Luminous, A Fleck O’ Caress
Dipanwita Sarkar _________________ One yellow, tri-cornered fruit. and contaminated all evenings. your garland-chandan on my palm, cherished melodies, eddies dragging like ma’s breasts…over the close-fisted yamuna, through paradise-thickets, pray, who had let them in! to their coition i stand more luminous, a fleck o’ caress. Two i be a point. clasp i a point. throbbing firefly i clutch that pious godly-feet on my breast and my tongue exposed, laugh out hoary. mattress and swimming glide in unison by the oars of dimming light. dawning night now side-sleep, now turn over tummy-hunched. come let us commence afresh at midnight. Three whirlwind, whirlwind, whirlwind, on the trail frenzied finger like lance piercings .does vagina mean birth then? knowing this import, this cataclysm my wench life rambles. and she becomes ma, my birth as ma. such a lotus-hatch floods in a tri-embrace Four on plaits mine i have fettered him, you know? by the neighboring shadows of the bamboo-grove have i enchained him. like the din of my dense forest leaves, he glows in drums and chimes. adorned as kuhu-moni I shall send him off to a wedge of swans. the colour of water, through his dip-dip-dip ululates the day. incarnadine in the hues of phag-sindoor, the harikirtan sways and sways .the sharp nails and tooth his rai-besh unfurl. his… Five now, with rai-kamala’s body let me a trestle build. weave a merry-coronal of sondol-buds. on her distracted chins his play, and in her riotous-bacchanalian ripples try your luck in plucking foliage verdant, what else! reap with care and in the late-night drip-pond melds she her odorous-thighs. atop an aqueous-pungent kalmi-tip stands probed a birthing-portal. drifting drifting drifting in some long-ago washed-away time, to a dream of snakes-encoupled i awaken *** উজ্জ্বল এক স্পর্শবিন্দু এক হলুদ তিনকোনা ফল | আর এঁটো সমস্ত বিকেল, তোমাদের মালাচন্দন আমার হাতের তালুতে, রাখা গান, ছলাৎ-ছলাৎ মায়ের বুকের মত…হাতে রাখা যমুনা এবং নিধুবনের দরজা খুলে ঢুকতে দিয়েছে কারা | আমি ওদের সংগমের কাছে আরও উজ্জ্বল এক স্পর্শবিন্দু দুই বিন্দু হই | বিন্দু ধরি | জোনাকি দপদপ আমি শ্রীচরণকমলখানি বুকে নিই ও জিভ বার করে হাসি | বিছানা ও সাঁতার একযোগে বইতে থাকে টিমটিমে বাতির দাঁড় | ভোর হওয়া রাত তুমি এবার কাট হও, উপুড় হও, এসো আবার মাঝরাত থেকে শুরু করি | তিন ঘূর্ণি ঘূর্ণি ঘূর্ণি পথে এলোমেলোভাবে আঙুল বর্শার মত বিঁধেছে | যোনি মানে জন্ম তবে ? এই অর্থ ও অনর্থ বুঝে আমার মাগিজন্ম কাটে | আর সে হয় মা… মা জন্ম আমার | এমন পদ্ম মুখ ভেসে যায়ে ত্রিবেনী-সংগমে | চার বিনুনিতে তাকে বেঁধেছি জানো ? বাঁশঝাড়ের ছায়ার পাশে তাকে বেঁধেছি | সে আমার ঘন বন পাতার শব্দের মত খোলে ও মাদলে রূপ খোলে | কুহুমনি বেশে তাকে পাঠাব রাজহংসীর দলে | জলের রং তার স্নানে স্নানে উলু হয় দিন | রাঙা ফাগের শাঁখ সিঁদুরের পালায় হরিকীর্তন দোলে আর দোলে | নখে ও দাঁতের ধরে আমি চিনে ফেলি রাইবেশ | তার… পাঁচ এবে রাই-কমলার দেহ নিয়ে একটা সাঁকো গড়ি | গড়ি সে সোদল ফুলের মালা | আনমনা চিবুক তার খেলা তার মদিল মদিল ঢেউ নিয়ে তুমি শাঁকপাতা তল আর কি | বসে বসে বাছো আর সে শেষ রাত্রির টুপটাপ জলে মেশাক উরুগন্ধ, আঠালো ঝাঁঝালো কলমিডগার ওপর গেঁথে গেছে এক জন্মদ্বার | ভেসে গেছে কোন অবেলায় যেতে যেতে যেতে আমি জোড় লাগা সাপের স্বপ্নে জেগে উঠি ____________________________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Chora Bato: None of the Pathways in Darjeeling is Straight
Parimal Bhattacharya _____________________ In Tenesse Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, the heroine takes rides on a streetcar line named Desire to come to the city center. In New Orleans, there really was a line by that name. If a tramway in a US city could be named Desire, then the taxi route to the hill town of Darjeeling could very well be named Longing. To understand this, one must go to Chowkbazaar on a dim, foggy afternoon. There one would see the battered Mahindra and Land Rover service jeeps waiting in front of the police outpost, below Golghar restaurant, and would hear the impatient cries of drivers and their assistants – Silgarhi-Silgarhi-Silgarhi Kharsang-Kharsang-Kharsang Last Turn! Last Turn! Last turn. After this, darkness would fall, no vehicle would ply on hill roads. Darjeeling would be completely cut off at night from the rest of the world. During my years of exile there, every time I heard the