Hereafter the Bitterness
Prasanta Chakravarty_____________________ It is quite agonizing when one fails to find a close enough word or phrase to convey certain words in the English language. In Bangla, once such cluster comprises of words like: স্নিগ্ধতা, শ্রী, লাবণ্য | Grace for labanya or softness for snigdhota actually does not do justice to either language. Sree is even more difficult—at once having a sense of financial well-being and an elegance that has more to do with poise. Likewise, I had a very hard time considering what the actual English equivalence of মাধুর্য is as I was recently rereading one of my favourite poems তারপরে যে তিক্ততা (Hereafter the Bitterness) from Prasun Bandyopadhyay’s later collection of lovely poems: Modhur Tumul/ মধুরতুমুল. The regular reader of Bandyopadhay who has followed him over the years knows how his acute observations of everyday activities, objects, relations and certain enduring institutions are framed within the chalice of a selfhood that is so brittle, confused and vulnerable that it often gives over its many fragments to the eternal flow of time and space. Though he has evolved over the decades, his best poems are playful, naughty, even sassy in bringing to us certain enduring home truths. In this one, he places two contrary attributes—tiktota and maadhurjo side by side and goes on to spin his tale. (Aside: with modhur/maadhurjo I toyed with—lusciousness, charm, softness, sweetness, grace, sonority—and eventually settled on mellowness. I am not happy—for mellow is more mature than sweetness, but then sweetness is too light a word to convey the immersive sense of the original. Sweetness lacks viscosity and affection.) Contraries make the whole, even if ostensibly the attributes may seem divergently directed. The initial move is to suggest that all bitterness must come to an end: for the walnut’s hardness is deceptive. It hides the luscious and soft kernel within. One can hope that all that is modhur shall triumph eventually. A hopeful beginning. The second stanza changes tack as the poet makes a startling resolution that he shall espouse and embrace bitterness as he would do with the mellower, more affectionate conditions of living. The two are subtly woven actually; entwined with each other in a far larger relationship. And here opens space for the second example: unlike the walnut, the colourful sweater is knit with contrary threads and antithetical movement—warp and weft. But the two units are not separate but unified in a mysterious, blended concoction: sweetbitterness. In the final stanza, with the sudden inclusion of the term bodhu/ বঁধু (sweetheart), we realize he has been actually recounting the secret of the universe to his beloved, who is obviously the contrary principle in attachment. The naïve realization of the first stanza—that bitterness would eventually fade, is now no more. Once the poet has confronted the true nature of the cosmos: that contraries clash and may stay as is without reaching any final resolution or stillness, he begins to accept that as life would bring to each one of us the honey (মধু) of care and immersion, so will it churn malignancy and bitterness. But it’s only when both the principles arrive shall we realize what is the nature of the hereafter—of bitterness and mellowness melded. The equilibrium is achieved through the occasional clash of the two principles, not by skirting or striking out either of the two. The poet is perhaps trying to make us appreciate the configurations of various forms of vibrations (স্ফোট) effected through these apparently opposed principles, which are a part of a larger realized truth. Prasun Bandyopadhya has been a traveller who has tried to steer clear of political-cultural harangue (aapkhoraki/ আপখোরাকি) and discursive superfluity (maanbhasha/ মানভাষা) (which he considers to be forms of ‘fatal anaemia’) so that language and selfhood, by means of quitting inertness, can reach a certain ‘non-age time’ and a space (shawsthan/ স্বস্থান). He has often said that a mountain summit can be observed from many sides. Like the many-hued sweetbitter sweater perhaps? *** Hereafter the Bitterness________ so that the bitterness that rises hereafter can also come to an end at last, the hard walnut, in mellowness discards its shell to reveal the kernel *** to regard mellowness when bitter when mellow, not to banish bitterness on a route similar, commingled—shall receive in contrary-pairs whatever lies woven *** like a sweater many-hued still, a single one you wear the one you wore in Kalimpong Is it not a unit in partnership *** should mellowness churn honey no regrets then when bitterness arrives in realization coalesced, my sweetheart whatever originates in contrary-pairs _______________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org