer winds can beckon you
to Death’s demesne; for in my veins hisses an immersed serpent.

Because it is time that I must go to the depths, so I shall.
Since I desire to destroy my fates at will, so I shall.

THE TWO CLAIMANTS

They who saw light in the darkness, in the dark prison,
suddenly leapt up in joy to see the coming forth, the roar
of the angered river rushes in their breast, in a long line
of arduous desire, they found their feet on this shore.
For long years, this weakened century’s fallow fields
have lain lone but were pierced by the proud maleness
and hailing eulogies with chaplets and laurels in glory.
A blood-tinged rebellion was born here, a promise,
a legacy of life and living willingly clasped for all time.

In the darkness of the midnight I hesitate, those who had
floated away in the stream as a hundred lotuses, they flee
in their exiled happiness to the endless sea, ceaselessly.
An all-swallowing current flows in the veins, in rapt terror
I watch, those two claimants have drunk their fill of blood –

the land has devoured all light,
the dark has devoured the children.

UDAYAN GHOSH

SILCHAR 1990, A NIGHT WRIT IN BURNT LETTERS

When the street lamps light up in Silchar,
I feel that I am quite close to the illumed town.
The night is illumined even more.

Writs, records, documents all burning, the rights
of homes and households burn through the nights
on the fire-altars of the sacred profane-priests;
the fields fertile, the rights of the tilling farmers,
all of that burns in the offices of the land officers.

Wrapped in a fake cloak of like ashes appear the holy men.
Their bags conceal the coveted vaastu-snake, heritages dim,
and the revolving wheels of time so wildly triumphant.

THE RAILWAY TRACKS ON THE MOUNTAINS

In the rail station of the hilly bourne of Harangajao,
a man in a blue uniform stands alone, lantern in hand,
in the faded light, beside the stationary railway carriage.

The mountains, the jungles, the bridge, tunnels thirty six,
and the undulating motions of the train
revive the memory of that lone lantern’s light.

Far away, behind the hills, like the life-long ambiguity
of a confused lover’s love, the taciturn moon showers
its pristine, silvery light in silence.

CRUSADES

Growing growling thudding thumping, I cast my flailing at you.
Now let us drum them drumming hard, in the crowded market,
If but there is a time when we should have danced, then be it so
even without any timely reason. With the soft strains of the sitar,
or within the walls of a darkened, ancient house, there do I cast
your thousand wilful restraints. Twenty-five thousand wise owls
bide there – softly swelling butts and breasts – where would you
hide away, like the fleeing flowing of the river? Such powers fierce
these are – growing growling thudding thumping growling curtly,
booming barely Bombay drums – twirling stepping dancing madly
shouts near and far – I shall sound them all in the crowded market.
These fellows loll their tongues in greed – many thunders bide here,
all in the wizened tresses of that slut indeed, flowers-leaves-temples
thoroughly-discarded-away-away, I cast again on your bathed body
this the milling crowd, in a sure-sure-sense-knowing-wrongs-done.

The aeroplanes blast these sounds – Vedic statements one or two –
ancient altars here – the sounds blast these rising planes – tottering
old feet, teeth all broken, kicking living – ever solemn elephants too,
creeping over hiding them all growing growling thudding thumping,
laughing gleesome flick that skirt, will you? I cast again – you will too
accept this cacophony silently, waves rising large in the heart roughly.

Flowing lyric-poem you are, the latest entrant in the old man’s ear.
Light you bring sure and twenty-five thousand wise owls bide there
all growing growling thudding thumping loud enough –

I will sound the drum – I will send them bullets – no song but long
knives being sharpened – I have suffered long – I have borne it hard.
Now no more will I endure, now will I resound in those vile ears.

RUCHIRA SHYAM

BARRIERS

I feel guilty when the beggar stretches his palm
whatever I can I throw onto it and try to escape.
Why does this happen, I wonder and wonder
but do not reach an answer, though I may crave.
The one blinded from birth has only blindness
to offer – to your vision I bring this knowing,
you being the recipient fitting, in your own prisons –
Where would you flee? The world is not that big.
Wherever you would go, these barriers will exist within.

TO CONCLUDE

My mother, when she left, took away
that last fairytale with her.

On the bed are now scattered a few bel flowers
which have, on the face of it, aged overnight.

The iron key around the neck unlocks no closet.
The emptiness in the white clad room hurts the eye.

Is there no one who could cover up so much light?

THE EMPTY ROOM

There is somebody’s room in my house; it is all locked away,
always, I have never seen them unlock it – I held the key
in my hand often. Sometimes I would wonder to myself
if this is that someone of the locked door, when others
would talk about the matter. I hand over the key to them,
but strangely the lock stays in place – the door remains as it is.
The room is stark empty but then, there is a strange cosiness
about it that pleases the heart and calls out to me sometimes.
Often, in the midnight, I enter the room and pass my time there.
People say that this used to be the room of the household deity.
The homeless ones before us had left with their homeless gods.
Are the gods refugees too? Do they thirst for safe havens as well?
That unknown child whose nickname has been lost in the mists of time
cannot be found easily even though the whole world is searched over.
I guard the room in hope lest that child should suddenly turn up ever.

BRAJENDRA KUMAR SINGHA

THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF BAISHAKH

Those reflections have erased themselves
from the surface of the mirror of light.

In a mango grove bereft of heart-song
dies away the strains that were.

On faceless wings flee the days of the guitar
into the heart of the dark recess.

Our words mean little – they have put on the caps
of donkeys and have donned irrelevant garments.

Breathless ads have spread their charm around
in this mart of colour-some popular singings.

Wrapped in gaudy garlands of sheer nonsense,
headless monsters perch on elevated thrones.

Our days, beheaded, silently pass away likewise in the breezes
that flow around in Baishakh’s rainless, mendicant eventides.

HISTORY

The thikadar babu sits in the shade of the Amaltas tree.
That dravida maiden’s hair is dotted with Harappan clouds,
the ruins of the great bathhouse spread about in the heart.
Here, another civilisation grows as the bricks ascend the floors.
At day’s end, the babu holds her hand and shows her
how to put the thumb impression on the pay register.

This used to be the babu’s garden retreat,
and his tart, tight bodied like a fresh cauliflower,
her voice like a kokila’s had her day all the time.
The evenings used to resound with jolly crowds
of revellers in the light of the chandeliers.
The babu came in his phaeton, cronies in tow,
with brandy and champagne bottles, chaplets
of fragrant flowers wrapped around his hand,
with diamond earrings for that woman, the tart.
Now, it is all gone, woman, sounds of the past,
even the house that was here is being demolished.
Maybe this woman had been a courtesan then
of the royal house of Mohenjodaro, maybe
she died of consumption after the floods.
That birth had been a joy-filled one, that life
of hers had been blessed by the hands of the king
when he would adorn her neck himself with gold.
Even the richest dishes, arranged around like flowers,
would not appeal to her taste, she would say –
‘This is not food fit for the palates of human beings’

The dravida maiden knows that flesh is quite cheap
nowadays; here evening descends with urinary odours.
Worms and maggots from the gutter creep onto one’s food.
The thikadar babu’s satisfaction must be guaranteed, even
with straining muscles and tired bodies,
or else even that putrid mouthful would not be had.

ON THE DISSEMINATION OF LEARNING

Father used to teach me colours as a child
- ‘This is the colour of rice’, he used to say,
this heat will suffice to cook the rice in the pot.
One evening, he smelt some strange odour
and remarked – ‘Hey, that’s the smell of heated rice’

I am grateful to my father, for his words,
which taught me so many a thing
without my having actually seen them
Father used to say – ‘When you eat, imagine
that you are a servant in the house of the babu
and that the food you eat has been granted
to you culled from the leftovers of the kind master.
Listen, to imagine the right thing is what is important
what you actually eat is not important at all.’

