In Remembrance of Eid
Shubha ————————- [This essay was first published in Jalsa 4, 2015] *** Eid it is, and yet its presence eludes us. The happiness that used to infect us with the very mentioning of Eid now turns into an alarm as if to portend some ominous news. That city where, with my dear girl-friends, I’d celebrated years and decades of Eid—that city, that country, is now gone and departed. Those characters are no more. Now listening to the azaan, the heart does not frame ditties, but fans a peculiar restive buzz. As if in this world adrift, people do not know what Eid used to be. Yesterday, in the market, I could not trace date-palms in any store. I returned with the memory of that store with a heavy heart, the one that used to be filled with the aroma and freshness of shirni-roti and date-palms piled in baskets. The silvery patterns that used to be glued on them glistened like the tinsel hanging over a bride’s countenance. With the very proclamation of Eid the marketplace would start to remain open till late at night. The tailor too, would stay awake till the wee hours of night so that he could complete his pending work of fine gote-kinari.Not just packaged but open yarn of sevaiyans used to be stacked in such a manner as if they were a skein of fibre. Around and above the market place and the street-corners a fine filigree of gote and kinariya patterns. With their designated work for the Eid in place, every craftsman would sit in easy, undisturbed meditation. Like spinning tops, women would go about, radiant, making arrangements all through the day. Urad-daal would be soaked at night; curd cultured in big containers. As Eedi, assorted gifts, new coins and notes would be put away securely. Entrusted. Itr-daans would be filled with itr. Betel-nuts, finely chopped, used to be kept aside and along with cloves and cardamom, a full arrangement would be made for the paans to emerge in their full glory. Come dawn, urad –daal would be grounded and then more bades and sevaiyans would be prepared. Everyone would cleanse themselves, take their baths and don their finery as one is supposed to do for Eid. With the new dress, shoes or chappals would also have to be new, of course. Films like Mere Mehboob, Tajmahal or Mere Huzoor would have special release dates, synchronized with the occasion of Eid. We used to look at the posters of such films with so much longing. Along with you, the whole day we used to visit the homes of our girl-friends—Farana, Farzana, Shahyada, Ishrat, Kishwar Sultana, Salma, Nujhat, Sanovar, Naahid, Gazala, Sabiya and to sundry other places. Like, one had to deliver sevaiyan to the blind peer’s diggings. O Durdana, once when I had asked the meaning of your name, you had explained that it means ‘the grains of the true pearl’ (सच्चे मोती का दाना). To this the Christian Isa sahab had smiled and said, what is truth but pearl! It is the same Isa sahib who would translate stories from Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe and Tom kaka and narrate them to us in Hindustani. There was another protocol between us—you would call my father Pitaji and I would call yours Abbu. In this way, apart from my girl-friends, I would also often meet up with my Ammi, Bhai-jaan, Chacha-jaan, Khala, Aapa, Ba-ji and Mamu-jaan and of course with my Badi-Bi. After we moved apart from each other, I have not addressed anyone in this manner, as if all of that were disaffiliated from my life. Unravelled. The last time we had met, I was 23 and now I have crossed 60 and today I recall you in such a way that my tears won’t stop following me. Durdana, the town, the country we used to live, the place where every year we used to tie rakhis on a boy, where we used to steal guavas and cranberries and marry our dolls to the very boy we had tied the rakhis on—all that is gone, gone. Marmalized.Overwhelmed. That mulberry tree is no more, climbing which we used to be completely oblivious to eating the berries themselves. Such was the engrossment. There is no comfort, not any that one can feel, no. It is a time of terror. We are encircled. Bivouacs all around. False cases are being thrust upon people. Witnesses are being murdered. The places of worship are especially being targeted; preparation is being made to create breaches within ablutions and offerings. It is a dreadful time and our souls tremble. What Eid? What celebration? Just now they have wrecked the home of a lovely couple in the name of Love Jihad. What Eid can such ruined and desolated people celebrate? These days I begin to talk to myself and lose all sense