Date of Publish: 2019-04-06

A few poems of Partha Bijoy Dutta

 

Hands of God

 

 

 

We trodded on to reach the seashore and looked up at the sky. The ship loaded

with sailors was moored nearby.

The sea made us delicate by diverting our attention from the world. On our

return both our feet got pricked by thorns and were bleeding. Still we are

eternally attached to the sea.

God asked then, at that very moment, extending both the hands. It had been

us who were busy calculating planetary positions. But could not conclude.

Events do not occur with an advance notice. It arrives and grinds the life with

its pestle. Is it just a matter of joke to reassemble a fractured life! Then we

sought for God. Extend both your hands, hold on to us. There was no streak of

lightning as expected, no manifestation of divine light.

He arrived silently. Holding the X-ray plates against light, commented – matter

sensitive. We actually traversed through a sensitivity. We kept on invoking God

extending both our hands. The sea appeared to move closer during the moment

the life support system held on to my life. The multihued boats were floating

around me transforming into a sea of possibility. Which country the merchant

heads to setting sail on his cargo loaded vessels. The smiling nurses asked –

Where do you wish to set sail to? This marine life.

He entered again silently into the cabin. Then said – It appears possible. Are

you ready?

God is extending both his hands. I am exploring not for the sea but for a return

path.

 

Exchange

I seek someone to speak of the living tales

Else the emptiness in front mocks me

Once unveiling the secret I told you my favourite colour reddish.

Said I’d decorate this canvas of mine with my colours – just keep watching.

You thought – this is just audacious.

That day I called you to say the words that I reared long in my heart

But again in my front the prance of dead emptiness. A portion of my lungs was

sought in exchange of my release from cabin. I was denuded – thrown – picked

up. But I continued treading on.

Now only you are looking at me mesmerized keeping the canvas of my favourite

hue in front. Pacifying me pointing at the red sky. Groping for my doe-eyes of

the bygone days in darkness.

Would you go if I take you in flashback. Would take you to the cabin, shut the

oxygen flow. At that moment would seek a portion of your heart. You’d clutch

my hand tightly and ask – friend what type of justice is this?

Had the answers been with me, I’d never have been seeking you madly. Alas,

that day I was asking the eternal emptiness the same question again and

again.

Lost a portion of my lungs in exchange. You had not been anywhere. This was

just a matter of joke or the unwanted silence of life.

 

Surreal

 

 

The air inside the room is shuddering briskly

A breathe is wreathing

So many windows in the closed room

Ok, now just one is open

We appear naked in the grid of sun rays

Hyacinth flowering in stagnant water

You are smelling in closed air

We heard growling of tiger the entire night

The voice wafted in from the eerie woods

Heard the cackling of birds towards dawn

At that moment we climbed the hillock

The rounded Sun playing with mist in front

The air shudders in the closed room

The rapid breathes

We return turning into hyacinth flower of summer rain

When’d the people ventured out return.

 

Bat Time

 

The pair of eyes looked at me sternly through darkness and said – I have

something to discuss with you. I said smilingly – Come once during daytime,

we would discuss. Then I did not realise that these eyes are active only during

darkness. They stab, pierce, kill and fade away before the day breaks. The

stories of the day is so unique. No one cares about the eyes wafting in the air.

I enjoy talking sitting face to face. Speak the utmost necessary else thorough

silence. The eyes proposed truce and said – else the situation extreme. The

conditions are distorted and hazy.

A pair of eyes were flickering and gazing at me intently. The eyes had a

language of its own and perhaps a little sadness.

Those had not been a gloomy pair of eyes.

A pair of vanquished eyes in a trap. That flickers and glitters amongst flock of

eyes.

I know this pair of eyes. It was flapping turned into a firefly on the banks of

Buredehing on a dark moon night

 

 

What could I give you

(Dedicated to Swati Kiran)

 

What could I give you

Million ordeals of being lost

in the unending expanse of the sky

You tied me up so tightly

Who dares to untie the knots

 

That I could come back

Backed by your immeasurable devotion

Your prayers lay hanging

Turning into star-diya in the night sky

 

There is immense joy in returning thus

To look anew to live again

To count time while opening the closed eyes

Seeing you opening the eyes

To chase the entity called God

 

Left behind so much

What I lost there in no trace at all

You don’t allow me to keep account of that.

All poems are translated from Asssamese into English by Bibekananda Choudhury

 

About the Poet-

Partha Bijoy Dutta, a strong young voice of Assamese literature, was born in 1983. He was a poet, a storyteller, and a non-fiction writer. His journey into the creative world began while he was a child. His first collection of poems for children was published when he was in class V. He did his Masters from the University of Delhi and joined as an officer in the Assam Police Service, 2010. His collections include Jukti Bastobar Cha-Pohorot (a collection of essays 2014), Geet aru Taar Achin Prithivi (collection of stories for children, 2014), Khandahar(collection of short stories, 2015), Cheri Pholor Botor aru Eta Jivanor Sadhu ( collection of essays) and Duroir Ghantadhawni(a collection of short stories, 2019) . He was invited to participate in the prestigious South Asian literary festival, 2018 held in New Delhi, where he recited the first four of the above poems. He breathed his last on February 7, 2019.