Father is no more. I bade him farewell on the pyre.
Whatever I learn now is from my peers and friends.
They say ‘Your father was an ancient illiterate fool.
Do not take his words for the truth, do not hesitate
to go upto the ring leader and ask him, when hungry,
where should you go and destroy posters, or where
you should work to blast bombs during meetings,
or whose head you would hunt, tell him that you
are his to command, that you are his enslaved Alsatian.’

The country’s been free for more than half a century.
There is no dearth of food or shelter anywhere now.

Yet you remain the same fool that your father had been.

BIJIT KUMAR BHATTACHARJYA

THE PEOPLE OF BARAK LIVE THUS

The girl crossed over, then
the boy, groping, panicky hands,
grasping shoes and bag in a hand
and their lives in the other, crossed
over to where the BRTF jawans stood
arms outstretched in help and aid.

The tumultuous Lobha flows away beneath,
on the banks have descended landslides,
on both sides of the ruins are ranged cars,
and a few lives, yet with their lives intact,
with shoes and bag in hand,
they have to flee the treacherous ruins,
everything in life is so very important.
They leave a car on this side of the slide,
crossing over to hire another vehicle
on the other side. The people of Barak
live thus for half the year, sometimes
they lie entrapped with no way out of it,
by land, air, train tracks or waterways.
Yet, I do wonder, in spite of it all,
how have we managed to stick on
with the rest of the nation?

The girl has crossed, then the boy
steps forward to cross over too –
The gurgling Lobha laughs in glee,
its lolling tongues flickering in between
the crevices of the mountains,
that invisible thread of hope,
that rope did indeed help them flee.

THE FLOODS ON THE TWISTING LAGOONS

1.

This sight is pleasing because there are shores here and there too
This sight is pleasing, here love flows in the trees and in flood waters.
On each side gushes those flood waters in the twisting lagoons
and throughout rises the railway track, the sounds of the train
and the gushing waters creates a new world of sounds in itself,
the carriages and the gaps in the flood waters, through the windows
peek the astonished passengers at the trees standing tall, neck deep
in the waters, splashing against those tough trunks black, embracing them.
The waters rise and yet another slice of the railway track disappears
beneath the curtains of the flood, so will this pleasant sight drown itself.
This skiff, a part of a long line of anchored ones, that song of the breakers
will carry me to what new sight, where still surge the breaking waves
against the tough trunks of the trees, in the day-night long dance
rising and falling in the waters of the twisting lagoons.

2.

Now here as I see, the dead, decayed body of a child floats by –
In this sight, the naked homeless have floated themselves on a skiff.

The village has disappeared beneath the waters, the houses house
only the splashing waters, the thatched roofs raise their arms as if
in appeal for mercy to the skies, the people with their ragged bundles
and a broken pot or two rush about frantically, looking for a camp
where they would be refugees, with rations doled out to them
a head each of grain and fuel – these times are when the skiffs
go down often in the twisting lagoons, even those government ones
which bring stores of grain for the hungered refugees, unclothed,
unfed, bereft of shame and honour, whose children have died
in the waters deep, whose livestock and cattle are gone where
they know not – the boats with their rations have gone down,
yet they wait with longing eyes on the verandas of the camps
in lines, the electric lights in the camp shine out every night,
there is no black tough tree trunk in this sight, there are
only the rough breakers here, these rush to strike down
and drown, like huge hooded serpents – in the village,
the children and the young maidens have drowned.

SHANTANU GHOSH

1.

From Mohenjodaro to fairytales till Mohenjodaro again,
the mirror never glimpses my hair, nor does the razor
slide across my cheeks, no one would deign to visit me,
in the evenings, such is the melancholy that shrouds my face,
and there will be no time, the clock’s hands will not allow it,
nobody here in this world will have the silence of the clock,
nobody’s will be that silence, nobody’s at all, never.
There had been breezes in the morning, and sunshine
and the twirling twisting whirling winds in a procession.
Memories from past lives would form thoughts in the mind,
tales of fairies and kings and dashing princes on winged steeds
would form thoughts in the mind, those memories.
But no fairy comes now, and all fragrances are lost.

COMPOSITION 117

You lie there, vast and motionless, like the ruins
of the Mayan civilisation – wet desire touches
your lips and the sky-waves of the morning
touch your feeling forehead, as you lie silent
like a straight line of pine trees.
Do I not feel your agony?
The seismograph did not foretell
when the earthquake would strike,
is that why you are pained?
Let the tumultuous storm bear away
your picturesque houses, for none did,
is that why you are sad? Or was a stealthy cat
sniffing for custard pudding? Or some cream
kept aside for later? Or was it the song from the radio?
Or is it those love letters
that have been swept away by the breeze?
Do I not feel your agony?
There, twenty-four pages of Tennessee Williams
and you are all awash in agony – very well
let me see then, come darling, come outside
look outside there, no, not a drop of rain,
the steadily dripping tap in the bathroom
ushers in the dawn, those leafy veggies in hand
and now a kerchief from hand to hand, that man
gets it in his hand now, the kerosene lamp
of the rickshaw puller fizzles out suddenly.
See, dearest, how the fish jump from the lake.
Did any of them ever read Tennessee Williams?
There, now, this would be good, a bit more on the side,
darling, there, a bit more – all this luxuriating agony
and Tennessee Williams is good enough only after
the twelfth hour of the day, turn on your side,
a bit more, a little bit more, there, your bosom
open to two and a half lengths, like a leafy veggie lies,
now do tell me, dearest, what is your sorrow?

COMPOSITION 1

I am in desperate straits, fear engulfs me,
Silchar’s very identity is gone to the dust,
the rowdy young morning suddenly rises
tearing apart the veils of the dawn’s mist mercilessly.
A bit or two of white hot angst drips – an angry visage.
I lie awake throughout the morning.
Dear you are, Silchar to the dynamics
of possibility and impossibility, devoid of dreams,
bereft of the very capacity to move at all –
Only the breezes in my eyes you faintly touch
with a soft veil, I pinch an orange from the fruitseller’s cart
and slyly move away – the next moment, I look for a tremor
in the wrinkles of the radiant brow of the Lushai maiden.
I visited Jyoti yesterday – she brought me a refreshing spring
from the white fridge, and I wondered to myself as to why
I had remained alive – Jyoti was not mine, no maiden either.
All through this intense day, these women revolve around
countless, countable – have I been able to go to them?
Shall I ever be able to go to them? With a lot of claims,
nature remains latent, dried up in my garden, the juices
are seized from the succulent veins of the oranges
and before the world-crossing,
you, o daughter of Mohammed,
I see at the final tomb in Bethleham,
dressed in a white frock, the crescent Eid moon
on your forehead, bangles on your wrist, like a rose
without a single thorn – it calls me for the last time
beneath my feet, the worldly wheels turn and turn
with a fierce whine, ah, but our love is an intense one.

MONOTOSH CHAKRAVARTY

TO LALDENGA

Open out your palms
the white flowers of harmony in which
shall decorate their gardens. The mice have fled today
in fear, for the bamboo groves shall see no more blossoms,
the ones which invite hordes of mice, and thus the grain
in the stores is laid to waste, people die in the famine -
those days will not arrive anymore,
the seal of harmony bespeaks a new sunrise today,
such is its astonishing image. Open out your palms,
there is no need for the trumpet of time to be blown,
let these melodious strains of the song of peace flow
about the mountainsides, the jungles and the woods.
Laughing, smiling, those Mizo maidens in colourful attire,
Burmese parasols in hand, let them come down
to our peaceful vale.
Today, o friend,
do cast aside all that hostility
and open out your palms, in friendship.