of my interlocutor. Am I speaking to the souls of those who have been killed or am I still with the living? These days the living are also like lost souls—now here, now vanished. My sleep is filled with nightmares, Durdana. I hear cries and howls in sleep. Often I see stupefied women, fleeing to nowhere. One day I have even seen dead bodies of children. Sometimes I tend to forget the country in which I am living. Is it that the Gaza-strip kids arrive in my dreams? Or were they our own kids? Which is our own, what is ours? Durdana, the ayaat that you had taught me comes to my mind every single day and I often repeat that, at random moments- या बदी-उल वाइबो बिलखैरे या बदी-ओ | I have to keep doing my work. A difficult task. To prepare reports of murder and bloodshed. And weep. ____________________________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Nirmala Boudi And The Bureaucracy
Amiya Sen Translated by Bhaswati Ghosh ——————————————————— Nirman Bhavan–the foundation for which had been laid by the late Lal Bahadur Shastri–is now an imposing structure. As the older Shastri Bhavan became too cramped for space, many such buildings –each associated with a ministry –added to Delhi’s splendour. I had some work with the director of Nirman Bhavan. Though not a government employee, I have to to rub shoulders with senior government officers from time to time for the sake of my business. The sight of Nirmala boudi at the reception on the first floor shocked me. With a vigorous gesticulation of her hands, she argued with the reception officer in chaste Hindi. “Listen now. You can’t stop me from coming here, whether I make ten visits or twenty. This office is for the public after all. We’ll come whenever we need to.” The reception officer tried to reason with her with a resigned look. “I’m not stopping you from coming here, Madam. All I’m saying is if you call us before coming, it will save you unnecessary trouble.” “Necessary or unnecessary, that’s for me to decide. Now, will you please issue me a pass?” Even as she said those words, Nirmala boudi almost grabbed the huge register opened before the reception officer, Mr. Bhandari. Turning the register towards her, she entered details like name: Mrs. Nirmala Roy, purpose of visit: allotment of house etc. Mr. Bhandari had no option but to prepare a gate pass and hand it to the woman standing in front of him. I needed a gate pass, too, but my destination was different from Nirmala boudi’s. I had to meet the director of the state office, whereas Nirmala boudi wanted to meet the additional director. I watched the scene quietly, standing right behind boudi. As she turned back with the gate pass, I blurted, “What brings you here –haven’t you got your quarter yet?” Clutching a huge file close to her chest, Nirmala boudi said with a busy look reflecting off her glasses, “Come outside –I’ll tell you.” I didn’t want to get late, but Nirmla boudi could be hard to ignore. At one time, we were both residents of the same village in Bangladesh’s Bakharganj district. Nirmala boudi was the eldest daughter-in-law of the Roy family, and I, the youngest son of Hemanta Gupta of the Gupta family. Our houses were adjacent to each other –a bamboo bridge over on a small canal served as a shortcut to go from our house to theirs. This is a unique feature of Bakharganj or Barisal district, filled as it is with canals and streams. Villages, all surrounded by water, appear like islands, complete in themselves. At the time of her marriage, Nirmala boudi was fourteen and I, a ten-year-old, studying in class five in the village school. As per village customs, Atin da, Nirmala boudi’s husband, was my brother. Based on his grandmother’s wishes, Atin da was married off to Nirmala boudi as soon as he earned his graduation degree at twenty-two. Being next-door neighbours, it didn’t take the two of us too long to get acquainted with each other. The Roy family had big gardens flanking both sides of their house. I would gather whatever fruits were in season –mangoes, Java plums, berries, guavas, elephant apples, custard apples, velvet apples, grapefruit, jujubes, cranberries –and run to the Roy household. They were a joint family and the house would always be full of people. Luckily, the family elders and servants lived on the ground floor. The upper floor was almost entirely reserved for the family’s young brigade –married or not. With a whole stash of ripe and unripe fruits, I would stealthily climb up the staircase to the first floor and sneak into the southern room, allotted to Atin da after his marriage. The