Date of Publish: 2020-03-29

A few poems by Bibha Rani Talukdar

Schizophrenia

Illuminated roots get uprooted

Filaments of jasmine droop on crooked genuflecting body

Pulling back the memories

the raven is cawing

 

Smouldering something or smog gets deeper

Mist either, or the reeking of smoking layer

Peeping through the lid

a sound rustes around the bride's anointing feet

 

A bud flounces to sprout

when sun leans to set

 

Wane voices float in coiling

Steps yearn for taking breath

Clueless night wants to have siesta within the eye

 

Bare falls

An edgy bawl sprouts

original: Skijophrenia

Trans. By: Amitabh Ranjan Kanu

All the night it was raining in the hill

All the red buds

got drooped till the morning

Gazing at the budding sun of the darkling sky

The lowland girl kept sitting on the outer plinth

For the bird that had flown away at night itself

to stem the clouds

lay flat over a rock of the hill spreading its wings

 

The purple fingers of the eastern sun

got buried in the paddy stretch of the west

A stream of sadness wells up

How could she clamber the hilly path

Where could she hear the bird's call

 

Draping over her body

the red chadar woven by her mother

she goes down the bluff

Melting the patches of cloud

run down from her eyes

The quills of the bird drift down

With petals of red flowers stuck in them

A shoal of fishes

golden and silver

splashing in her heart

drag her to the whirlpool

 

At the time of burning Nahar seeds

the people on the banks see

a forest of red flowers

drifting down

tucking its head in the wings of a bird

Original: Paharot barasun

Trans. By: Nirendra Nath Thakuria

Chadar: Typical Assamese scarf

Nahar: (Mesua ferrea) Indian Rose Chestnut

 

Water prayer

A lone tree raising its arms moves towards the sky

Heaps of countless people are in faint clutching the roots

Coming to senses for a moment

the peole ask one another the same riddle

"The pond gets dry the mere gets dry

The tree tops do not..."

Water

Where is water

No pond no mere

The tall building mock

Wailing in the graveyard of trees

the people faint once again

 

Let the tapering roads get broad

Let the subsided houses rise high

Let four-lanes and six-lanes gather the horizon

From the tallest of the tall housetops

let the sky be touched

 

The people jostle to hurry up

The people jostle to get taller

And dreamy and drunk they

remain suspended in the void

 

Slowly and slowly the tree turns yellow

The people get tired after fits of coughing

No water no water how to quench the thirst

No water no water how to wet the land

Lifting the crust of slumber

the people dragging themselves up

 

sit in prayer for a patch of cloud

raising their hands

Original: jalastuti

Trans. By: Nirendra Nath Thakuria

Boats in slumber

The listless noon was falling drop by drop

from the thin-striped leaves of slender bamboos

Groans in the throats of boats lying in sands

 

Tucking its two drops in wings

the egret flapping in flight

suddenly cleaved the noon

Tapas reminded

Over there is the whirlpool

Over there is the abyssal kalohi

 

In the gazing eyes reflect

myriads of wavelets and ripples

created by the slick tails of mermaids

who can I narrate to

that at thrashing my heart

on the stone slab at the edge

how the tangles of memories too get snapped

 

Getting rid of tangles memories grip me again

I touch the venomous jaws

taking them for crab holes

even in the abyssal whirlpool

wilts the waterweed body

 

Melting down drop by drop

the noon sobs at a distance

Leaning against the heart of dusk

I turn into one of the boats lying in sands

my womb filled with hairy sand

Original: Sui thaka naobor

Trans. By: Nirendra Nath Thakuria

Moments ago we were

Moments ago

We were in the same house

the same air we inhaled

Yet I hardly knew him

 

Did I see or didn't notice

the white scratches in his hair

his dry eyes like dead wells

in the drip-drop from his body

I did not know what salt melted

We were not that intimate to make out

 

Moments ago

he creamated the body of his son

The last piece of firewood placed on the pyre

moaned

Transient is wealth kith or kin

Transient is youth

Transient is family bond

 

Suddenly his eyes likened to still wells

raged like a fire

and sucked all the salt from somewhere

I didn't ask even once

To ask him I wasn't that intimate

 

Oh dear

as long as there is body there is shadow

as long as there is body there is maya

Why so long to make out this thing

 

At the time of his hasty leaving

he has sown his words

in the downstream baulk

 

Only when I stepped in

the bend engulfed by light and darkness

it dawned on me that I knew him

He is my father

I am that son

with those pyre's smoke

he wants to draw the subtlest line

between life and death

Original: Alap aagaloike aami

Trans. By: Nirendra Nath Thakuria

About the poet

Bibha Rani Talukdar, a young poet from Assam, did her M.Sc. in Statistics from Gauhati University. She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Goreswar College. Her poems have been published in most of the leading literary magazines of Assamese language. Four of her poems translated to English had been published in 'The Indian Literature' published by Sahitya Akademi. 'Luvina', the literary e-magazine published by The University of Guadalajara, Mexico had published one poem translated to Spanish. 'Atmabhash' is her only published book of collection of poems.