Sweet Water, Silvery Ilish
Parimal Bhattacharya This is a translation from Abdul Jabbar’s Banglar Chalchitra, a collection of vignettes that capture the sights and sounds of south Bengal, its people and places, the dialects and daily rituals. ————————– O if I were a bird I’d take you to some other land. Loving you My bones have turned black. Late on a monsoon night, the sky pours in fierce torrents. Boatman Kalimuddi bursts into a raucous song as he lowers the hilsa net. A big tidal bore now rages upon the river like a herd of foamy-mouthed bulls. Kanai and Yaar Ali, his two mates, begin to dance with raised arms and swaying hips. They have just finished a six litre pot of toddy. Strong and frothy, it started to work as soon as it hit the belly. Now the stormy wind whiplash across their bare chests. Earlier, the cold had made them numb. They had called Kashem Ali on a nearby boat for liquor. By Allah, Kalimuddi uncle, not even a glass of it! Kashem had said. We’re smoking ganja to beat the cold. This fucking wind is too sharp. Everybody knows Kashem has hooch stowed away in his boat’s hull. Molasses fermented with calcium carbide and distilled hastily, for fear of the police, gives a clear hard liquor that burns down the throat. Toddy is much better. It is white as milk and soothing to the eyes. Kalimuddi checks the end of the net and feels the powerful tugs. Will they tear it off? He has weighed the net down with twenty-two bricks and has tied on top countless pieces of bamboo as floats. Altogether eighteen boats have dropped nets at Gadakhali. There are others at Raipur – quite a few ‘Rais’ or sluts do live there! – and also on Boatman Punte’s Whirl. The monsoon month has peaked and yet not much water in the skies. Schools of hilsa have suddenly arrived from the sea. Snow has melted in the mountains, discharging sweet red water. The fish are rushing into the river like crazy arrows madly labouring to release eggs. Yesterday Kalimuddi and his mates could get ten hilsas. The rain tonight promises more. They had sold the catch at the wholesale price of eight rupees a kilo. The wholesellers, in turn, had asked ten rupees. At one-and-half kilos each, it works out to fifteen rupees per fish: quite steep for poor people. Dariyar paanch peer badar badar! Hail to thee, five saints of the river! Everyone repeats the cry with raised arms. The tidal bore is here. Waves high as mountains toss the boats about like petals of banana flowers. The boatmen hold the paddle firmly against the heaving water. The thick wire tied at the end of the dragnet sends out a grating noise. Kalim uncle, we shouldn’t have dropped this fucking dragnet tonight – Kanai says. It seems a dolphin has got caught. D’you hear the noise? May be it’s timber from a shipwreck, Kalimuddi says. That’ll rip the net off. The mahajan will be furious, Kanai replies. Lightning flashes every now and then. The nets will be pulled up when the low tide begins. That would be around two in the morning. A knot of men and women are waiting at the riverbank, their lanterns twinkling in the dark. They are the wholesellers. They sit huddled under umbrellas and waterproofing, near the bushes of cacti and prickly pears. A weak rain dribbles from clots of cloud that drift in from nowhere and waste away. Everywhere one hears the rumble and gurgle of waters. At Boatman Punte’s Whirl, hyacinths, bits of straw, wood, broken canisters and other rubbish eddy about and are sucked in. Punte’s boat had sunk in that whirl. A hazardous spot. But a group of fishermen’s daughters have gathered there, catching topse, bhola, prawn, pangas and other varieties with their crude cloth nets. A few anglers have also gathered there. Red warning lamps flash on the floating buoys. A ship had once got stuck there on a sandbar. It had been a windfall for Kalimuddi and his mates. They had salvaged a lot of goods like timber, jars, drums, wheat, coal, liquor bottles and trunks. About fifty fishing boats lie in wait at the Bamboo-grove Ghat. They never ferry or catch fish. They sail towards the sea during low tide and collect contraband goods from ships. Occasionally, they do ferry night travelers across the river, but for fat sums. Some also carry kidnapped women. A ferryboat takes hours to cross the river from Anchipur to Uluberia. That is why, after the fishing season ends, Kalimuddi takes his two eight and ten-year-olds brats on the ferry line. He has to pay to the lessee of the service. For the government, leasing out the ferry ghats is a profitable business that involve investment. There must be shoals of fish towards Gadakhali-Naldanri, it seems! Kashem shouts. That’s why they have cast nets there. Bullshit! Kalimuddi replies. The river is deeper here, about fifteen fathoms. Do the fish dive across the sandbars, you bugger’s son? Kanai joins in. Whatever you get, it’ll go into the mahajan’s belly, he says. Five to seven hundred rupees worth of loans is there in the record book he keeps in his grocery. The boat and the net are his. One portion for the net, one-and-half for the boat, one for the boatman and one for the oarsman. It works out to two-and-a-half portion. In real terms he’ll divide the catch into five portions and take three of them. That means twelve fish for him. Of the remaining eight, the boatman will get four and the oarsmen two each. The wholesale price being eight rupees, a one-and-a-half kilo fish brings only twelve rupees. Twenty-four rupees for two. The mahajan will work up a temper and say –
From the Diary of a Desolate Immigrant
