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An anthology of Assam's Bards born after 1975
The hijol* tree’s shade
Kushal Dutta
Her fault was she had been to the river to look at herself
The god of the river took her down to the water and that’s that
The one who jumped in to bring her from the water
Had a boat of ejar* wood and his calves too were ejar-hued
Leaving boat and oar meandering under water
The light house of truth glimmered in the distance easy as a straight line
Exhausted swimming as they got out of water on to land
Under the shade of the hijol by the river they looked at their eyes
The colour of breath under water was green on land it’s like land
The shade of the hijol hides all unwritten annals of the earth
* The Indian oak, Barringtonia acutangula. * A species of timber tree, Lagerstroemia reginae.
(Translation from Assamese - Prof. Pradip Acharya )
A poem of nothingness
Kushal Dutta
You are restless and fidgety
looking for the definition of nothingness
Please listen —
taking a piece of paper
draw a zero
then looking at it
start seeking your required definition
Have you got it
In a blank paper drawing a line
you created a picture which is like
the full moon in your mirror
how can it be a zero like the dark moon
The picture of the mist is repeatedly lost in nothingness; it again becomes illuminated in lines of light in its fullness
You saw nothingness long ago with your third eye;
you knew and understood and remembered
again and again that nothingness
In the endless splendour of nothingness you
unknowingly had embraced nothingness one day
Unknown to me a zero is hanging from a zero
my shadowless shadow is imprisoned in that zero
[ Translation from Assamese - Prof. Prodip Khataniar ]
Maya
Kushal Dutta
Like one needs a starting to end one needs a question for an answer too But being the starting being the question Maya is always an answerless arithmetic for me And suddenly Sankara manifests himself in front of me as the thought strikes my mind Is there anything called reality? Or everything is illusive like Maya?
When I return home from office When Maya moves away from beside me to go somewhere Sankara manifests suddenly in front of me with the eternal question – Whom I know how much I know in how many ways I know Whom I don’t know how much I don’t know in how many ways I don’t know
I too, explain Sankara like a teacher explains to a kid That rather than always suspecting Maya Why don’t you try asking her father once! (Whoever we know as her father – him!)
This time Sankara’s face lit up a bit Moving the calm eyes lifting the face looking at me he called – Actually as much as I think I know you How much do I not know that I know?
(Whom? Myself? Maya? Or Maya’s father?)
Finding an answer like two plus two equal to five in the dilemma of understanding and not This time I put forward my step hand in hand with Sankara patting him on the back.
(Translation from Assamese - Bibekananda Choudhury )
Samudra Kajal Saikia
- Bahadur Shah Zafar
With a conspiracy of putting fire to the sky with no fear of consequence,
the Gulmohar trees are blooming at the every square.
And (as the price of gold is falling), Amaltas’s everywhere-
Having an auction of golden beads, brightening the sky’s extreme range.
Like the smart girls going for tuition, who speak English very frequent,
dazzling the Bougainvillea. The fragrant prayer
of the evening, from the Madhumalati I do hear.
One or two of the Karabi flowers drop in void. A silent condolence.
Up to the limit of my sights the spring has established its free-of-cost bazaar.
It’s a blooming Delhi. Even lying on its anesthesia-bed Yamuna seeks no pardon.
Roaming across the city Kankhowa comes to his Balcony, when work is over.
Not a single flower is there; nor a tender leaf. All hopes are lying prone.
Just a fist-full of dried soil out there in the tubs. ‘Moostey Gubaar’.
You didn’t take care on time, Kankhowa, now no help in crying alone.
Pain in My Ribs
Samudra Kajal Saikia
I caught an accident a few days ago, there is pain in my ribs now.
Can't take a turn on bed.
Consoling matter is that- no spring bird is singing in the nights
from the tree of monkey jack fruit in my father's garden.
No Oinitom is being echoed at distance...
What a strange relation it was, between your fingers and my ribs.
Your Fingers used to grow like the fern on the Naga-hillside,
- used to wave with the breeze.