moment she saw me, Nirmala boudi’s eyes would gleam with delight through her veil. As I was friends with the boys of the Roy family who were closer to my age, it was easy to get introduced to Nirmala boudi. She happened to be the youngest — the same age as us –bride in the entire neighbourhood. We always kept a share of whatever we collected for Nirmala boudi. All this had to be clandestine, though, given how conservative the Roys were. A daughter-in-law was almost like a prisoner in that house, denied any contact with outside air or light. Naturally, the young Nirmala boudi took to our group. On summer afternoons, when the older folks enjoyed their siesta or were busy doing something else, we would drag Nirmala boudi to the terrace balcony and reveal our loot. Out came from our pockets treats like raw mangoes, berries, grapefruit, green chillies, a knife, salt and the like. Some of us would even bring freshly cut banana leaves to use as plates. Five or six of us sat circling Nirmala boudi. She would peel the fruits, make a delicious mix with the available ingredients and pile them on the leaf plates. Our feasting would ensue. These sessions continued even as we grew older. The menu had changed by then, though. On sleepy afternoons, escaping the elders’ glances, we would have tea parties inside the closed doors of the Roys’ kitchen, located outside the boundaries of the house. Although some of the adults drank tea, the beverage was strictly prohibited for children. Nirmala boudi made us not only this forbidden drink; she made for us something that was even more strictly off-limits –omelettes made from hen’s eggs, which she served us on banana leaf plates. She wouldn’t have it herself, though. Nirmala boudi had another talent –she was an accomplished card player. Some of the other boudis played cards, too, but their scope would be limited to the game of Twenty Nine. Nirmala boudi played Bridge with us. She came from a family where sports and arts and culture were highly valued. It’s difficult to imagine that young bride of more than forty
Kachchh. Khambhi. Kavya. : Six Poems For My Village of Six Memorial Stones
Amrit Gangar _________________ Chhasara (chha – six, sarā – memorial stones, also called khāmbhi or pāliya in Kachchh and Kāthiawād; though sarā or saro is a Kachchhi word) is a village of my childhood memories and therefore it exists. It exists within me and in the mānas–garbha (mind-womb) of both time and space. Two smaller villages flanked it, divided by the same river named Bhookhi (Hungry) that somehow turned its course. Perhaps, she was in search of water – epār Bhookhi, opār Bhookhi! She remained dry perennially, hungry for water, and occasionally expressed her terrible fury if it rained heavily and a remote dam somewhere on Kachchh’s deserty topography impregnated her, flooding, fanatically flooding. Much towards inside her shore, she inhabited an open well with a cement-concrete flat elevated surface that surprisingly remained full of deep waters, and would generously bathe many men. Young boys would use it as a swimming pool. Along her coast, the Bhookhi had yet another much deeper and bigger well with a havādo (a pucca reservoir) outside it, which would serve and sooth the thirsty cattle under the burning sun, awaiting eagerly the godhuli bela (dusk time). A little away from her shore, inside the bāri wall (the pucca-built tall wall with a window projecting towards Bhookhi and a hill that was abode of a pir’s shrine) was another well, with pulleys called, Sākariyo Kuvo (a well with waters as sweet as sugar) that would quench the villagers’ thirst, help them cook their daily hot food and make tea. Of the two villages across Bhookhi nadi, one had the privilege of having the service of a mochi (cobbler) that my village didn’t have, while the other had a self-taught medical doctor, who, in his khādi clothes, would visit my village riding his handsome horse. Their visits were significantly essential. I have a feeling that to be a good cobbler or a doctor, you need to have strong poetic intuition. Well, my village had a flour mill that both villages on the banks of Bhookhi didn’t have. Run on a machine fuelled by diesel oil, the mill would create a harsh sound, chhuk chhuk chhuk—like a locomotive engine, but its ingenuous owner had placed a small empty tin box on its exhaust vertical pipe which would turn the chhuk chhuk into a euphonic kuhu kuhu of koyaliyā, the cuckoo. And the sound would keep both the villages across Bhookhi informed about the flour mill’s working existence. Crossing the