SUNRISE AT BHUBAN HILL

Sunrise at Bhuban Hill: memories of my adolescence.
That scene is replete with the clouds of wanting,
those distant days of thunder and lightning.

That scene houses all those festivals of the past,
those songs sung during the jatra, the rituals
that my mother officiated at, during the Savitrivrata.
That scene conceals many colours of my ineptitude.

I had a thousand different dreams restive like the waterdrops
on a single lotus leaf, many a thousand dialogues that I had
with thousands of stellar bodies, the sunrise each morning
the light of which would waken me, oblivious to my poverty.

Sunrise at Bhuban Hill

THE MIRROR

Next monsoon there will be a lot of rainfall at Bhuban Hill.
The villages around Silchar will have a golden harvest then,
there will be shoals of fish in the Barak, and at Phatakbazar
there will be no end of cheaply priced fish being sold, blissfully
the wisps of Chaitra’s cotton blossoms shall float in the air
and the childless womb shall bear progeny, this year.

The fish stores full, so with the granary,
the cardiac patient turns on one side in the hospital bed,
it’s raining on Bhuban Hill, suddenly some mendicant arrives
and tells you rigmarole to what end, and you listen, transfixed.

We exchange glances in the town of Silchar.

RANAJIT DAS

THE TREAD OF DEATH

I have heard the tread of Death at night in the yard.
Death has come in the darkling night that has drowned
even the shining moon outside – He looks
like a friend of my father’s, a venerable Vaishnava,
long bodied, peeking through the curtains on the bed
at my father who lies there unwell, unconscious.
But Father responds to his friend’s footsteps.
He tries to move his lips to call out to his friend
and I rush to his side to pour in
a last few drops of water.
My brothers lie asleep in different rooms,
the yard is surrounded by many a palm –
arecanuts, coconuts, all of which
Father with his own hands had planted,
the pale moonlight shines on them,
casting longish, morose shadows which guard
the tread of Death.
As he walks ahead,
a fruit or two descends to the ground near his feet,
half-eaten by the fruit bat – the transitory life
seeks a moment or two more, those eternal grants.
Inside, Father’s face yet is calm, stern, self-doubting
as the breaths grow weaker, the world-weary breast
collapses slow, as the lips spill open, the life that he has led
is painted across his features now – the wretched life
of a refugee across the partitioned nation’s boundaries,
his wretched face wracked by the ravages of living, the paths
that he walked on, his final frontiers, his rising.
Day in and out, he used to take a childish pleasure
in the battledore of life, fighting it out like in a game
full of enthusiasm, with invincible confidence, honest and right.
The warrior lies silent now, with many feathers in his cap.
The dark courtyard is where his friend awaits him –
His friend, long-bodied, a kirtanniya with a khol,
and with tears springing in his eyes.

BEAUTIFUL BENGAL

From an endangered amazement
I turn to one that is pure amazement –
from the morgue I return to the post office
to the sunny-smiling-time-that-is-pure-unsullied –
I walk, dust covered; I enter the courtyard and call out –
‘Ma, I need some water to wash my feet.’
Kusumkumari Devi rushes out of the kitchen,
she makes me seat on a mat and serves me puffed rice
with sugar candy; she asks me ‘Would you know
where Jibanananda has gone?’ Silently, I show her
how the shy, reticent Jibanananda walks
the paths of Bengal in the company of Rabi Thakur,
away in the distance, so far, far away.

A POSTCARD FOR MY PATERNAL GRANDFATHER

A sea storm suddenly enters the city of Calcutta
and calls out my name with a thunderous voice.
It even lights a nightly allusion in the slate-hued clouds
writing my itinerant names thereon
with an intense streak of bright flash.
The cyclone resembles
my angered grandfather come-from-home
It rattles all the doors in the city,
all the while only looking for me.
To my wife and son,
terrified with the terrible assault of the storm,
I say ‘Grandfather has come, I have to go to him,
you must stay safe’ As I step onto the street outside,
the storm slaps my cheeks and roars expletives at me
with a whooshing, breezy noise. All my faults,
my fears and my guile for the past year it condemns
as unforgiveable crimes. That Shravan gust
strips me of all my dead branches, all those bats
and all those sloughed skins of snakes
that until then had been part of me.

DILIPKANTI LASHKAR

LOCATINGS

When I answered his query as to where I am from
stating ‘Karimganj, Assam’, he was thrilled
and quite happily he exclaimed – ‘That’s nice,
you speak quite fluent Bangla!’
When somebody as learned, and a littérateur at that
thinks thus, then who am I to say anything else?
I tried to clarify his doubts about the location of my home –
I said ‘I come from the land of the fifteen martyrs
who sacrificed their lives for the Bangla language.’
He literally stumped me with his next words
when he straightaway said –
‘Oh, you mean Bangladesh?
You should have said so!’

THE MOTHER TONGUE

Our mother tongue is Bangla
The language of our films is Hindi

Our mother tongue is Bangla
The language of our songs is Hindi

Our mother tongue is Bangla
The language of our bliss is Hindi

Our mother tongue is Bangla
The language of our aspirations is English

THE LEGITIMATE LANDS – ASSAM

The doors are closed everywhere
I rattle so many of them and return
Have they gone away somewhere!
Where is everybody?
Or is it that they have locked themselves within
their houses, in silence?

The sounds of that vicinity are stony,
tears congeal like adamant, the hours drip
like so many snowflakes, cold, silenced.

Blood drips too, in the silence and jells into wood.

The gunpowder in the breezes is the last breath from the cadaver.

TAPODHIR BHATTACHARJYA

OF THE INCREATE WATERS

All recitals have ended, so has the lifetime of words
now hear what the increate waters speak

I write stories, with the emptiness of ecphonesises,
with the stagnant waters, not waters but gestures merely

the sorrow of the forced out earth that sticks to the roots,
the despairing opuses of the dumb, the silence of the deaf

this is all that is – our lives and livings, the progress of our days,
you who would be blind, look, I touch the morose evening hour.

These flames feed on me – this is my own dice-game.
Denuded, I drown completely in these increate waters.

GODDESS

Goddess, I have known you to be the seven horses
of every glorious morning.
After this, the next analogy that assails my pen
is the kaustubhamani.
You are not some unearthed idol, you are the sky
that smiles in light
every dawn, every awakening, why then do I write
about the seven horses or the kaustubha?
Words seek to adorn you with awe, therefore this
blindness and its reverses
bring in an intense light and gradual gestures
of a glow of glory.

Goddess, all locutions, like the sixty-four siddhis,
have enshrined you in the lotus of the heart

You are Shakambhari, the source of verdure and life

You are Dwiralap, the merger of discourses

You, Goddess, are Yogini, the procreatrix of connexions.

9TH JULY, 2003

In your own home, you have been rendered voiceless,
no organ declaims you –

The sky is calmed, stilled, blue as yet
only you are absent
Your structures are to dust remanded
and solitude with its trappings
is but an externality.

Whom do the blinded pedestrians look for?
To whom do the endangered directions rush back?
Broken bangles and a nose-ring lie on the road
amidst the pandemonium of the sheath.

Voiceless you have been rendered in your own home,
no organ declaims you.