Shubha [translation HUG] One of the finest poets of contemporary India, these pages from Shubha’s diary were first published in Jalsa 3 (2010). It took HUG four months to go back and forth over the writing in order to come close to the myriad shades of meaning,intonation and diction that stamp this shining work of reflective art, the nub of a lifetime. *** Staying Alive Toast your state. Stay hidden. How many of them! Many. There may be many more. Almost like infinity. Numbers mean nothing. Do not get into that groove. Numbers cannot measure their schemes. Their schemas.That job is yours. Do your job. Be conscious. Secure your interests. If they celebrate their shamelessness, crack inane jokes, project their idealism by ridiculing their own selves, if they exhibit glossy, expensive dress, and laugh with a ho ho, you too laugh with a heehee and quietly save the vignette of a silence. Conserve self-confidence for yourself; between them and your own self, place a sheer curtain of inferiority. If they are able to plainly see your self-confidence, they shall make you their target. Within the circle of their haughtiness, their booming presumptuous voice, do not make your sensitivity apparent. Speak to them in their own language but in lieu of arrogance, fill it with a shade of astonishment, so that you can speak to yourself in your own language. If they stand up, you stand too, if they sit, do the same and secure yourself. Never be the first one to stand in a queue. In praise, in eating and drinking, in accepting something—ignore the largest portion and pick up a smaller one—the one with a soul. When they praise and commend you, do not take that as truth; keep a close watch on their hatred. Whenever they distribute workload, hiding your own wish accept the given load, and blend your wishes into it. You have to take a call on your own work. When they express their happiness, be with them like a badge of approval and save all your sorrows within your heart; do not let that bit vacillate. Without sieving and filtering, do not let their sorrows make way to your heart. Conduct the task of sieving when you are on your own, alone, and carefully let your own sorrows mingle with theirs. Sometimes they cannot identify their own sorrow. But you cannot safeguard yourself; in order to preserve your own sorrows, you have to share their sorrow. Keep those other eternally sorrowful ones silently in your heart, who hiding their own sorrows, are with them and pose like them. Remember, you have an alliance there. If you feel like crying and if your eyes well up in front of them, withhold those tears. Hold those teardrops and do not forget. Cry to your heart’s content when you are alone. It gives succor the way one receives after a bath. The heart turns clear and limpid, all gloom and murk disappear and every tense muscle relaxes.Just like in the rain everything is cleansed and drenched. Crying makes you clearly see your sorrows, your happiness. Then you can carry on the sieving-work unrestrained, in a spree. Never ever ignore your tears and never be oblivious to them. Nurture this natural cascade all alone; do not waste them away. Forgetting Claims After all, when you left home, it was not just in search of roti and love. Roti you have anyway and these days love is a compulsion, so that life can go on. When you were turned into a refugee, you did not just wander about seeking a home. No one casts about only for a home. At that point when you feel that you are helpless or lonely, think about all those people who are in a similar state. They are many and their ghettos and quarters are multiplying in leaps and bounds. You will notice that along with everybody, there are those too, who have been able to secure for themselves a good house and employment. But about material things they have acquired, they are never completely certain. Though not scared of natural calamities, they are forever vexed with the disquiet that something will be snatched away from them. They feel as if they have lost forever some kind of a group-song, a choir that can only be sung in a collective. At certain moments when they look at children as harbingers of hope, a threat, as if some impending menace runs through the hub of that hope. The two broken corners of the torn hope flutter above it. They tend to overlook and forget their legitimate claims. The people, who have been constantly rendered unwanted, considered burdensome and alien—how can they place any claim as their own? Their very existence is that of an unsanctioned, forbidden creature. In spite of all these tribulations, holding onto the earth as one’s home, one must keep on placing assertions. Only then can you think about justice perhaps. Though justice is virtually a forbidden area for you. If you demand it, you will discover that the preparations to chase you away from the forbidden area and to annihilate you have long been finalized. Relief Camps The quest of being reinstated after being uprooted has made you an immigrant, although there is no space for you to return, not even in the imagination. Had there been a secure place for you to come back to, you would not have been displaced in the first place. Often people are displaced and ruined in their own place. Sometimes, as soon as a girl child is born, she immediately realizes that she is alien to that place. At the time of her send-off after marriage,she advances to a new address, baggage and all, like a desolate-disinherited soul, bestocked with provisions, goes to a relief camp. Dispossessed people are repeatedly displaced. In spite of relief camps they continue to remain landless.