anxious calls of these men, I felt a sudden tug at my heart. Their litanies were blended with the muezzin’s call for evening prayer that rose from Butcherbustee below and filled me with a deep longing. One of my colleagues had an 8-year old son who suffered from asthmatic fits. These came unannounced, and he had to be immediately shifted to lower altitude as there was no other remedy. The jeep drivers’ calls would cast a shadow on the nervous father’s face. Another colleague, who had an odd sense of humour, would respond by singing aloud a Tagore song – Orey ay, amay niye jabi ke re bela sesher sesh kheyay Orey ay, diner seshe… ‘Oh come! Who’ll carry me in the last ferry at the day’s end…’ – the lyric says something like this, and then: ‘For whom the daylight has died but the lamp of the night has not been lit, it is he who is sitting at the pier.’ The light of the day would really die for us with the ardent cries of last-turn drivers, the lamp of the night would not be lit, we would plod on to go and sit at the pier…I mean, at one of the many pubs in town. I have heard anxious footsteps of village folk who had come to town on various work, and were hurrying to catch the last-turn service jeeps. With nightfall, not only would Darjeeling be cut off from the plains, but the settlements scattered all over the hills, too, would shrink into tiny islands in a dark ocean, the mountains would return to the priemeval times. The darkness would slowly curdle over the jeep stand, the calls would become mystical and indistinct: Kalempoong-Kalempoong-Kalempoong! Lebong-Lebong-Lebong! Kharsang-Kharsang-Kharsang! Last turn! Last turn! A keen ear could pick out in these slurred utterances roots of original Lepcha place names that the jeep drivers unknowingly evoked. Thus, Kurseong became Kharsang, Lebong Alebong, and Darjeeling became Dorhzeling. In Lepcha language, each of these words has a meaning: Kharsang means the land of white orchids (alternately, the star at dawn), Ale-bong is a tongue-shaped spur, and Kalempoong is ‘the ridge where we play’. In fact, many peaks, rivers, gorges and plateaus in these hills still bear Lepcha names whose sounds have been twisted in other tongues. Thus, Peshok comes from pazok, which means forest; Mirik from mir-yok, ‘a place burnt by fire’; Phalut from Fak-lut, or ‘the denuded peak’; and Senchal comes from shin-shel-lo, which means cloud-capped hill. These bear testimony to the fact that the Lepchas were the original inhabitants of Darjeeling hills. This is also acknowledged in British official documents. When the king of Sikkim gifted the East India Company the 24 miles long and 6 miles wide Darjeeling hill tract, so that they could build a sanatorium there, it was inhabited by the Lepcha tribe. But that shouldn’t stop us from taking a critical look at the image of pristine wooded mountains sparsely dotted with a few Lepcha dwellings before the British set foot here. The object of seeing, and showing, Darjeeling hills as an almost uninhabited place was two-fold: one economic, the other cultural. For the tenancy of this hill tract, the Company had agreed to pay the king an annual grant of three thousand rupees (the amount was later doubled). Lack of human habitation and, consequently, limited scope for revenue collection would have meant that the gift was rather profitable for the Sikkimese monarch. And then there was the colonial mindset at work behind the notion that Darjeeling was ‘discovered’ by the British. This led to the fabrication of a nostalgic home town on foreign soil, upon exotic Himalayan terrain. # The fabrication progressed through the 19th century on war footing; a military officer was appointed for this. In 1835, after the East India Company obtained Darjeeling hills as a gift, it sent Colonel Lloyd and Dr Chapman, the surgeon of the Governor General, to sojourn there and find out whether its environment and climate were suitable for a sanatorium. They stayed there for eight months, from November 1836 to January the next year, in a wattled hut that they built for themselves. Based on their report, Darjeeling Association was formed in Calcutta with a brief to set up a town in the mountains. The years 1838-39 