Bhookhi, the mochi would walk a-lame (he had polio) two miles to my village every week or fortnight as many torn shoes would be waiting for him. The doctor would also be on call – on horse, with his leather box of allopathic medicines. It’s the image of shoes that pushes me into a memory, memory of death, a forced death and the well on the river Bhookhi! On that early dawn, dogs had started sounding differently; the owl on an old peepal tree had lowered his mysterious eyelashes, small insects had started emerging from sandy streets. Something had gone devastatingly wrong somewhere. An early bather on the Bhookhi well had seen a pair of solitary shoes, a pair of spectacles, a stick and a Gandhi cap on its surface. Anxious, as he looked into the well, he saw a human body floating. Shocked, he shouted “Magan Patel!” while the misty-humid Bhookhi remained non-indifferent and self-absorbed. Soon, the news spread across the stunned village while the day had barely broken. Many rushed towards the well. The man’s pregnant wife was wailing and their four children added to the heart wrenching cries. He was a half-aged step son of a village chief (Patel), whom I, with my childhood-eyes, would often spy walking alone swiftly, talking to himself most of the time. He was an intelligent man but deeply perturbed somewhere within–that it is what I had felt. It had taken a massive effort to pull out his unusually swollen body from the well. At the time it was beyond me to comprehend the meaning of death but the image of the swollen body is still heavily stuck on my memory-scape. The Bhookhi well, someone said, had taken as many as seven lives as its toll! Years after, I stand in front of the six weather-worn sandstone sarā, having no script on their bodies to decipher, except poke-marks and unheard sighs of the dead: five Rajput brothers and their sister (and her little baby) were all killed in a little war for a fiefdom. Four centuries have gone by since but oral tales circulate around, in whispers or is it whoosh! The sister’s husband was also killed some furlongs away and his memorial stone (Hekalsaro) stands on a farm enveloped in an eternal mirage (Saro 1, 2). Nobody knows the names of these souls though their periodicity is an acceptable conjecture. But the fact of the matter is that these six (plus one) tall memorial stones are still there. That bit cannot be a fabricated. Chhasarā, the village of six memorial stones has gone on to desolate itself gradually. More and more families have left it for cities in search of livelihood. Only some old widows still inhabited it. They all wore maroon, black, white or even blue clothes– as a mark of their widowhood. All battling loneliness while their sons live afar. They would sustain their meagre existence. One such widow, stooping and frail in frame, suffered from terribly chronic asthma. In winters, it would be unbearable for her and she would breathe laboriously and loudly; so loudly that the entire village would helplessly witness her misery through its organs of hearing (Saro 3). Summer noons, with blazing winds, would be lazy and laidback; often the potter’s donkey would walk through the streets alone in a futile search of a mate and install itself naked (physical nakedness as we define it) in the empty village square. Its search punctuated by a mourning dove in the chabutrā, the
The Ghaat Within
Biswadeb Mukhopadhay ______________________ This is a poet of circularity—of the potter’s wheel, the rotund staircase, local implements like the maku and the turpun, the chakravyuh, the foundation-stone, the navel, the chalice, planetary orbits, the vortex in the pond—such motifs reappear. This is also a poet who believes that each creation, including the very idea of I, owes itself to the superimposition of the wave function of individual particles, continuously taking shape all around us. Thereafter all kinds of permutations and associations are possible. Sometimes that happens through vaak, through which we exchange bhava. Bhava is a many-valued proposition, a hypothesis which we may also give the name of wonder. Poetry gives shape to wonderment, and so it plays sounds and particles that stay in the nooks and niches of our everyday existence. This exchange of wonderment may sometimes prove incommensurable within the frameworks of our relationalities but it is not impossible to work that out. Perhaps poetry comes closest to bridging this incommensurability. The poet knows that the all scenes of marvel and wonderment are taking place within a smallish planet called earth, revolving around