Fafamau
Prasanta Chakravarty ওর আর কোনো গতি নেই জানো, কবিতা লেখা ছাড়া—she does not have any recourse, you know, other than writing poetry. This is what rings in my ears. This is how Anindita Mukhopadhyaya, whom I keep meeting as she swings on her Aeolian School Balcony ( বাতাসিয়া স্কুল বারান্দায়ে ), was introduced to me by a friend who himself only knows to swim and perish with poetry. There is a ticket that you have to earn. If you are ‘an explorer of the bliss of writing’, in Roland Barthes’ words. And this ticket can only be earned if you have routinely skipped classes and tutorials in college, dumped all projects and deadlines for good: কলেজ পালিয়ে যারা চুপিচুপি /ঘাসে নেমে এলো,/চলে গেল দূর দূর গঞ্জের হাটে,/তারা পেল /ঝাউফুল আর –/নেপচুনের সমুদ্র মুকুতা “Those who bunked college classes, and noiseless /Came down to the grass /Disappeared at the gunj-haat /They would accrue jhau-flowers/Neptune’s sea-pearls” On this balcony, living is tentative. Buffeted, but not indifferent: living, dying and living again on the swinging school balcony is a shared belief system that one partakes of. No one looks for any clarification here. Because no pointers are given. Living is staying in constant amazement of our existence and being aware of our finitude, even as we are deeply aware of and puzzled by the angelic and diabolic presences all around us: আসলে একটা পোকা সেই কোনকালে/মাথায়ে সেঁধিয়ে গেল–/ গন্ধতেলে ভেসে থাকত দুপুরের সর,/অসুধ খেয়ে সে কী ঘুম/আলোকলতা পিসির,–ইজিচেযারটা হাঁফাত,/বিচ্ছিরি টিকটিকি দুটো কী যে করত/খাটের তলায়!/ সমীরণ ধীরে না বইলে ভীষণ ভয় করত/সবেদন পরশন সইতে না পেরে/ছবিটা ঝনঝন করে পড়ে ভাঙলে/লতুপাগলি আবার সমস্ত পাড়াঘর মাথায় করবে | “Actually an insect, long ago/Embedded itself in the head /Afternoon’s rind stayed afloat in fragrant oil / Popping pills, those everlasting siestas used to begin /Aloklata Pishi’s easy-chair would pant /Those ugly lizards! Devil alone knows what they were up to /Underneath the bed/The buffeting breeze, not gentle, would terrify /Unable to withstand the aching touch /The painting came crashing down, in splinters/Lotu pagli, her wails and shrieks, shall once again wake the whole colony up.” Living is slow. And living is a misunderstanding that is unmistakably erotic. So the poetic recollection of that eroticism is eternity’s flowing back into the present. For the poetic tick that infiltrates our head is a delicious pall of an unrushed creamy rind, maddening in its extended fragrance. Everything around us takes time, wondrous and wondering , every bit rocks sluggishly, the insect’s magical potion taking charge, gestates inside our head—the leaden siesta, aunt’s chair that is easy, the resident lizards, all owe their existence in the nowness of their presence to that bug that had entered our cranial woodwork at the beginning of time. The bug of existing is now in poesy, undulating in living matter, throbbing. Such is the tremulousness of our living, such is its pitch-perfect diurnal cycle, that any minor change in this seasonal flavor— effected by the busy wind in this case, will inevitably lead to shrillness and imbalance. This strident intrusiveness of the wind starts off the dawdling madwoman. Who, with some oracular premonition, alerts us with her clamour of some impending doom. As a contrary force to time’s wind, there is a waft of a breeze, not mellow but full, and it always arrives in the dawn—যোগাযোগহীন এক হাওয়া —an unconnected puff of air. This is how visitations of memory, and connections, rustle us. This rustle will take more concrete shape anon. There is a side to the gunj/shahartoli existence that fills us up with rubies and pearls, this lost existence in utter oblivion–কী গান যেন, কাদের ঘরে?–অনুচ্চ, অনুক্ত…/ সেও বোঝেনা আমরাও চাই ওসব মণিমুক্ত. The basis of an existence, of all poetry, is the unsaid, the tonality of the low-lying, sunken, the nether. This is where the Aeolian balcony appears —within the cocoon of a concerned oblivion. It is a school of learning, a magical parallel cosmos that runs athwart us—বাঁ পাশে বিস্কুট-কলোনী ভরে যাচ্ছে নতুন আলোয়—this is the milky way of the light-awash refuge of a biscuit colony. It is this incandescent biscuit colony on the left side of our existence that leads to that dawn’s railway station where one encounters fafamau: হঠাত জীবনে এলো ফাফামাউ/ ভোররাতে রংচটা কোটে/…স্টেশনমাস্টার বলেন ” এই তো সিগন্যাল/ এ লেড়কি, ট্রেনে উঠে পড়”/তিনি তো জানেন না কিছু –/জীবনে এসেছে ফাফামাউ !/…এইবার ভোর হবে, পাহাড়িয়া ভোর/জোনাকিরা ফিরে গেছে, বাবুনাই ডাকে…/তুমি যদি নাও আসো/জীবনে তো ফাফামাউ এলো/ তাকে ছেড়ে তাকে ছেড়ে/যাবনা কথাও আমি আর | “And lo! fafamau has come into my life/ In his discoloured coat, at dawn/ The station-master says “There goes the signal/Hey girl, get into the train”/ But hardly would he know/ that fafamau has come into my life! /…Soon there will be morn, a hilly morn/ The fireflies have departed, the babunai sings…/Even if you do not arrive/Still fafamau has come into my life/Leaving him, quitting him/ I shall not, shall not go anywhere.” There is a undistinguished railway station where fafamau lives. The station is laden with matt-blue wooden benches, and a bluer waiting room. Here’s where fafamau shall welcome you. And black deodar trees and deodar fruits are afar, that surrounds you as night falls over you like a shroud. The tall darkening blacks, the azure waiting rooms are where our business of love and wonderment never comes to a stop. You will ignore the signal and disregard the station-master. But there is a price to pay for embracing such a life of a private, unhurried non-journey. The deodar darkness of the station turns into a macabre tribunal that exhibits us in our full, creaturely vulnerability. First to ourselves. And then to the world. A forlorn abjectness is our only fate. We genuflect. And an unconditional declaration is the only possible means to square with such stringent, unforgiving judgmental ways: না, না দয়া করে আমার দিকে আলো ফেলবেন না–/চোখে ব্যথা করে খুব–এমনিতেই আমি এরকমই ঘামি–/না, কোনও অসুবিধে হচ্ছে না আমার–লাই দিলে আমি মাথায়/উঠে যাই–আরও ধমকধামকের দরকার আছে আমার–/ বেত্শিক্ষকের