TIRTHANKAR DAS PURAKAYASTHA

EASTERN CLOUDS

Where do you sway, in which direction, curtains of tresses for disease?
What festive songs drift here from across the meadows of Palashdanga?
Besides with the long-liver grain, what else do you store up
in solitude, in this barren month?

Tresses for disease, why did you not conceal the mark on your brow
with the cloud-dark sleep that you possess?
Why does it, like always before, look to the east for a rendezvous
when it is evening?

All look for havens – the sunbeams beneath the tree
and the terrorised rat on the roads

Tresses for disease and the vigilant pouting brow-mark,
why do you creep in at the horizon slowly
when it is evening?

RITES FOR PASSAGE INTO THE VOID

To the stormy winds I call out
as to the deep waters of the river,
my thirst increases greatly
and the day is set to end.

The minstrel’s lyre thrums beneath the feet
the music of Purnadas Baul,
I hear that cracks have set in – east, west,
north and south – in the earth
that does not see its end.

The bird that seeks a mouthful or two every day,
the day and the night that are a terror,
this and that, things of no consequence, help forget –
this the rite for passage into the void for the rootless.

FOR MY DAUGHTER

I have brought you here at break of dawn, when
the Vesper shines in the sky like the vague light of glances,
another day begins, a tree or two breaks through the misty veils
and there was a new amazement in your newly awakened eyes.

The river can be seen far off, a thin line of water
I have held you in my arms here, in the moon’s light,
These meadows, this sky and a sudden deep trench or two –
all these are for you, for I age fast, as the last hours of the night.

The hesitant shadows creep here and there across the land
and a few minutes later shall see the end of all apprehension.
There shall be green shoots, creepers, that shall grow with eyes
locked onto yours; till then, I shall ward off the snakes’ fangs.

DEBASHISH TARAFDAR

THE LAY OF ASHVIN – 2

I shall leave one day, for Bombay
and there, amid the stars, I shall lose
all my maternal ties; cursed, I shall wander
from port to port and wane – such
thoughts assail me with shadows.

If by some trick of fate, I do forget her,
lose her, even in my nightmares
if I am rendered Bengal-less,
then will the Ashvin night
adorn itself in glory without me?

If I die, O beautiful Bengal,
will some other heart assume this?
If some day in Ashvin, I become
a part of the passed, or become
a mechanised clerk somewhere

then, do, O unfortunate one, O mother of a dead one,
read the pages of this volume of poems wrought.

OUR HOUSE

You could look till far out from the windows in any room in our house. There are so many windows and so much light. We have returned after so much time.

I keep wondering which way to look and where from and how. Should I look at the breezes across the papaya tree to the south of the house from the veranda? Or should I watch the launderer busy with his iron to the east of the house, shaded by a lot of creepers and the leaves of the neem tree?

I look sometimes at the west side window which I have named the green jharokha only because it is clad in green and green all over. Sometimes I see a bird perch on the cords hung outside and the devdaru gently swing its hoary head.

I think I should go now and sit at the window to the east – sunshine, shadows, the small lane – maybe the pheriwalla will come there today – How long it has been since I last saw that lane!

OF NATION (AN EXCERPT)

The four boundaries have been stated. Reader, brow knit in a frown,
so you did encounter the symbols of imperialism? The poet incessantly
acts the imperialist, like kids who keep salvaging titbits, cigarette boxes
handles from broken cups, cards, and tram tickets, and fill their bags.
I am also one who craves such wealth; I have pilfered things from
the roads across the world over and have built my treasure trove.
Each clod of clay in it I prize like a gold trinket and guard it with care.

Like Harangajao. A minor settlement it is. Surrounded by green hills,
with a small river, there people are Sylheti in origin, or Assamese,
or Dimasa, or Nepali, or they speak Hindi – there are many such.
Like the goods in a port, different tongues, different ways of survival,
all mix and mesh in the bazaar there, at the roadside teashop.
Munching on a stale bun, I listen to a cacophony of languages,
its waves touch the heart, that Kachhari nurse, the Hindustani driver,
that teacher from Sylhet – I pilfer them all for myself, no one escapes.

I build nations like that. The pearly snowflakes that hang on the Dahlia
at Christmas in the yard at Shillong, the church bells not afar, the odours
of the fish preserves being cooked, the strains of some invisible girl’s song,
the blissful rituals that pervade the world, the limbs of the orange tree
bent with the load of fruit against the blue backdrop – All of it is nation.
Each colourful thread I salvage, as many as I can, each scrap of cloth
which I have used to create my nation diversely coloured like a Baul’s cloak.

The Baul reminds me of the train. The second class compartment there
is the perfect image of a nation. Imagine, a sundry station, the hawker
with his tray of assortments – parasols, knives, handheld fans, recorders.
An innocent couple bound for a honeymoon trip bends over it,
or a Naga maiden, or a housewife from Lumding returning home after
her stay at her parents’ in Kolkata, they who know language like a melting pot,
or a small trader from the border near Bhutan – All of this meshes together
and a whole new nation is born – to imagine a nation is to know this alchemy.

SHANKARJYOTI DEB

THE GREAT DEPARTURE

God departed quite silently

Into those jaws opened wide
I cast a drop or few of illusion

Nobody of his clan survives –
someone who would light a lamp
to his memory

The flowing breezes cast themselves
around him like a coverlet

The golden autumnal sunshine
suddenly broke into song

Enquiries revealed that it was no dirge
but a song of celebration after all

SONAPUR, 2001

In the misty mountains, the road struck hard,
the silt moved slow in the hours of the night.
One youth was swept away into the waters
of the Surma, on and on, towards Sunamganj.

Ashraf and Atraf – Hindu-Mussalman –
if those had not been there at all, then maybe
these twisting ways, these lines so pronounced
would not have existed here after all.

Unseen paths there are so many for intrigue
flowing across in the guise of these alienations
here in this deceived land, that is Bharata.

Say, let us go, let us go, do say, go to the other bank in sight
Intrigue and all that let us ignore, keeping our eyes’ pure light.

SHILLONG

I cross the city of Tagore’s Shesher Kobita
These days, this city of eastern clouds does not speak,
but it was only that day last, when we conversed –

I walk the twisting turning paths shadowed by the evening
as the air from across the pines plays around me,
the whooshing sound of the breeze reaches a crescendo
and then suddenly descends, beginning to flow once again
slow, still slow a strain, as if it was a piano playing,
an invisible instrument whose airs throbbed
throughout these misty mountains.

Today, from afar, I glimpse the city dressed gaudily
in a plethora of bright garish lights and I fear,
I fear the darkness that creeps in with the evening.

AMITABHA DEV CHOUDHURY

THE BARAK VALLEY EXPRESS

That train which never left, I had been a passenger on it.

Those kisses at departure were re-birthed as legend
like the great hearth-snake beneath the homestead.
Those rapt waitings invoked the cow-dust hour
with the incessant clatter of their hooves on the highway.

Many a train arrived and left after that. Many a slumbering eye
in innumerable compartments opened at the silent station.
Yet that dream devoid shadow that never leaves, and
the departings after that, were delayed, and delayed still.

All my departings, burdened by that sole non-departing,
become ceaseless returns through the period of a lifetime.
All our stayings, burdened by that sole non-departing,
search for small, cheap hotels on the dismal roadsides
and for succour, for life’s main, for the fates that be.

Between departing and non-departing, there are unmoving bridges
that sooner or later, and quite gradually, turn into confining prisons.

That train which shall never leave, I had been a passenger on it.