‘Fearless, You Cannot Be My Prey’
Savithri Rajeevan As You Bathe Your Mother As you bathe your mother be mindful as with a child. Let the body not slip from your hands let the water be mildly warm Do not lather that body softened by time with the heady fragrance of soaps. Nor let the eyes hurt. On her arms Which bathed and beautified you You won’t find the bangles you played with Nor will you hear their tinkling laugh. That old ring which bore your tender bites will have slipped off her finger long long ago. But Now, on mother’s arms Countless pleats bangles of wrinkles shine with remembrance Seven or seventy or seven thousand, the colours on them? Don’t trouble to count Just close your eyes touch, gently caress that tender body soft smooth in water’s mild warm flow. Then those wrinkles memory-filled will unfold Mother will slowly stretch her arms and bathe you again Steeped in oil and cleansing herbs you will keep emerging washed limpid, clean. Then in return give your mother one of the kisses she gave you. As you bathe your mother, as with a child… (Translated from Malayalam by P. Udaya Kumar) *** In the Lion’s Cage (In memory of Kamala Das- Madhavikkutty) Today is the exam day: the day when questions line up in uniform and stare at you. The cheerless girl told her friend : “Let us go to the zoo.” They erased the question paper from their mind and went straight to the zoo. Deer, peacock, hare, camel, leopard, donkey, rhino, tiger : none asked them questions, not even the ant-eater or the horn-bill. So the girl and her friend regained their cheer. At last they reached the cage of the king of animals. The lion was resting, its mane loose, its fiery eyes aglow, a plate of red meat before him. “His majesty is not a veggie,” said the girl, “The Lord seems to love you so much as to gobble you up at one go: see, he is looking at you.” “ Can I open this unlocked door?” asked the little friend, “Will you enter the cage?” The girl agreed. “He will put you on that plate and eat you.” “The lion has already had his lunch and is taking rest ; he won’t eat me”, the girl was confident. She then entered the cage interrupting the lion’s post-lunch repose. Fear, afraid, stood outside. It locked the door of the cage. The lion with his unkempt mane moved towards the girl gently like a hermit woken from his meditation. He stopped to gather the swooning child in his paws and touched her softly. Then he tenderly licked the girl’s cheeks, her nose and her back, caressed her long on her ears with his nose and went back to his plate as if to continue his broken meditation. The girl came out of the cage and began walking to her school. Her friend, trembling, asked her: “What did the lion whisper in your ears?” “ ‘Fearless, you cannot be my prey’, that is what the lion said, and that it likes the fearless child.” The girl smiled. The questions for the coming exam, and their answers, opened before her one by one like the golden hairs on the lion’s mane. ( Translated from Malayalam by K. Satchidanandan) *** The Lone Wound He just called her ‘moonface’; she pressed her cheeks to his shoulders And there, she tripped and fell straight into the stream, not even a screw-pine’s prickle or stem to entangle her. to see him on the tree with her undone robes, gone in a single dip, that decade when she was born. winking and smiling and coquetting sweetly : She went down and came up fast playing that famous flute. She was sad the sixties were gone, For now she no more remembered how to hide her breasts in her hair, to be thrilled by his flute song , a hymn to her full breasts , to swim as if in River Kalindi, and to stand under the tree, ‘Give me back my robes…’ No; instead there she goes refusing to cringe and flirt for her robes, or to hear his tempting song, stark naked, her shame covered only by the bruises like a tree in autumn, the screw-pine had made and the blood oozing from them, scarlet like Durga’s silken vest. There she goes, nude, split right in the middle, a solitary wound. (Translated from Malayalam by K. Satchidanandan ) *** Skin Disease Your body looks like an ancient wall painting, burnt and peeled off : the mirror told her. There is light in the pink and pale brown, and shade in the bluish blister Which country’s secret picture-code has been painted on you- Altamira, Egypt, Greco-Roman, could be of any land, so ancient is your body, thin, peeled off. A deer writhes on a spear behind your scaly palm and on your shoulder, a wild buffalo, grey, shot down by an arrow. Don’t erase them: researchers will need to discover them in future. That Greek beauty on your thigh, filling her basket with flowers: her arms reach your knee her fingers holding a pale white flower. She wants nothing short of a bison to ride, that pitch black beast bellowing on your breast. Nourish it with grass and hay: don’t undo it with your steroids. Stand straight, don’t bend, the mirror told her. Let your arms dangle in front, but tilt your face a little. Chest, belly, the whole brownish trunk , let all of them face me . But tilt the legs and the feet a little. If you can, look at me with both your eyes. Keep close to the wall. Now this is no more your body, its skin peeled off : you have turned into a painting , a pre-historic mural. (Translated from Malayalam by K. Satchidanandan) *** Leaving Home Leaving my home, I must have walked barely sixteen yards, and there, my home comes chasing
The Twilight Tavern