I wonder if the vultures would chew up my ribs
or just plucking the flesh they'd leave them on the ground.
Would you ever come to Falfali Bakori by any chance?
The wish was, you would caress my ribs with your beautiful fingers...
Looking for my ribs would you join the Bedouins some day?
Within the cage of my ribs there is another sun.
That sun, too, is stuck in his cyclical task of rising and setting, without fail.
May be another disposable sun, but, recycled...
A pain grows in my ribs. I nurture it like an expecting mother.
Till the date the pain is there in my ribs, it will keep reminding me of your fingers.
The fingers I had chopped off long ago just like the fern on the hillside...
*Oinitom: traditional lyrical poetry from the Mishing tribe in Assam.
*Fern from Hillside, has a reminiscence from Assamese oral literature.
The Sky is Always Something More than a Little Cloud
Pranjit Bora
Even when everything is finished
The craving for survival does not end
See, even on the handkerchiefs of sorrows
People embroider flowers of the happy days
On one hand the precipice of sorrows erodes moment by moment
On the other, the green field moistens
On one hand Autumn wipes out with dust the end of the road
On the other, there drop on that dust the dancing horse raddish flowers
Indeed, even when all fall asleep
Somewhere there awake man and man’s poetry
Therefore, poetry is always something more than a little silence
The sky is always something more than a little cloud.
Translation from Assamese - Dr. Birinchi Kr Das
Through the Gaps of All Your Fingers
Pranjit Bora
Through the gaps of all your fingers The evening moon of full autumn
Your hand is the branch of a mature tree The movements of your hands, as innocent as the white moonlight lead me Towards the overlying meadows
Through the endless paddy field with recently sprouted rice-seeds I keep running on
Wherever I find that the other hands are Coming up out of the still water of the silent pond To touch the shadow of your hand I take a break
How utterly tragic the light of your hand becomes
Translated from Assamese by Dr. Sultan Ali Ahmed
Desolation
Nibedita Phukan
Something was chasing me about
Something that had no shape
No name
Like a firm feeling it coursed through the veins
No one was witness to the moments of the chase
With me there was only my way-brother
In evenings spiked with acuity, loaded with tranquillity
Filled with barrenness
Its load was past bearing
An insufferableness bereft of form
An insufferableness without a name
Lines grew more numerous on my furrowed brow
Anti-ageing lotions were on the last legs of efficacy
To rid me perhaps of that insufferableness
Came time and words
And the formless insufferableness assumed a form
Anonymity took the guise of pain
A desolate yet bearable feeling
Time is whose eternal sibling
An Ancient Tale
Nibedita Phukan
All travelers search for the road’s end
All roads look out for the road-loving man
The roads the travelers seek are arduous and harrowing
Therein begins the tale of man’s descent
Clasping a home to the bosom
In light in darkness an ancient people
The escorts were from another world
They gave a false meaning of faith
They hid
The bit about faith’s faith in spontaneous ex
It’s but faith that keeps life and the road stable
That’s why the trees remain evergreen
Forests turn thicker and ever thicker
Men come to belong to one another
Life is renewed and flows on
The forest becomes man, and man forest
The ancient men sought out on their own
The forests of this world
Bapa, the stone blind
Bijoy Sankar Barman
Bapa my neighbour forty-two years old
stone blind
yet he doesn’t lose his way
I’m twenty-six sighted
I can see
For the last twenty-six years
I’ve seen Bapa
I’ve known Bapa
But I hardly know
the corners of Bapa’s world
42 – 26 = 16
Those sixteen years
Had Bapa’s world remained all the same
I can’t simply guess
Bats are nocturnal almost blind by day
keep hanging upside down
flap around only at night
Opposite is the case with diurnal creatures
People also can’t see at night
Yet
the number of nocturnal people has gone up
What is more convenient for Bapa Day or night
Day or night
Does it make any difference for Bapa
I find it ticklish