THE REASON WHY I WRITE

I write the language of adamant in a watery script.
Maybe someday a slender seedling shall thrust
its brow upwards from that impervious stony surface.
This desire I perceive in the depths of the waters

OF ALL THAT IS STALE

I have politely thrust aside this becalmed busyness.
I have tried to acquire a restive tranquillity.

One day on this living shall be shed the sun’s shining light.
Quilts, manuscripts, all and sundry shall I shake and spread
out in the warmth that moment – such had been my desire,
though covered all around with clouds that had been then.

I have often opened the lids of the trunks –
many a rat has spent many a night on these.
Only the odour remains in the heart of the clothes.

The words that the rats have pillaged, I gather them and try
to set those in meaningful order, in solitude, out of sight.
Whatever I have written till date, all of that is worn out, stale.

One day the sun shall feast on this life, this living -
Such is my desire, though covered all around with clouds it is.

ANITA DAS TANDON

ACROSS BOUNDARIES

The shadows lengthen with the maturing day, the sun
creeps across the courtyard. The birds, noting this,
are terrified of the oncoming dark and flee back home.
The sun’s decease terrorises the moon into the clouds.
The darkness gathers. The light of the hurricane lamp
flickers in the tumultuous wind. Somewhere I hear
a dismal sigh that turns on its side – so far, so far behind.
All of that we have left behind us across those boundaries.
Here it is cold – an intense, powerful chill.

OF THE NOWAAI BIRD

Come back to me, o nowaai bird,
do come back to me, soon.
The letter hidden in your plumage
you have not delivered to anybody.
Come back to me, o nowaai bird,
I wait endlessly for that letter
which I had thrust with my own hands
in your feathers, in some other life.

O nowaai bird, do come back soon.
The cow-dust hour will soon be here.
You will return, won’t you, before
this darkness palls my eyes?

THE MUTED LANGUAGE

When innumerable silences
beg me for largesse of sound,
palms outstretched, I, who converse
with myself ceaselessly, tremble.
My inner meditations are stilled
and on all sides descends calm.
I try to say something in a language
that is so ancient that no one knows it.

When I try to speak, only a few
muted moans escape my unused tongue.
Hapless, I suddenly realise how futile,
how muted my converse is.

SWARNALI BISWAS BHATTACHARJYA

THAKURMA’S REPERTORY

1.

THE STORY OF LOTUS-RED AND LOTUS-BLUE

As the tuntuni bird perches
on the Sojna tree’s branches,
just then does the school bus
arrive at Lotus-Red’s house.
Lotus-Blue and Red are names,
they are brothers at academe,
studies do not allow them,
their gambol and their games.
That magic flying horse
is lost in the worried fuss
of homework and of class
and even then it is worse.
Best them someone might
and climb the golden ladder
so they have no time to wait
and enjoy the golden hour.
They return home to finally rest
when the day’s gone away west.
To where did their dreams flee?
What seized them away?
Their childhood’s halcyon day,
those cycles of tale and story.

Demon hordes gain
in the darkling field.
Babe snatchers wield
newer plots of pain.
Green card-pound-dollar
clutch Lotus-Red and Blue
around the neck in collar
and take them away too.
The golden wand or silver
and the magic rod - all lost.
I weave here dreams afar
for you to return at last.
Careless breezes meandering
and a bit of fun freewheeling,
in the happy clouded days,
across the meadows flying.
Clench reality’s iron rod, dears,
yet try and if you will, wage,
your war to save, to salvage
these dreams despite your fears.

2.

THE STORY OF SIMPLE-DIMPLEHEAD

I have crossed to here at day’s end,
the disguised Prince of Wonderland,
shores more than a thousand, and
the waves of River of Coloured Sand.

Gracious-princess-lonely-waiting
atop a five storeyed castle rising,
will you fly to those distant worlds
with me, across the far rice fields?

Dark waves of conspiracy rise,
the leafy skiff flounders here.
Loud motorbikes, so streetwise
princes five will ride the air –

Offspring we are of a mother indigent,
these fates gift us but the pavement.
It is useless even to dream here.
Imprisoned princess, this songbird rare,
you play with it and with the bird of bliss,
on the chat window, the games of peers
in the cyber world that is a global room.
Your father is a great, moneyed man,
so he wants for you an N. R. I. groom.

Princess, look carefully,
do you not know me, really?

I have brought you pearl-blossoms,
dusty books filled with many a poem,
heart-song-wild-grass-leaves and blooms.

For you alone, lovely princess, here I am.

Come, flee with me this monotonous town,
this benighted place in netherworlds grown.

3.

THE TALE OF SUN-BOY WATER-BOY AND RADIANT-LASS

(Remembering Kamala, she who was martyred for the cause of her language)

The brothers turned to stone
the sister at home waits alone –
The nineteenth of May rises in the heart
as does February’s great twenty-first.
The magic stone, illusion’s oceans rolling,
and between them rises a sorcery unending.
Sun-Boy and Water-Boy lost to nowhere
Radiant-Lass their sister is lonely here.
Eyes flowing with fire, their lips uttering disgust –
a score of rivers did they cross unto Death’s last.
That must be salvaged; one’s lost mother language,
the skies are desolate, the breezes are on a rampage.

The letters of the alphabet descended as drops of holy unction.
Thus Sun-Boy and Water-Boy rose alive from their stony prison.
The lost tongue of birth and race returned as glorious as before.
Bangla, dismal, destitute mother once, was queenly once more.

SAPTARSHI BISWAS

THE WAITING ROOM

A rural railway station
sometimes it wakens, and then sometimes it recedes to a deep sleep.
The hoary banyan bent with many years watches this, on and on.

The red-brick waiting room
lay waiting here for the travellers
and resting thus, it succumbed at last
to time and was razed to the dust, long ago.

And then the station rose beyond all stoppages,
and all waitings that had been and were,
the hoary, old banyan still watched
and remembered the first train

at this station –

Remembrances of those days,
of the many coloured engines
that had been once derailed

here, at this station.

O POET, O DEPARTED POET

(On receiving the news of Shaktipada Brahmachari’s demise)

Like the other poet’s, your words too
will be spoken of for some more time
Like a fresh wound is separation’s pain,
it stings when wet, for some more time
The flames will feed on flesh, more death-wise human flesh
Then one midnight, your offspring
will rush out of bed on hearing the newborn’s cries,
and will forget you entirely
as they would cross the yard to the delivery room.

As I wait beside your funeral pyre, I muse at how
you must have built this house with a lot of care.
You must have also kept rigorous vigil
outside the delivery room so that you could hear
the first cries of the newborn babe then.

MY HAY HUT

Those clouds so white float across the sky, across the world’s edge.
The brave rider of the breezes rides across the hayfield, but barely
touching it, seeking the horizon the green grass shivers slightly
remembering those little children’s feet that once had walked on it.

The leaves waft across the paths in response to the afternoon’s call.
All through the sky where the sun sets the birds quest for something.
It seems that it is so, near the river, beneath the fragmented clouds,
my home, my little hut of hay made, all alone, solitary, lies in waiting.

SHELLY DAS CHOUDHURY

KHUKU’S LIBRARY AND I

One day, I suddenly entered Khuku’s library, but she was not there
I mumbled to myself her name, but no one called, or answered.
I run my palm across her shelves, it comes to rest on a pile of tomes.
I am proud, as it is, for Khuku will be a scholar one day.

I wonder at her intelligence.
Khuku rattles off English words so easily at her tender age.
Who could tell how she managed to do master that foreign tongue?
Yet at her age, we had been used more to sponging our slates
and scribing names on it – names of fruits and animals and what not
with misspellings a lot while wet to the bone we used to chant
in the rain or the mist,
“Shibthakur’s going to get married.......”