were a period of intense activity in Darjeeling. Jungles were cleared and plots of flattened land were distributed among members of the association. Also, and what was of crucial importance, the construction of a bridle path to Darjeeling via Punkhabari began. The Darjeeling Family Hotel was set up; a colony came up with about a dozen cottages. St. Andrew’s Church was built in 1843; the Loreto Convent was established four years later. In the lower part of the settlement, not yet a town, dwellings of coolies and menials, most of them from the plains, were coming up now as a large native labour force was sine qua non for the comforts of sahibs and memsahibs. This led to the growth of
On The Cold Dark Black Girnar: A Hanumana & Another
Amrit Gangar __________________ The sun has yet to tilt up perhaps a mile more to peep out of the ancient cleavages of the mount Girnār, much older than the Himālayas! No snow, only dark black rough rock that had once inhabited cultures and civilizations ranging from Shivaite to Buddhist to Jain to the primitive. Here on one of its peaks, as the legend goes, one Pāvāhari Baba was first initiated into the mysteries of practical yoga. Dattatraya had his abode here. In ancient times, the Girnār was called Raivata or Ujjayanta, and has been the temple-abode of the Jain Tirthankaras – Bāhubali, Neminātha, Pārsvanātha. In its womb, the mount Girnār nourishes mines of mysteries and caves of curiosities that never go to sleep at night with their eyes open, punctuated by the full moon or no moon and the strange sounds of cicadas. The sun is steady here in his movement, serene and soothing, intoxicated by his own fire, without soma. Lions stalk here, the ash smeared naked fakirs walk here fearlessly. Fear roams here fearfully in the narrow untouched virgin niches of the Girnār! A little away, hordes of bats hang on walls of the Adi Kadi Vaav, the fiftheenth century deep, dark ,unusual step-well, and the Navghan Kuvo, the well shy of a few years of being a thousand years old. A Gujarati proverb still lives and circulates around unsurreptitiously, “Adi Kadi Vaav ne Navghan Kuvo, Je Nā Juve te Jivto Muvo,” meaning, “Whoever has not seen the Adi Kadi step well (vaav) and Navghan well (kuvo), meets with death before dying.” But on the hills, death turns into life with Bhairav on the black rocks of Girirāj. Bhairav manifests here, and there. Shiva’s blue neck has gone bluer and no river flows from his thick black matted hair. Here on the Girnār plains flows a river named “Sonrekh”! “Oh! Se āmarā Subarnarekhā!” who said this? Where are you Sita? Abhiram? Where is your deserted airstrip? Your childhood playground? Ask all your gods, Girnār, to sing in chorus, “Aaj ki ananda… jhulat jhulane Shyamchanda…” From a Buddhist cave emerges a Shiva, in a Bahurupee! Buddha is tired of smiling here. Mahāvira, the Digambara, has dissolved into the wide open ambar, the sky that caresses the Girnar so giddily! Madness stalks here in the marrow of Time… And here on the Girnār, Hanumāna wears on different manifestations as the dark Bhairavs keep leaving behind their tantric footprints, you thought were yours! And one of the eleven faces of Hanumāna stares at you winking the monkey wink; still the sun has to tilt up many meters more to embrace the misty dawn of the hills overlooking the town of Junāgadh. Three poems for one wink… *** VĀNARA 1: LAMBE HANUMĀNA “O! Lords – Sun! Wind! Indra! Brahma! O! Bhutas! Let me turn taller than the mountain longer than the ocean,” prayed Hanumāna for Rāma his tail lengthening enlengthening on the steps of the Mount Girnār somewhere someone is chanting Sundarkānda, the red shot eyes you thought were owl’s were the ash smeared naked fakir’s the nāgābāwā, the Girnar’s child! “O! Sāgara! O! Vāyu!” prayed the vānara plunging into the Rāmāyana ocean paving the path, the vānara after vānara after vānara – brilliance of the dawn awaiting as Lambe Hanumāna caresses my face with a long soft tail you thought was his it was lion’s! Gir’s real governor! *** VĀNARA 2: ROKADIYĀ HANUMĀNA Pliable gods and pavitra every fifty steps a new Hanumāna new avatāra new energy new darkness of the Bhairava! Rokadiyā Hanumāna is unlike the