a mid-sized star in the milky-way. The poet has to forever be aware that art’s source and canvas is finally, the universe itself. The poet’s life, therefore, is a kind of sadhana, the same as that of the scientist. This sadhana, a repetition and an augmentation at the same time, is also a function of a perpetual flux: one that runs between the inner universe of our subjectivity and the outer, galactic presence. Does one travel from thought to mind, or is it the reverse? Do one and one make two or does the very idea of one envelop all duality within it? Does the brahmanda reside within our anubhavas or do anubhavas amass as entropy in this cosmos? We come back to the circular. The new returns, as the poet rearranges syntax, breaking form— again and again. He also renews an ancient bond with all that is the heart’s—apparently forgotten and left out, and yet all the time, they travel with us and with this our rushing planet. Characteristically, his poem titled Address, from the collection Pa Rekhechhen Parom (Parom Sets his Feet), concludes in this manner— Biswa Brahmanda post-office Zila Birbhum. ———————————————- Sorrows and Grandma In your next life, like kakurs you shall hang on kakur trees Saying this, my grandma Once blessed sorrow It’s difficult to say why she did this, may be since It never left us even in times of great distress. Reasons apart, We are told— That since that day, thus proliferated This our immense fruit garden Some utterances work like a mantra Though after this Grandma said so many other things as well —placing her palm on didi’s head She had said: “Be a Rajrani.” To me too She had said something, and engraved with baba’s name That mannat-pebble still dangles in the Peer’s abode. Baba is no more. This our sorrow and grandma’s tale We may also call it poetry, if we wish. If you are doubtful, why don’t you visit us around twilight someday? Come, sit around this our courtyard. You’d see How leaden darkness descends slowly, slowly… And right underneath the kakur-tree macha You’d spot, dangling Dark black, tall long, just-like-that sorrows and their fledgling little brood. *** Kalighat Temple No legroom in the temple, because everyone brings sins befitting his means, hence, the hustle to unburden those is also acute. One man supplicates, as if to cede All his depravity, another flings a coin And a third, anointing himself in temple-dust, smeared with tears Says, “All my sins I hand over to you thakur.” As prescribed, in clusters The disciples return each to their homes But Hari! Hari! The same stony weight each still carries within! Then More darkness Descends on the temple-precinct Roams alone, forlorn In Kali-kshetra, only a dog despondent. *** Ghani At the end of a long day’s trek Evening at a Kohlu’s house There, Kohlu’s daughter, standing with a lantern, Lights up the well-side. On the raised deck Water in a brass urn, a folded gamchha, And a footstool standing by. Moorland Hertalpur Dusk drops in torrents there Afar, the thuggee village… That horned moon now, splits open the kaash grove— The nightlong pestle rotates in the starry courtyard Tup Tup Honey-like sounds. In the morning an ancient earthen pot brims with oil. *** Tanti Colony’s Sleepy Time There spins the spindle, the bobbin whirrs So late at night. Arre O Paban, in the tant-room Why weave so frantic baap? Won’t you hit the sack? In the room, dust swirls Busy rats, yonder the rusty handle of an Old umbrella, chaupaya, pillow-wrapped Blanket, tattered rugs… Through the low lying windows, afar, strings of roofs Bolted door. Sleep. Encompassing Dhanekhali, Shantipur Hums the sound of tant, tant spins, someone weaves tant. *** Contentment Some go in darkness, some go in shadow At lantern’s end children are from lessons distracted There is only babel. The babbling stays close, so Sitting at evening’s portico A few kinsfolk chat, contented. *** The Husk Like a pillow cover, one day, a swift wrench shall invert me. Steadily the hand wreathes. Flakey cotton swabs underneath Fog’s unique body… All through the night The inside turns out, the outside in. *** Ghaat Who is that who scrubs dishes all night? Is the ghaat lodged inside the body? Yes, the ghaat is lodged inside the body! *** Path If the insect decides to traverse the path obverse To the old-man’s, will it by and by re-enter the body As the ancient sperm-tick? The old-man trudges northward Toward the embedded insect inquiry. *** The Listener From two throbbing meatballs emanate Joy’s ether-waves In the middle, sprawls a cosmic termination Dust-particles cipher-like. Unconnected…