Once my boat had docked on this very bank The fresh breeze of spring had caressed its flank. You all called out to ask If I had a particular mark If there was somewhere I planned to go I only said, what do I know. My boat rocked, my strings were torn Alone I sat and sang of youth lovelorn. Hearing my song Young men and women came along Giving me flowers they had plucked “He’s one of us,” they proclaimed. Only this, nothing more, That was the first name I wore.
Then came the tide The play of waves did subside; With the nightingale’s tired song Memories of forgotten days suddenly pulled along Clusters of frangipani bowed And moved Scraps of spring’s invitation letter they were Meaningless, like a lost feather.
The deep pull of the ebb-tide Now wrenches my boat to the seaside. Boys and girls of a new age Call from a distance, engage, “Who goes there rowing his boat Towards the evening star, afloat?” I tune my sitar’s string Once more I sing — Let my name be thus known I’m one of your own Nothing more Remember that as the final name I wore.
~ পরিচয় (porichoy) একদিন তরীখানা থেমেছিল এই ঘাটে লেগে, বসন্তের নূতন হাওয়ার বেগে। তোমরা শুধায়েছিলে মোরে ডাকি পরিচয় কোনো আছে নাকি, যাবে কোন্খানে। আমি শুধু বলেছি, কে জানে। নদীতে লাগিল দোলা, বাঁধনে পড়িল টান, একা বসে গাহিলাম যৌবনের বেদনার গান। সেই গান শুনি কুসুমিত তরুতলে তরুণতরুণী তুলিল অশোক, মোর হাতে দিয়ে তারা কহিল, “এ আমাদেরই লোক।’ আর কিছু নয়, সে মোর প্রথম পরিচয়।
তার পরে জোয়ারের বেলা সাঙ্গ হল, সাঙ্গ হল তরঙ্গের খেলা; কোকিলের ক্লান্ত গানে বিস্মৃত দিনের কথা অকস্মাৎ যেন মনে আনে; কনকচাঁপার দল পড়ে ঝুরে, ভেসে যায় দূরে– ফাল্গুনের উৎসবরাতির নিমন্ত্রণলিখন-পাঁতির ছিন্ন অংশ তারা অর্থহারা।
ভাঁটার গভীর টানে তরীখানা ভেসে যায় সমুদ্রের পানে। নূতন কালের নব যাত্রী ছেলেমেয়ে শুধাইছে দূর হতে চেয়ে, “সন্ধ্যার তারার দিকে বহিয়া চলেছে তরণী কে।’ সেতারেতে বাঁধিলাম তার, গাহিলাম আরবার– মোর নাম এই বলে খ্যাত হোক, আমি তোমাদেরই লোক আর কিছু নয়, এই হোক শেষ পরিচয়।
I won’t let the sun set now. Look, I’ve broadened my shoulders and tightened my fists. I have learned to stand firm by embedding my feet on the slope.
I won’t let the sun drown now. I heard you’re riding its chariot and I want to bring you down You, the emblem of freedom You, the face of courage You, the earth’s happiness You, timeless love The flow of my veins, you The spread of my consciousness, you; I want to help you climb down that chariot.
Even if the chariot horses spew fire, The wheels won’t turn any longer I’ve broadened my shoulders. Who will stop you I’ve expanded the earth With bangles of golden grain I will decorate you With an open heart and songs of love I’ve widened my vision to flutter you as a dream in every eye.
Where will the sun go anyway It’ll have to stay put here In our breaths In our colours In our resolves In our sleeplessness Do not despair I won’t let a single sun sink now.