Khuku knows her arithmetic, such complex ones they are!
She solves them with barely a wink like would a computer.
Wonder girl she is! And to think that I have to calculate
even now, using the fingers on my hand.
Arithmetic I do not at all understand.

I place my palm on Khuku’s shelves.
Whatever wont you find there!
But not a single Bangla book –
Khuku does not know Bangla,
she speaks it like a foreign tongue.
Such hopes we have for her.

I wish to kill myself in Khuku’s library
I and my corpse –
we are alone together in Khuku’s library.

ABOUT KHUKU

1.

She makes mistakes over and over,
and I scold her, berate her, saying
‘Hopeless you are’.
For someone
as poor at arithmetic as you, there’s nothing
that can be done or any good that they can do.
You are in for trouble, Khuku,
I tell her, emptiness looms ahead
in your life, it is writ large in your fates.
Khuku stares at me listlessly, not realising
what I meant. Indeed, how can Khuku know
what this warning of emptiness entails?

2.

Khuku, you have amassed a mountain –
a pile of loose paper and incorrect sums
that obstructs the moonlight with its bulk.
How wonderful! how strange! the moon is hid
by the sides of this mountain of incorrect sums

KAVYASHREE BAKSHI BHATTACHARJYA

THAT DEMENTED GIRL

Itinerant these nights the girl has wrought.
A draught of water has swept away the dreams
of dressed and garnished lavish chews – what
madness seizes her? Her hair flies tousled,
her body is bared. Those scraps of cloth like flags
are tied onto the branches, no one here walks
save the waters that float across the lanes and by-lanes.
Hearts rend but no cries of agony rise, the breeze is silent.
The heart-garden drowns in flowing flood waters
that flow ceaseless, the girl alone shoulders her burden.
When the dense clouds stoop, the surprised winds shriek
and the windows are lost in the haze, the waters make
their own watery windowpanes.
The sun peeks through the clouds.
The madly rushing rivers are grown large as the sea.
Stilled waters reveal drowned grain fields and homes
and then the floating woman gathers her meandering limbs.
And since it has been, a sharp cleaver in hand, this destruction
parts the waters, tears the waves with the tongues of snakes
slowly the dashing waves cease, slowly the flood waters recede
while the demented girl giggles endlessly at the gory corpse.

2009-05-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

A TRANSLATION OR TWO - ON THE 18TH OF MAY, 2009 - FOR THE MORNING SUN THAT WILL RISE TOMORROW

Our pride, our hope above all you are,
my beloved language, O Bangla.
Your lap of comfort, of love
you grant me - my land, Bengal.

Your music enchants - the boatman
plies his oars with it, and the baul,
wayward soul, dances to its cadences.
The peasants seek the harvest -
your music leads them home.

The great Rabi sang to your tune
and brought home laurels and fame.
The world at your feet wanders to and fro.
O my beloved language - O Bangla

Auden and Yeats - A Poem about a Poet

2009-03-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

Wystan Hugh Auden once wrote a poem - "In Memory of W. B. Yeats". It is one of my most favourite poems that somehow border on the elegiac mood. The poem is quite long and exudes a very dense presence of knowing the past in the guise of the present. Here are the lines that affect me the most whenever I read the poem -

"...poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth."

Auden deleted these stanzas from the poem later on -

" Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well."

Very critical and too incisive for my tastes. But it is the truth nontheless. Though the most politically significant lines speak about the contemporary European socio-political context, the above quoted lines could well have been the most important, or rather, rephrasing that, the key lines in the poem. I would suggest everybody to read this poem at least once.

2009-03-07T06:52:00.000-08:00

Gentlemen, desist from belief

Doubt everything

De Omnibus Dubitandum

Doubt every single thing

2009-03-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

GANGA

I was made of water and skies
and clothed in the tears
of a thousand moons.

I was fed the laughter of rivers
and housed in the fears
of a thousand homes.

I was born, but I never died.

I walked with the shadows
and within them too.

I rose from songs and fled into them.

Generations after I spoke of myself,
you speak of me as if you were me.

I, a dead shell of negligence, grow
and still grow on my own wild banks.

Messy, mossy lives – marred mud baths
in the sacred months and moons of light

and more of that there from where it all came.

I am the land, the living in it and the life.
They who live in me shall never die.

For the Lord and the Lady of the Capitol - Eeshanam Sarvavidyanam

2009-01-07T19:40:00.000-08:00

I weep on this New-Year's-Eve for my worlds that have passed away. I await a certain death to come, shivering in the warmth of the dying day. You call me dense and hate me for my love - I give you this - momentary allusion or two besides - Lovers are invariably dumb, especially when it is Love you talk about.

I build a lone colonnade in November and line it with bright roses from February. Thereafter - and still later - ruin ovetakes it fast in the molten shade of the vatavriksha that is so virile.

I call for the end of disastrous headlong rushings into matters of the heart - but who can overcome these many mysterious workings of the Lord of Love - I ask the Lords and the Ladies of the blessed Capitol but there is no answer.....

(You can call it a poem - or just a musing - but for me it is an image - one that has built itself suddenly...into the very structure of my being. Et tu....???)

Mosaic - On the Helm

2008-01-17T08:47:00.000-08:00

Constant deliberations that I have made
about that unique afternoon, and evening
weigh down upon me - as does a shade
that bears down silently - a part of being

a tree
all alone
and still steady,
but outworn
within
a singularly worked-upon garden.

Someone waited for a cemetery to materialise
and wanted, furthur, a brief brush to evolve -
a satisfying trope that this text would realise
as a conquest, less said - and would revolve

about
nothing more odious
than a pair of brown lips.

Then, should I be silent, silenced
by an erratic demand made fancifully?
Or should I be hopeful? Entranced
by only a faint hope, wishing dutifully

for fulfillment
at the hands of a white-livered lily
wresting so painfully
with the tentacles that it itself conjures
within-without-all about -
lenses all awry

2008-01-16T09:45:00.000-08:00

To my land of dark days
lost in the uncertain calls
of twisted rivers flowing
ceaselessly but erratically....

I think this would be a fairly well-turned-out introduction to the new book.

My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose

2008-01-16T09:39:00.000-08:00

smaragaralakhandanam
mamashirasimandanam
dehi padapallavamudaram

My love is like
a red, red rose.
It turns all black
when the evening dews
drench it, burn it,
stain it with more -
Love is the only dream
my love cannot bear.

THIS SOUNDS TOO SWEET FOR MY EARS

2008-01-15T00:58:00.000-08:00

I met a small ringing sound
trying to cross a difficult road
into me and my stolid solitude.

I was promised a grey earth
and a primordial sky without black
or white or anything in between.

I replied in no small terms.
I rang my life many a time.

I sat silent then and thought -
This sounds too sweet for my ears.

I let go of it and forgot
about it and me being friends

2008-01-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees
Before dying
I want to share these poems of my soul.
My verses are light green
But they are also flaming red

I cultivate a rose in June and in January
For the sincere friend who gives me his hand
And for the cruel one who would tear out
this heart with which I live
I don't cultivate thistles nor nettles
I cultivate a white rose

courtesy - ODDITY - this being by Jose Marti....

2008-01-11T07:16:00.001-08:00

Which road did we not take?
Which one was fair and which
was not? Which one
should have lead to what?
Which road?

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I couldn't travel both
and be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear.
Though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh,I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The question of choice in human life. An eternal peril. Surely we know better than that. Do we?