I’ve been timid since childhood
afraid at night
Hiding my face under the quilt I thought
Bapa is better off
He does not see spooks
baank dot kandha at night
Where is the fear
if he doesn’t see them at all
One evening of the new moon
it was Bapa
who was coming back along the village lane
with a kerosene lamp in hand
Hello Bapa
What with a lamp
(Maybe you can see in the lamplight)
Oh it is not for me
in this darkness
but for you people
And one late afternoon
of the last month
Bapa returned as usual
that day also from the market
with a bottle of blue kerosene
forty rupees a litre on the black market
clasping the greased catch
around the bottleneck
He was feeling his way
Hello Bapa Coming back
Where are you coming from
this evening
Eh What to say
So much bother last night
What what happened
last night
Oh no
No power supply
No kerosene
Had to sit up throughout the night
in darkness
couldn’t get a good sleep
Translation from Assamese – Nirendra nath
Pigs do not look at the sky
Bijoy Sankar Barman
We the dolphin-loving people
do not think of pigs
The pigs in their entire life
do not look at the sky
even once
That too we do not know
Going upstreams
from the Guinjan river ghat
you’ll find
the Dolphin Point
of Dibru-Saikhowa
Light plays over the river water
or over the pond of our heart
In the dazzling light
closing our eyes
we see dolphins
under water
We keep waiting
With the rhythmic clapping
unseen dolphins
jump archly
Along the railway tracks
in Guwahati are seen
polythene shanties
coal courtyards
tarred bodies
Water is polluted
Air is polluted
Soil is polluted
The void is polluted
(Only unpolluted is FIRE)
We the dolphin-loving people
do not like to see the pigs
Yet
the people who fancy
they are dolphins
the people who jump archly
and come down
say clapping their hands
Yes yes
We live in Guwahati
Translation from Assamese – Nirendra Nath Thakuria
Blue bird, my tea garden
Kamal Kumar Tanti
There was no one else.
None.
Unblemished a body like a lonely traveller. Potent limejuice and
The wind among the leaves. The sound of terror
Of a herd of wild elephants. A sleeping jackal dreaming in his hole.
There was no one else.
None.
The barking of a black dog. Bare stump of a pine tree.
People’s faces. Torn leaves of the gulmohar.
Cow piss on the yellowed grass.
There was no one else.
None.
On the hollow of the banyan tree a squirrel. Soil
Soaked in rain. A dark woman and the burden of firewood.
The green horizon and half a sky.
There was no one else.
None.
A fork filled with mud and grass. A herd following
The cowherd’s tune. Mango trees and mongoose’s nest.
A lonely toddler. A group of dark men.
There was no one else.
None.
Only the tea garden. My
Garden. Blue bird
Of mine.
Translation from Assamese – Dibyajyoti Sarma
A poem against you all: We are happy
Kamal Kumar Tanti
You live on the other end of the world
Hence, you are happy
Devoid of intelligence, we live in our lanes
Like strays
You do not hear the rising voices of our souls
Yet, we hear your ramblings
Listen to your glib talks, your oily voices
Like purring of cats
You pollute our blood with
Dark poison and vermillion
With the craft and cunning of scholarship
You stop our blood from turning red
Translation from Assamese – Dibyajyoti Sarma
Death anniversary of a witch
Kamal Kumar Tanti
(Dedicated to the countless women killed on the suspicion of being witches)
Breaking the earth sprouts
That burning body
In the air, hangs a screech
Slowly, it fades into thousand screams
A flickering blue fire
Floats in the air
Draws fresh wounds in the
Hearts of men
The trees of the night recognise the darkness
The people of the night find
The terrified face of the woman
Without magic, without malice
When will death come
When will death come
Death comes when a poisoned
Arrow pierces the jackfruit leaf
Days become
Past
The weeping of the relatives float in the forest
Unknowable, in the fields unharnessed
In the sand islets on the river
In the tiny hutments ablaze in fire
Breaking the earth sprouts
That burning body
In the air hangs a screech
From faraway
I am telling you
Today is the witch’s death anniversary
Translation from Assamese - Dibyajyoti Sarma
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