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A few poems of Manoj Barpujari
ASSOCIATION
I would have taken along if I could
Your face getting tinged at the time of sunset
A whiff of intensely eager wind coming from the sea
Descends down onto your hair
What is my capacity that I’d say to be mine
A salty taste has flexed its body on my balcony
The entire house appeared to breathe
In short and quick bursts
From noon till midnight
My immediate past turn senseless
A solitary serene fort
Brings forth to my room
Past of my past
There had not been any remorse
No bondage
Nothing is waiting
Be it new or old
As the past exchanged with present
The row was resolved
An eager river heading towards the sea in me
And still you are modest like a sea
Even after rearing me
That is the excuse
I wander on divided into two parts
For the two days prayer
While the sea mingles like it’d never been
The sky was waiting
I saw the same congregation of stars
Appearing to shed tears right away
A piece of conceited cloud near me
There is no way out
It never waited for anyone as the East embraced the West
I just stood dumbfounded
One mother transformed into two in the sandy light
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
UNBEARABLE
All these days
I could not make out one thing
Even after understanding
A flock of bird with singed wings
Sordid necklace and amulets
Whose fault has it been
That it so happened
Why did it happen
Actually what happened
Days are dark
Nights lit
None of the chasers are lunatic
A row of boots galloping away
It becomes a matter to watch
The face of the Moon that forgot to bat its eyelids
Ask Aniruddha
Where is the joy of rescue
Ask Usha
Which happiness is different from love
The flying Jatinga
Stay put shutting the eye
In gratitude
There is a fête in the relief camp
The flock of birds
Prances in its own wildness
All return homebound
Leaving behind the camp
And, we feel satiated
Thinking the thread of relationship
As the bonding
Though
Myriad things happen
Actually
Nothing happens
Amidst
So much hardship
Only you stay back
As the support
Of lonely days and
Troubled nights
(Blasted memory!)
Some of Earth’s habits do not change ever
Why did not I grasp
Such a basic truth
After following it so long
Memory is just bird’s feather…
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
INTERPRETER
Often I feel pain at not understanding you
What I wished for what I got
I understand even without you deciphering it
I am sitting now at the most coveted pilgrim spot
With you
Lifelong oblation of words
For you and me
Because darkness exists
The glitter of heaven in the bead of language
What else is it
If not the golden fruit
Those words carry no value
If human eyes
Do not converse
With human eyes
What is the problem in thinking
If not today
The following day
All eyes will meet on a line
Inebriated by dream-sweet voice
Never ever imagined by arch rivals
The sighs and sobs
Would be translated to laughter and mirth
Silvery magic
With the twilight
With lightning
With the aurora borealis
Three languages
One over the other
Three ages
Three worlds
Without knowing you
I am indebted to you
Forever
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
SELF IMMOLATION
Myriad possibilities dazzle on the rocks
Turning into inscriptions.
Thought settlement would be the rock-lines
The nights do not appear dawn
Gandhari tied cloth over her eyes –
She couldn’t have it tied.
The blazing morning ran along the street;
Yours mine everyone’s body
Mightn’t have been burnt
Come let us judge
Was the blind deference for Dhritarashtra actually needed
Give away land be it akin to a needle tip
Let the pseudo rightfulness end.
No one stayed without hearing the Big Bang of the beginning
After that
You carried on your shoulder the silence of destruction
Come let us settle where the end of this agony is –
At the ladder leading to heaven
Or, at the plinth of hell.
That fiery morning
Didn’t stop burning even at midnight
So many invaluable lives
Are burning thus like torches for all of us.
Fire has relieved us from lying hanging in mid air
What fire did not do
From beginning to end of civilization
And in boundless barbarism.
With this fire
You, and many others
Have ransacked the stack of corpses
Allowed a river formed by teardrops to flow by
For kith and kins.
The barrage for the eyes were blown away.
Has the river been allowed to flow before the blaze
(What is the difference between staying alive or dead,
If you search for only the near and dear ones!)
You had always immolated yourself on the altar of
Blindness, greed and anarchy
Just look how devious you appear
In the fire of hanging justice
Where is God? Let the trial start now
Till eternity
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
CONVERSION
It is perhaps easiest to disrobe.
And if religion is just for good looks
Then it is easy to change religion
Is not it that
For you
Religion is just a dress?
