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...

“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.