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Navakanta Barua (b. Dec 29, 1926, d. July 14, 2002) was an eminent modern poet, novelist, lyricist, dramatist and a popular writer of children's literature. He enriched the modern Assamese poetry with his unique style, aesthetic consciousness and bold ex
Barua received several awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award (1975) for his novel Kakadeutar Har, Assam Publication Board Award (1974) for his collection of poems Mor Aru Prithivir and the Assam Valley Literary Award (1993), the Soviet Land Nehru Award (1980) for translation of Pushkin's The Wounded Swan. As a Tagore Scholar he travelled to erstwhile USSR in 1962. In 1973 he participated in Fifth Afro-Asian Writers' Conference in Kazakhastan. He visited Poland and Yugoslavia in 1975 on a cultural exchange programme.
The lyrical flow in his books for children, which include Akarara Jakahala, Syali Palegoi Ratanpur, Makhonor Kukura Puwali, Golap Aru Beliphul, leave lasting impression on children.
"He was one of the first to introduce surrealism in modern Assamese poetry. His collection established him as an eminent poet and a visionary. His poetic ex
Measurements
It is evening now,
Let’s go to the tailor’s, to get measured.
Measurement of neck chest hands and arms
Measurements of the thumb.
We shall give measurements of the palm and the heart,
The entrails, the spleen and the liver,
Give count of hormones and love.
Let us give measurements of life
Of this and that and various things.
Only give the measurements.
We shall think of the stitching later on.
For the time being let’s just give measurements;
We can only give measurements.
We can only take reckonings.
We shall record the suicides have
Swelled considerably.
We shall give count of Christians in Arabia.
Just give measurements.
We shall think of stitching later on.
Only think.
Someone after us will measure anew
Saying that our measurements were wrong.
Fresh new measurements.
When will someone stitch the garment to fit Man.
(Translated from Assamese by Dhirendra Nath Bezboruah )
The First Code of Life
Offerings to the mother have been washed
With brother’s blood;
To satisfy the mother earth
Offspring’s flesh has been cooked in her breast’s milk!
Please, no more
Distribute those horrible offerings!
I am a poet, my shelter made of only words
Words only from my bridge
Through the incisive bridge of words I have crossed
The dark caves of disbelief
What is the use of calling he word as Brahma
Thinkingof it as The God Incarnate.
When man wants to protect its dignity
With men’s blood?
Only a few accused, condemned words
(So easily can one juggle with the words!)
From which erupts deadly hatred,
Suicidal, fratricidal smoke, and
From which originate rivers of blood
Of the confused poor
Ye my people, the incarnations of the Great Ashoka,
With your tears of repentance
Have your hands washed of
The stains of your brother’s blood.
Purify yourselves. Not with the split incantations
But with the stable unity of
Thought, Love and Sweat.
Ye Ashoka the Terrible, transform yourself
The Ashoka the Just.
( Translated from Assamese by Ritu Raj Kalita )
The Belt Of The Spinning Wheel
The corded belt of my mother’s spinning wheel
was a mystery to me
spool after spool is used up
the distended bobbins pile up in the basket
the empty reel takes a spin or two and stops
But the belt of the spinning wheel is unending
I don’t see its ends, just see it move
spelling it out carefully, I write on my slate
Eternal.
One day the cord of the spinning wheel
became quite another thing
I saw a bare string lying on the cement floor
And, after that
We bore mother to the grounds and burnt her
Now the spinning wheel turns
but the bobbins won’t,
In the reel a knotted skein of thread ...
Sitting in the dark of my mind
gingerly, in Rabindric charactery
entered in the ledger:
Terminal,
in the morning light,
the stammering poet, me, read
et-term-inal.
( Translated from Assamese by Pradip Acharya )
God Gave Gray Cells
God gave man brains
To achieve lunacy therewith.
With his body plenished with blood
The heart took on the task of mistrust.
Speech he had
Wherewith cunningly to obscure truth.
The only truth left to Man
Is the work-moist hands of his own woman
Clasped in his weary hands of an evening
And the smile of this his child.
(Translated from Assamese by Pradip Acharya )
Two poems translated by the poet himself
Cloistered
The fossil heaved its stony sigh
Moaning:
God’s failures have caused,
All his tears to helpless man.
(First published in 1970)
The Gloom
Last night
Someone poured ink into Umiam
How the streetlights emitted darkness!
The whole day the sky blotted
It with the clouds.
And now, just now
Mixing the gulmar and
The golden cassia hues
The sun prepared
A tiny speck of an orange light.
(First published in 1970)
The translators:
Dhirendra Nath Bezboruah is a veteran journalist, author and columnist. A former president of The Editors’ Guild of India, Mr Bezboruah was a former editor of The Sentinel, an English daily published from Guwahati.
Pradip Acharya is a renowned translator in Assamese and English, literary critic and author. He taught English in Cotton College.
Ritu Raj Kalita teaches Chemistry in Cotton College. An essayist, poet and a translator, he is the Associate Editor of Natun Padatik- a socio-political quarterly published from Assam. He writes extensively on social justice, peace, social harmony and secular values.
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