Is that why you put religion on other’s body
Like putting clothes,
You utilize religion like opium
I have changed many a thing in life
It is so easy to change things
But is religion a ‘thing’?
At this point I have deep disagreement with you:
I cannot change religion
My faith do not match with that of you
Can you
At your will
Get the North Star down to Earth?
Just imagine, today I tie a bond with you.
In the fire burning in my heart
This bond will be warmer
Will face many trials
And would be even deeper
The bond would become an asset to the heart.
It would bond into a single entity
Would become inseparable to each other
It would become my religion
It would expose itself
Far from the dazzling world of debonair clothes
Deriding your religion
This feeling of closeness, is my religion. Many times in my life I have
Transformed souls of my dear ones. Those belonged to men or women,
With whom I spent hours after hour, days after day, season after season.
I have extended company in long journeys, in return I got a reeking deep
Wound of unadulterated love. Perhaps one feels good by
Putting warm pack by palm.
Thus I have entwined the surrounding nature with my soul.
You would perhaps say nature is God and you have provided clothes to others
As directed by nature. But would you claim the pride and rights of all tribals,
All migrants, all indigenous, all bonded labourers
As your body cloak?
Can you claim so?
But I would defiantly say they have all seen the light of
My earnestness. Each of them invented the wheel,
They poured the curse of language like charmed water
On each other’s palm, made the pronunciation of the tongue
Sweet like the stock of molasses, converted sounds to songs,
Handed over all their valuables like
Contented neighbours. So I cannot change my religion.
Change of clothes is simply insignificant compared to all these.
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
ABOUT CORPSE
He reacted sharply on seeing the photograph
A lifeless body carried like a slain goat.
Oh, how barbaric, dead body should not be carried like that,
He said. The body of an unknown girl,
His poetic self was shocked
Noticing the bloodstains on the hands of two carrier sepoys
There was no adornment on his statement
He saw two or even many bullets
Piercing even his own body
He pronounced just two words
‘He Ram’ in the public meeting
And ‘Please don’t shoot’ in the desert.
Two words without any variety or any fresh flavor
Those are the times
When we get entangled in moral dilemma
Of searching for a simile
We are still a slave of tradition as far as cremation
Is concerned. I hear that the tradition of chopping and throwing
The dead body away from deserted hill-top is no more.
Should we feel remorse for that?
There is no new word or slogan in your mental agony
But it won’t go in vain,
O poet! One day these forests will recite
Your anger against all battles
These hills would broadcast through reverberation
These rivers would leave
The seed of this anger
Along its banks like silt
I’m waiting for such a day…
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
LUNAR ECLIPSE
We all are truly the same. The longest Lunar Eclipse
Of the century being the witness.
You are the semi-sphere of the sky. So am I.
The same pain has pierced through our hearts.
You have not seen me, neither have I seen you.
Would the pain just disappear if we meet each other?
Would it be double, if we part, or
Would it be double if we do not meet at all –
My thoughts just could not fathom the reply
(Akin to a dwarf stretching out to the Moon!)
The shadow of the Earth covered the Moon. A routine
Phenomenon. If we see our shadows on the Moon,
Does not it feel like finding someone just beside us
From our neighbourhood? Shadow brings us both
Close together. We have seen each other,
Feel each other touching too. One bead of memory illuminates
The doorway of our heart.
My favourite dreams are embedded in these
Beads of gems. The dream of the past
Remain blended with the dream of future.
Thus we provide shadow to each other
Bearing the pain from eons.
Unable to dream even of a single shadowless day.
It’s better not to ask since when we are related.
Have the Earth and the Moon ever asked?
Translation : Bibekananda Choudhury
About the Poet :
Manoj Barpujari’s poems represent hurt feelings of humanity, foreboding of the tumultuous time and conscience ever since his poems were published, although occasional take on philosophies of life reverberate across his wide experimentations. His first poem in print was in an erstwhile left-wing journal Natun Prithivee in 1980. He has four volumes of poetry and won the Munin Borkotoky Literary Award in 2003 for his collection Amlakhi Gasar Suhuri. His poems are translated to several major Indian languages and included in various anthologies and literary journals. Besides, he is an acclaimed film critic, having been bestowed with Swarna Kamal at the National Film Awards of 2011. By profession he has more than three decades of experience in journalism and received honours including a Caribbean fellowship.
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