Suranjana Choudhury/Amitabha Dev Choudhury Ordinarily I sit here. The road on the right hand side of Devdoot Cinema hall approaching Circuit House progressively culminates towards this bar. It is a small bar with eight tables. Each table has four chairs. I sit here when the sun retires down the horizon. Generally during this hour the bar is relatively unoccupied. At least it is not choked with frivolous youth crowd. So it is quiet and restful. I abhor any kind of noise and clamour in the bar. The western side of the bar is enclosed with wall. The entrance through the glass door is on the same side of the wall. I gaze at the reflection of the waning sun on the door and leisurely sip on my drink and wonder, “Do I drink or do I savour life itself?” I was deeply engaged with myself. So in response to the question, “may I sit here?” I delivered a nod of consent out of courtesy without even noting the person who asked this. Then I looked around with a tinge of surprise. All the remaining seven tables were vacant. So why did he have to sit here? I glanced towards room. He appeared handsome, tall, and fair with grey beard, a mix of black and white hair and glasses on. Remnants of a charming youth in its course of retreat lingered on his bearing. He would be around twenty-twenty two years older than me. But why does he drink so fast? I have not yet finished half of my served drink. He has already gulped down more than one pint. “Do you remember your previous life?” I was startled at this question, however, I soon realised that this notion of mine that insane people never needed any liquor was thoroughly wrong. I took around five seconds to transform my sense of wonder into a sardonic edge, “Why would I think of my previous life when I don’t see myself being a man of any consequence in this present life of mine?” and then added, “Do you remember your previous life?” He replied clearly, “Yes I do. There was nothing here where you see this bar now. There used to be tennis hard court where you see Devdoot Cinema Hall now. Sahibs played there. There was a grass court a few yards ahead. Cachar Club housed a bar and library on its ground floor. The first floor had a ball dance room. There was an abundance of trees here. Can you imagine the varieties of birds present during that time? There were many, plenty of them. All varieties comprising birds like Indian starlings, robin, parrot, mynah, munias, bulbuli,wagtails, …. Those white men and women would come every morning and evening to view the birds. Sometimes they would watch bare-eyed and sometimes with binoculars. “What were you then?” “I was a revolutionary then, a freedom fighter. My father ran a huge business in Tulapatty. He dealt in bronze and copper utensils. But I had come under the powerful grip of the revolutionaries connected with Mahaprabhu temple and Saraswat society.” Is he mad? Does a mad person narrate a story so comprehendingly? I asked, “Then?” “I used to look at those Sahibs and Memsahibs. It is quite natural to experience a compelling attraction towards those who we wish to drive away or destroy. During Christmas huge tents were installed surrounding the entire neighbourhood. Those high society white men and women from all nearby tea gardens grouped together to arrive here. The tents were completely inaccessible. We natives were never allowed entry there. If we were ever spotted in the vicinity, they would firmly order us in English to leave the place immediately. We knew their language though it was difficult to negotiate with their accent. However in tennis grass court whenever these people came for bird watching we looked at them clandestinely. One day a little white girl came. She was probably three years younger than me. She looked disarmingly beautiful. She inspected me as if she was watching a species of male hornbill. Then she smiled fixing her eyes on me. “ “What happened then?” “What do you expect to happen after that? Does Christmas last throughout the year? It ends, the celebration too fades away. The Sahibs dislodged the tents and went away. I never saw her again.” “Please tell what happened after that?” “What else could happen dear brother? I got married within a few days. My wife was twelve years old. She was a pretty and petit girl. I grew close to her in no time. But I disliked watching her clad in a sari, especially during nights. One day I gave in to a peculiar fancy of mine. Money was never a problem for me. I bought a very expensive piece of dress material and got it stitched by a Muslim tailor applying my own sense of measurement. The tailor was a skilled professional. He was a specialist in stitching foreign attires. After receiving the stitched dress, I gave it to my wife as a surprise gift just as any Sahib would have done. I assumed my wife would jump with joy at this. But it never happened. Rather she stared at me, her eyes wide open, as though she was witnessing a mad person. Then she opened the door and raced out of the room.” I sat there mesmerised. The inebriation was not induced by any liquor; it was the sheer effect of his story telling. I have only drunk one and half glass, the remaining half is still floating on my glass. The story teller has started his fourth drink. The sun has dwindled away. A semi darkened ambience prevails in the room. It looked as if an artist after having painted the room in water colours has layered it with a single stroke of black shade. The light is not lit yet. “She went straight to my mother’s refuge. My mother didn’t let her come