Lambe yet like all his creed with sindoor and oil that eats devotees’ coins stuck on the body, the rokdā you said mythifying the money you never earned! Rishi Girirāj inhabits many a divine vānara with heads small, eyes big wide opened or not belly flat or ballooned, Hanumāna fascinates the mountain with a memory Sahajānand and his discovery of Rokadiyā Dev Hanumāna an embodiment of truth satisfying all desires truthful – Paint any stone vermillion and a Hanumāna is born in search of a truth waiting for the Ushā, her light! *** VĀNARA 3: HANUMĀNA WITH ELEVEN FACES Ekādash-mukhi Hanumāna, words tell you before you count the heads hands and eyes doubling! from a corner as the bell chimes and lamp flickers devouring the dawn appears Lopāmudra, saying – “O! sage born out of the pot, O! ocean of mercy Hanumāna’s yantras and mantras are not new to me you have revealed them to me! Tell me about the armor of the eleven-faced Hanumāna!” Girnar baffles you with vermillion stones all Hanumāna covered with mythologies unmummified Don’t search for meanings here ever smear your body with ash of memories mysteries you search for are malapropisms! *** Junāgadh, 8 February 2016 ______________ Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based writer, curator, film theorist and historian. He writes both in English and Gujarati languages. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
The Edifice
Ranajit Das __________________ Journal Entry I I still recall quite vividly that horrendous moment when my little one realized, for the first time, what a lie is. I remember, face to face with untruth for the first time in her life, those bewildered, derelict eyes of hers. Unfortunately, it was I who had told her that lie. The thing was one among numerous stupid and jocular adult lies: if kids do not sleep at their appointed time, then the police would visit and take them away. My baby, perhaps she used to believe that each material thing in this world is truthful, that every word uttered is authentic. This, my cautioning too she had come to believe. That she used to believe this in all sincerity was a fact because every time this precept was told to her at night, her countenance paled. Unable to leash her natural energetic self, she would look at us—helpless, resigned. May be the little one would be suffering greatly within, for failing truth? Then one day from one of our exchanges, she suddenly realized that this threat was not true at all. With stunned eyes, as she tried tracing the contours of our canny,guilty faces, she discovered untruth. I could see that somewhere behind her dumbfounded visage a whole edifice was crumbling. Perhaps her first universe, her world of verity was abandoning her. Since then, whenever I recall that moment, I begin to turn wood-stiff, queasy. I can feel that in my brain those down-and out, destitute eyes are pierced like a knife. I want to run, like a madman, from that look. But the earth and the soil, light, that sky seeking to converse with the horizon—all seem like an ashen extension of that look. I am unable to evade it and slink away. Journal Entry II We hardly know what truth is. But untruth we do know, unerring, like our shadows. In this lifetime of confusion about truth, the lie is our most manifest realization. In that sense, the lie is our most trusted truth. Our refuge. Our comrade. With a twinkle in his eyes, the one who says that knowing untruth also means knowing the truth, he is Nachiketa. Pig-ignorant we are. Inside our brains meteorites batter constantly. All around us heaps of acorns and saplings. And we—scuttlebutts and scandalmongers of the ancient rocks. It is likely that right from our mother’s wombs we have known untruth. Perhaps in the deepest twilight codes of our genes, the definition and usage manual of the lie is carefully inscribed. Still, for once, in that nerve-wracking moment of our childhood, we are startled by our first encounter with the lie. Only once in our whole life such piercing, woebegone stupefaction. Our first and last celestial moment. *** Ranajit Das is a poet from Bengal. He is writing since 1966. He loves football, cinema and travelling all alone. adminhumanitiesunderground.org