अब मैं सूरज को नहीं डूबने दूंगा। देखो मैंने कंधे चौड़े कर लिये हैं मुट्ठियाँ मजबूत कर ली हैं और ढलान पर एड़ियाँ जमाकर खड़ा होना मैंने सीख लिया है।
घबराओ मत मैं क्षितिज पर जा रहा हूँ। सूरज ठीक जब पहाडी से लुढ़कने लगेगा मैं कंधे अड़ा दूंगा देखना वह वहीं ठहरा होगा।
अब मैं सूरज को नही डूबने दूँगा। मैंने सुना है उसके रथ में तुम हो तुम्हें मैं उतार लाना चाहता हूं तुम जो स्वाधीनता की प्रतिमा हो तुम जो साहस की मूर्ति हो तुम जो धरती का सुख हो तुम जो कालातीत प्यार हो तुम जो मेरी धमनी का प्रवाह हो तुम जो मेरी चेतना का विस्तार हो तुम्हें मैं उस रथ से उतार लाना चाहता हूं।
रथ के घोड़े आग उगलते रहें अब पहिये टस से मस नही होंगे मैंने अपने कंधे चौड़े कर लिये है। कौन रोकेगा तुम्हें मैंने धरती बड़ी कर ली है अन्न की सुनहरी बालियों से मैं तुम्हें सजाऊँगा मैंने सीना खोल लिया है प्यार के गीतो में मैं तुम्हे गाऊँगा मैंने दृष्टि बड़ी कर ली है हर आँखों में तुम्हें सपनों सा फहराऊँगा।
सूरज जायेगा भी तो कहाँ उसे यहीं रहना होगा यहीं हमारी सांसों में हमारी रगों में हमारे संकल्पों में हमारे रतजगों में तुम उदास मत होओ अब मैं किसी भी सूरज को नही डूबने दूंगा।
The generosity of a weekend morning and a teacher’s unlocked house. Her trust in us, somewhat excessive. To leave the property to a bunch of inquisitive adolescents; there, less for language learning and more for the telephone to make prank calls with, just a few, before the elderly tutor arrived. To then settle down on the sofa like monastic disciples awaiting ordination. With the trail of lessons moving through villages, bullock carts and heaving rivers, to let the eye settle on a glass cabinet housing pretty dolls in traditional finery — Japanese, Bengali, Rajasthani. The teacher’s off-school diversion. After the class — a walkabout of everything from the classics and satire to home-brewed verses on bygone Saturday mornings — pottering over to the dining table to uncover surprises waiting in neat porcelain saucers. Tea cakes, cookies, seasonal savouries. Bribes the teacher cooked to entice some not-so innocent teenagers to bite into the mother tongue just a bit deeper.
I miss you like I miss the memory of things I once couldn’t forget if I tried to. Like the leaves of the tree under which the market presswallah
wielded his heavy iron on the entire neighbourhood’s rumpled crease. Like the minstrel’s khanjani, portable cymbals of wistful supplication. I
miss you like the absent compressor of our dysfunctional refrigerator, its garish orange paint a reminder of a well-wisher’s gigantic kindness
in selling us her relic. When it no longer cooled water or made ice, Uncle made It his secret cabinet for stashing the diaries no one could read anyway.
Not even him. I miss you like the boy Uncle must have once been, con brio, wanting to love, seeking home. I miss you like the illusory promise in the songs we
bellowed in school praising our nation, a sordid country of uneven ladders. I miss you the way we miss things not exactly lost and no longer easily found.
Like air and freedom, light, too, is suspicious of prison cells. Here, muscularity, minacious, well-oiled, prowls around the clock, a wild cat in command of its turf. Women petrify into grinding stones too heavy for new sorrow.
Juicy allegations buzzing with mendacity test the nerve of testosterone. Old friends discover each other anew as if they had been separated for years. Porous prison walls are the only true ally, at times smothering, closing in, like an obsessive lover.
Here, children lick more darkness than milk and try to believe the sky to be a true story. The rainbow is a fairy tale. Long conversations conserve grey cells and crumble invisible walls more solid than concrete.
Light shuns prison cells like fish dodging a cast net. On certain rain-whorled evenings, a rainbow and a full-blooded moon still get caught through the perfidious windows of this spotted palace.
Note: The italicised text are quotes by Devangana Kalita, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya respectively.
You gave me a gold-plated fountain pen And a cornucopia of writing equipment. A small walnut-wood desk. Letterheads in different designs. Silver paper with an enamel finish. Scissors, knife, sealing wax, ribbon. A glass paperweight. Red, blue, green pencils. A letter must be written every Other day, You ordained for me.
I finished bathing in the morning So I could sit down to write a letter.
But I can’t decide on what to write. There’s only one news — That you have left. This, you already know. Yet, it seems like You aren’t really aware of this. So I think of letting you know — You have left. Every time I begin to write Something tells me this isn’t easy news to share. I’m no poet — One who can give voice to a language; Or vision to words. The more letters I write, the more I shred them.
It’s ten o’ clock already. Your nephew, Boku, is ready for school, I need to feed him first. This is my last attempt — Let me write to inform you That you have left. The rest is only a jungle of Doodles crowding the blotted ink.