POEMS FROM MY FIRST BOOK - IN THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

2008-01-10T21:27:00.000-08:00

These poems are taken from my first book of poems IN THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR, published from Writers' Workshop, Kolkata.

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A SONG LEFT WOUNDED

The river made a circuit of the day,
the sound of birds, beasts and clashing cymbals
the giving way of breaths to a beggar called Life
then the flowers of humanizing rain
the love of the Lord, the pleasure of pain.

But there are some trees standing as yet in darkened orchards -
Orchards made when Eden was young,
before the gates closed forever with a fiery clang.
These trees even now live, grow and flower;
these trees - away from the unhappy hour.

We were talking aloud when I became the river.
Across my huge, bony, wrecked heart
wreaking havoc on my senses
and yours,I flowed about.
And across this land of many hued dreams
this land of daya, of damyata, of vairagya and of santih
I flowed away, floated away
till all fallen ones began an earnest prayer;
and I, with daya, entered the waterpot of the one who never came back.

The yellow stretching lines and in the middle a blinding fire,
all the while a busy flurry of patterns turning into figures slowly,
slowlyand then the dance of the nine triangles.
In the hurtling dance came the colours.
In red came knowledge.
In yellow came darkness, silence, calm and all things unknown
together fused to make an Eye, all-seeing, all-discerning.
In the gardens, the bursting of senses and of light -
And all the while,into the vast endless Sea
I, the river never born, never made, ever Living -
ran into in mute delight.

IN THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

In this room there is a single window
which looks out on a huge garden
which has no flowers to possess
no roses to love and be hated for.

In the house next door
they are having a party.
In the house next door,
someone’s come visiting
with lots of laughter
and good old wine.

They have forgotten all about me
this room and this window calling out to life
but life does not recall it.
In the house next door,
they are making hay
while there is still sunshine
and laughter and coffee with fruit cake.

They are not aware that someone walks outside
waiting for a glimpse of the merry window.
The garden is silent in the evening calm
while cars sit gleaming on the tarmac
between the houses and the road.

The garden meditates
on what would be the best way
to feel silent and at peace.
In the house next door
they who are having the party
have forgotten this room of a window.

In the house next door they are busy
busying themselves over flowers
and place settingsand mellowed mulled wine
and some tea of course.
I do not care and neither does the garden,
silent and meditative.
For to be lost is to be at peace with everything.

TO BOROBOKRO – IT DOES NOT HAVE A SEA

Ancient coins, ancient fishes
ancient currents that overflow
broken bridges, only waiting
for the queen with a sword
who never came back.

Twisting turning knots and boats
pullulating heart streaming skies
sun and moon and tears of dew
widows beating paper breasts
singing loudly singsong voices
Bring home the children, river wise.

Who knows how the river breathes –
in ones or twos or regular ham-sah.
Someone anxious for a child
ate a floating dead banyan leaf
and sprang Borobokro from the spit.

Ancient river, bloodied banks
banks where grew the Third Species
theirs to love, theirs to hate
theirs to know and forget even
stories and legends of a grey woman -
one-eyed matron in the gods’ chamber
dancing Sapphic for a clutter of bones.

Someone waits on the far-off bridge
that spans and shrouds you, cowering river.
And though it breaks its heart to do so
yet midnights are the time to love in peace
with moons above and you beneath.

2008-01-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

UNKNOWABLE LIVES AND LINES

I see everything by the twilight's last glimpsing of songs
and moons and dusks and long abated blissful nights,
ones that were once heavenly
but are now faded into unknowable oblivion -

and I wait for more,
more as in fulfilling visions
of darkly humming bridges and rivers
at regualr sundowns and sunrises.

Everything is soft and pliant here
as in a memory-charm
created to bamboozle urgently beating fists
upon doors that do not open, never open at all,
except on specifically shrouded blue-moon nights.

Many generations have passed into known history.
Many hours and cruxes-in-time so simplified
have watched us grow together, my loved land.

Nearly a hundred years in wakefulness have I floundered
in wide open dualised arms,
but still I do not know your names,
your eyes and your lives.

I, living engendered, vastly dismembered, mostly endangered.

Many knowing moments of iron-clad worshipat evenings
during the time-goddess's mad dance across courtyards
I remember even now as sad and great
and as vibrant in untimely time
as a single Bloody Mary.

And songs sung from doors to windows
fluttering as sexist statements from pillars
to posts and empty roads in a curfewed dusk
with that lonely bag of rice standing all alone by itself,
awaiting a liberator, a saviour and his hands
that are the hands of a healer.

What do I gather here - nothing
except only knowledge of things to come
and things that have been
and may be those that will rain down again,
swift and soft and hardening then as rocks
that are borne so caringly, sparingly
by the fertile womb of confusion.

My land in dreams and in knowing discombobulation,
nice words long ones and extremely religious ones these are,
the ones that I curse onto your newest life, your ancient names
and your twisted, ever turning, always meticulously burning
surprisingly maturing visages that you hide.

Many leaves have faded as mortal butterflies
once out of the cocoon, ever fated to fly, ever hated
by everything that loves and longs indubitably
for timelessly sweet, saddening eyes.

Many songs have been sung, many copper bells
in significant hour-endings have been rung.
Many a nephilus has flown to heaven and back.

So many moments, immoment, graceful, have passed,
and nearly a hundred years as well,
but still I do not know your names,
nor you and your lives.

2008-01-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

AN EPISTLE TO THE BURNING MAVERICK EMO....

The burning heart in the deeply dark night lonely burning
watches only the darkest vision of its being slowly turning,

turning into a silent scraping at the shut doors of life returning
all claims of blood and soul to the lonely heart lonely burning.

You are that other one who comes ever silent.

You have spoken of some singular sense,
speaking also of sense shutters
shuttering all songs seeking safe sibilation
but all the more strangely silent, waiting

waiting, as more others would say,
for a wan, very-other-like, wasted way
of the weakened world always dying
to open up, shore up its death-songs,
in death or in life burning,
burning and turning,
and returning.

To you, our loved eye, our hated heart, naked heart, lonely soul
only soul burning, to you I remit this epistle -

This is my ever-strengthening vision
of most ends burning.

2007-08-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

TWO POEMS - SHAKTIPADA BRAHMACHARI

(TRANSLATION BY ARJUN CHOUDHURI)

MANASA MANGAL

OR

THE LAY OF MANASA

Seven bedecked boats wandering, endless waters everywhere
In Sravan incessant drones this lay of Manasa
and clumps of pullulating reeds rearing snakelike hoods
Rags to cover oneself in and the agony of Behula
While whistling breezes waft home a benighted evensong
The daughter of Sa’ha hastens on her eternal voyage

Far it is from Nichhani to home in the city of Champaka
Back in the homestead hangs a seven-tiered shika
At night by the light of an improvised oil lamp,
The old woman blinded bewails the passing of Lakha.
My son the fisherman this night fares in the waters
Keep him unscathed, Manasa, O let him prosper.

The Sravani breezes from the southern quarters
Bear hence the uterine odours of the waters
Even now does the twice-born bard Bansidass this strain sing
Not hither, not hither, it is another dour lake...yet to be seen.....
In the entrancing gloom of the dim evening hour,
Called up by the pull of the unknown beyond,
The daughter of Sa’ha hastens on her eternal voyage

UDBASTUR DIARY

OR

PAGES FROM THE DIARY OF AN EXILE

1.