পত্রলেখা
দিলে তুমি সোনা-মোড়া ফাউণ্টেন পেন,
কতমতো লেখার আসবাব।
ছোটো ডেস্কোখানি।
আখরোট কাঠ দিয়ে গড়া।
ছাপ-মারা চিঠির কাগজ
নানা বহরের।
রুপোর কাগজ-কাটা এনামেল-করা।
কাঁচি ছুরি গালা লাল-ফিতে।
কাঁচের কাগজ-চাপা,
লাল নীল সবুজ পেন্সিল।
বলে গিয়েছিলে তুমি চিঠি লেখা চাই
একদিন পরে পরে।
লিখতে বসেছি চিঠি,
সকালেই স্নান হয়ে গেছে।
লিখি যে কী কথা নিয়ে কিছুতেই ভেবে পাই নে তো।
একটি খবর আছে শুধু--
তুমি চলে গেছ।
সে খবর তোমারো তো জানা।
তবু মনে হয়,
ভালো করে তুমি সে জান না।
তাই ভাবি এ কথাটি জানাই তোমাকে--
তুমি চলে গেছ।
যতবার লেখা শুরু করি
ততবার ধরা পড়ে এ খবর সহজ তো নয়।
আমি নই কবি--
ভাষার ভিতরে আমি কণ্ঠস্বর পারি নে তো দিতে;
না থাকে চোখের চাওয়া।
যত লিখি তত ছিঁড়ে ফেলি।
দশটা তো বেজে গেল।
তোমার ভাইপো বকু যাবে ইস্কুলে,
যাই তারে খাইয়ে আসিগে।
শেষবার এই লিখে যাই--
তুমি চলে গেছ।
বাকি আর যতকিছু
হিজিবিজি আঁকাজোকা ব্লটিঙের 'পরে।
Home is a kidnapper who has finally made you submit to its territory, mapped and unmapped.
Home is your first partner in crime who, by introducing you to its hidden corners, gives a toddler you a taste of what manipulating adults with pranks feels like.
Home is the no-nonsense courtroom, where, you, still a toddler, take the gods to task by bashing up their idols at the altar for denying your grandma her own house.
Home is the compassionate table fan that breezes through the room on a hot summer day as Rafi and Geeta Dutt croon aankhon-hi-aankho-mein on the radio and two children – your brother and you – sprawl on the cool cement floor of a government quarter to hurry through your summer holiday homework.
Home is the indulgent playground overlooking that same government quarter where children make friends over hopscotch and their mothers, knitting buddies, on charpaais.
Home is the confused late-entry hero that is finally grandma’s own house. Its dust and half walls hold you in a perplexed daze. Your brother, yet to reach his teens, brings you back to reality as he returns with a pot of rice he’s managed to cook in the half-baked kitchen of this unfinished structure.
Home is the jealous new paara, neighbourhood, who estranges you from old friends and the loving playground with its consolatory offer of a cricket-colonized back street and stock loneliness.
Home is the keen, encouraging listener of your early-morning and late-evening riyaaz that mother helps add melody to with the harmonium she buys you off months of savings.
Home is the generous open terrace that grows in personality as you do in age – as your study-time ally in your yet-to-be-teen, mellow winter afternoons; as the host of a star-draped night sky beckoning you to let go in your ambivalent early 20s; as your gym and fitness partner later, when you do learn to let go.
Home is the comforting pal your grandfather brings you back to from the bus stop every evening after school. It’s where grandma waits with hot food and a listening ear for all your school stories, helping you bridge the interval until mother returns from work.
Home is the trusted ally you make your way back to, having survived an attack by gunmen in a public space, to hug your grandma, sick with worry. In the days to follow, home makes you an accelerated learner of what political revenge means even as your eyes adjust to the sight of blood on the streets you call paara.
Home is the saboteur who smashes that trust and hurtles you into the dark, suffocating dungeon of an empty house after making you witness the deaths of your grandparents for two years in a row.
Home is the traitor who makes you grow up while you’re still an adolescent without allowing you the time or the technique for the messy transition.
Home is the embarrassing hole in the bedsheet you cover with a folded quilt that you desperately hope wouldn’t shift when your university friends come over to your house to plan a trip.
Home is the sterile mate you’ve lost all love for but continue to live with, your days drained of élan vital, your nights a concert hall for sleep-snuffing nightmares.
Home, after years, no, a whole decade, is finally the conciliatory collaborator who invites you to work from home – with your mother, now retired from work, filling up all the hollows your grandparents’ departure had cleaved into its spaces.
Home is the humble plot of land your grandma bought, even if it’s no longer the house she built. Her breath moves through the guava tree she planted, still rooted to the faithful backyard soil and alights on your skin as a butterfly every time you fly back.
Home is a detective plot that can only unravel in back stories. Each flicker of memory is evidence of the scraps that went into constructing this labyrinth. Every solution is wisdom distilled only in hindsight.
Bhaswati Ghosh 