He who has seized my homestead, has dispelled all my fear
The sky on its breast the imprint of my name does bear.
No more doubts, for I will wage a war to end all wars
My mekhlaa-clad sister has gifted me a single tambul.
I, for now, have learnt my lessons
Devoid of all language, in an academy of affection.
Bangla is my mother-tongue, the world is my shelter
For me, Prafulla and Bhrigu are each a blood brother.

2.

Ten brothers, each a champaka blossom
A single sister among them like a parul bloom
They tore out their hearts to inscribe
“This, the Ishan quarter, rejoices, weeps
In what language, listen, and know”

You cannot hear it. And these conspirators thrive as yet
Come hither and listen to this tumultuous roar
Rising from three hundred thousand souls
“Bangla is my mother-tongue, Ishan-Bangla my mother”

2007-08-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

THE GRASS THAT GROWS BENEATH MY FEET - CONCEALMENT – FOR BARDS

In my room
I always secure that place
where many lost hairs lie
streaming away senselessly
seeing able sights,
to strike and to strike more

and more fear into eyes,
sounding as serpents which,
sloughing their skins
bite their own burgeoning bodies
in closeted confusion.

In my room,
I build my own bonds
to break them, bushel them
and bind my stranger limbs
if limbs you can label them at all.
And I wait for one winding stairway
to open up in my walls - to escape

into eternity, forever.

In my room,
I sing all sailors’ sirens’ songs
in bits and bits and pieces

from pottery shards shaded

beneath the successful earth
reminding me of an ontogeny –

There was once an ounce of omniscience
lurking in these now leaking, luckless lands.
In my room, there is eternity

clad in ennobling ennui.

In my heart,
there is a pace that I have plastered
onto my poor life of loneliness
ruled over by a wondrous worldly wisdom.

I walk from wall to wall
wafting my wasted senses in hope,
expecting my eternally shelved stairway

to grow as the grass beneath my feet grows,

in the silentest, most significant

manner of manifestation.

A VERY BLUE EYE

2007-08-15T08:25:00.000-07:00

There is something called an eye...indeed there is, and.....

An Eye must always be BLUE....not black, because then it will see only the night and its taciturn beauties of water shining, darkened, dampened earth and leaves floating like carcasses on a bloodless stream....bloodied by a presence that no longer is one, actually....

not brown, because there is too much of raw earthiness in that....too much of pain, too much sorrow-bearing quite unlike bearing-a-child...and too much of the seen, the manifest bides its time in it...waiting only for the day in the night and the night in the day's raw light.

not red.....because then one would be an icon in a catacomb....where the Saviour of Palestine and the Messiah of Rome is portrayed as a lamb awash in its own blood....red is when you see the penultimate thrust of Time is betrayed in between the climax and the strength. Red is fire doused by a familiar-to-the-eye coloured amphora of wine-coloured sand.

Time is the all-powerful mendicant who begs his way into the cycle we imagine we create and then leaves us destitute with just a closely calculated gust of breeze that the arms of Time conjure-whip-up.

And not even green, not because there is envy in the heart of the neighbour....or the lover who sweeps your lips with a sweep of his or her lips...acting together in unison as the ubiquitous hands at a desk full of work leftover....as those of Sankhini Bhattacharjee born of the Seed of the confused planet, Shukra....or those of Krishnashish Chandra who cannot decide whether he should say to that virtual Man what he wants to say in appreciating that Poet's poesy.

and not even anything else....only BLUE...because the sky is not blue. It only appears to be blue. We, you and I see that the sky is blue. But then a man and a woman and a man in a Kaal Boishaakhi in the heart of Bangla will see the dark, dank heart of the sky which is not blue.

A traveller in an oasis in the desert at evening-song-sung-sadly-away-from-home will see the sky as red as fire that is far away, too far away to be stolen and then await punishment for stealing it, all the while one's liver and intestines shaking.

And even brown sometimes...when the sun is no longer interested in warming the earth. And green as green can be when we imagine lost sea routes in the sky....all said and done, the sky is not blue....nothing is....not even the ocean....nor the flowing rivers of Galatea....and Thetis.

All eyes therefore need to be BLUE.

2007-06-24T05:38:00.000-07:00

"The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze green water in the opposite direction. This apparently impossible contradiction made apparent and possible, still fascinated Morag, even after years of river watching."

The Diviners - Margaret Laurence

AT THE ROUNDED HALLOWS – JULY 20, 2007

Red rain in the drowning day
seeks cold pleasure
in driving hearts to a coarse death.

Rain of seasonal turbulences
unreasonable,

wafting across heart-wide oceanic regimes
vast, very silent,

and with cloud-messengers
bearing to many homes
a deathly wreath of longing
and of knowing.

Red-as-can-be rain,
beloved of waters,
of the earth and of the heart,

and a sum of seized songs
of surrendered souls,

red, so-red rain.

A crafted song here for the rain that seeps through most senses –

and sweeps through the valley of the heart –

as that river we adored loved asked for

and lost, forever.

Those who have watched rivers flow across their lives will realise how vivid a picture it is - watching a river, day in, day out, each minute of one's life passing in drops and gulps of air, of rising blood in, a languid love for and ever-present-silently-creeping-about hatred of, an unnatural growth....and all the while waiting for some strange thing that would rise or fall down, swoop down upon oneself, to end that sempiternal flow.

Apprehensive. Fearful. Yet waiting, ceaselessly, endlessly. For nothing in particular. But still waiting.

Thus have I watched my river grow with me.

It may have been here, for all I know; millenia before our people came to settle on this two-bit earth so beautifully wrought with fertile valleys and strangely infertile, apparently cursed spots of land where, as that leering Naidu from the O.N.G.C. office tells me, spurts of liquid wealth lie in wait, biding their time, cleverly straining to gush out. 'It only needs a little prodding', Leering Naidu would add, with a loud guffaw and a meaningful wink.

But do rivers actually survive for that long a period of time – I doubt it in spite of myself. Do they live in peace when there is that awful tread of homelessness upon their banks? I wonder, could my river have resisted all that and survived?

My meek river. My cowed down, mulled-waters-flowing-in-sorrow river. I wonder - what secrets of ancestry and trysts does it hide in its murky waters straining against the brightly birling sun that crosses our tiny earth each day, and wanders below it, sogaa-like each night.

But it was here, a huge body of water, a cause of sorrow for the valley's peoples who lived, farmed and prospered on its banks, at least a few centuries ago, barely a millenium, I know this from my readings of the ancient sagas; those kathas and gathas that have been left to our people by our long-fled forefathers who could not bear the confusion and the doubt engendered by each roving ripple on the chaotic surfaces of the river. And even now, this mysterious river of mangled history continues to grow.

The charanas and the kaviyals who sang of the river's might in the days of yore tell us that it had been a mighty river, as wide and huge as the holy Ganga herself. They tell us the great tale of the river's origin - how the great God Vishnu, in his incarnation as the Cosmic Boar, or Varaha, had once caressed the Earth goddess Medini with his tusks when he had made love to her. One of those cosmic dentures had pierced the poor paramour of the great God and had created an obvious rent in her delicate bosom. Our river was born of that awesome penetration. Varaha-vaktra - they called it; Born from the Visage of the Boar, literally.

Over the many ages that had supposedly passed after that great cosmic event, the riv er had come to be known as Varavaktra, Boroboktro, Borobokro and then had passed into the domain of the recent, the contemporary, the best of the lot and the worst of the ages.

It is known as Barabak now, the vestiges of the Vishnu-Medini-name long since fled into oblivion.

This present name, Barabak, simply means “the river which has many a big twist”.