The Chowkidaar
Kritika Chettri Above Deorali, outside the Tashi Ding hotel, the chowkidaar budo stood letting smoke from his beedi trail down to the mist that had begun erasing the valley. Inside, men and women were celebrating. Singing the old anthem from the time of their king. Glass after glass of imported liquor flowed. The hotel had reached its golden jubilee, almost a decade later than its chowkidaar outside. Old kings and new politicos had passed through these rooms. Now their photographs hung grim and solemn over these rejoicers. Since the doors and windows were tightly shut, the Kanchenjunga cold never strayed here too long. Neither did the fragrance of men and women who preferred not to smell as themselves, escape outside. Paljor called for a refill. He was the grand host with grand plans. Plans to turn Sikkim into the top most tourist destination in the country. That would require replacing this ageing relic with a five star hotel. But he had his own share of woes- “A few weeks ago my material was coming from Siliguri, when those Gorkhaland people called a bandh. Highway bandh. So I told my driver to rush right away. Have you seen the size of that highway? Anyway, he banged into another cargo truck, falling straight into the Teesta river. It took a while before they could fully rescue the truck.” Piling everything he could on his plate Rabi added- “Good loyal drivers are impossible to find. Here no one wants to do that kind of thing anymore. The Darjeeling ones are just too reckless.” He himself had jumped straight from the poor oblivion of Kalimpong haat bazaar right into the top leagues of Gangtok society. Paljor thought nothing of this pot bellied, pork marked man. But he had scattered a string of consumer labels along the city. Plus with this new found money, he had even started on some philanthropy. A business mind is quick to recognize another so nodding in approval he continued -“Too reckless indeed. This fellow has a wife and kids already in the kamaan. Here he was keeping another woman before falling into the Teesta. She must be hardly twenty and he had been saying he was just twenty five for the last two decades.” Reuden owned a string of ethnic but world class cottages offering unique village experience all over the state, and a son who refused to get married – “Maybe I should send my son to do some driver’s handy-boy thing. Gain first hand experience in these matters. As they say- driver ko life/ golai pichi wife.” Laughter resounded as Paljor continued- “Men will marry when they will. My chowkidaar, the one outside, is already sixty plus. All this while he had remained a pure bal brahmachari. As soon as my driver fell into the river, he went and married his girl, young enough to be his granddaughter.” “God give the old man good health, and us, young wives like those” These days Reuden had been meditating. They were teaching him to think only positive at the camp. “But it was no happy ending. She turned out to be more clever than pretty. She first came here as the handy-boy’s girl, then he ran away and she became the driver’s girl , until he drowned and she jumped into the arms of my chowkidaar budo, before making off with the poor unsuspecting fool’s entire savings in less than a month. What would you call that?” “Enterprising, that’s what you call it” Rabi insisted. “Is she anything to look at?” “At that age even a goat looks good.” Paljor assured. Laughter rippled into those glittering glasses. They would soon retire, some right up towards Baluakhani, others right down towards Ranipool. Since the whole of Sikkim was a hill station, there were only highs and lows. When it snowed up in the north towards Nathula, icy fangs would descend down to where the chowkidaar stood. He would light another beedi. It often snowed in Nathula. People came from all over just to see that snow. She had wanted to go too. Said she had never seen snow. He hadn’t either. A draft struck drying out the beedi in hand. He had to light it again. Beedi had kept him warm, beedi would keep him warm. But just three more remained and the bitch had run away with every single penny. When Birey’s wife ran away, they found her within a month. Living with another man down in Siliguri. Siliguri was taking in anyone and everyone. Indiscriminately. But Birey had friends and relatives who took it upon themselves to hunt her down. As if their own wives had escaped. Untainted, uninterrupted, all these years passed. A few more and he would have remained, just a chowkidaar like any other. That cursed morning he had to return from this chowkidaari, nothing but an old fool. Saab must have heard too. Today he had asked if everything was all right. Dogs began their parliament from afar. Hunter dogs could smell out anyone from anywhere. She, smelt of rotten kinema and burnt sidra ko achaar that he loved. He hoped she would return. The party inside was over. The lights turned off. The blue hills turned bluer before vanishing altogether. The scavengers began their rampage. Now quibbling over an old decaying bone. Now barking in unison at some common enemy, a jogi perhaps. But not a soul stirred. Flinging the dying beedi into the darkness, picking up the stick from the ground, he rooted himself, ready to face those intruders clawing in. The barbed wire was already giving way. _________________ Kritika Chettri writes from Kalimpong. Till recently she had been teaching at the Sikkim University. She is now concentrating on writing. HUG thanks Pavel Chakraborty for the two chowkidaar photographs.] adminhumanitiesunderground.org
My Meat is Yours
Biplab Chowdhury [Biplab Chowdhury is one of the most self immersed and outré poets of Bengal at this point of time. A journalist by profession, the fond and universal chacha to his close ones, Biplab has traversed a long, forlorn path as a poet. He is intimately connected with the world of the Bangla little magazines and travels far and wide with and for poetry. This is a short selection from one of his recent collections—My Meat is Yours–আমার মাংস তোমার (Chnoya Publications, 2015). Translation: HUG] “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” –John 6/56 O White Swan Did I know that god himself has banned meat for my benefit! Would I have flown then at the speed of wind– At the edge of the serrated greed of the blazing scimitar? O white swan, from my acute wish to wring your neck He wants to turn and deliver me to the rose-forest And I, ignorant, go and sit in the peoplesparkling park No one remains, my partner, a pair of tongs And the eternally-aged mind, my mind Nibbles away at itself mistaking it for meat. Clay Idol Last time at the fair, you had disappeared O clay doll of mine. No longer there, was that the reason you could not tell your name to anyone? With the thud of the first wind you cracked into a million pieces. And then you sank into water. And mud. O clay doll of mine—still no one dare make you cry. Wheel Unable to look downward, is that the crime? Fastening the sack, the cat you lug far across the train lines. Those eyes, smouldered in terrific lightning, I must draw! But that can’t be done alone, for they stand in rows neat, all aligned; from their sockets like torchlight luminosity is drawn out. Over our spines, the speeding wheels of the train roll over. Four Everyone is writing his Best Poems. In the desert a drunkard slurps camel’s blood. The moon pours silver light-beams on his head. Sand particles glitter. Our greedy faces turn ruddy. Like morning teeth—truly unstained and the most ferocious. These my writing hands do not stop always at writing. From yet-untraveled deserts the stench of camelblood strikes my nostrils. I slide away from you. You who had, one day, clutched tightly the railings of some ferry-ghat… Wish Dearest, I want to just sit in the flower-garden. Unperturbed by thorns. The bloodbath beneath the feathers I shall hide carefully. You shall only see flowers in the flower garden. Red and blue and yellow and more yellow light all over the place. I am talking about morning. Is that coming to you as evening’s language? I am spent, old, you are correct, but look the flowers are all new. Blooming all over beneath a blue sky—all blue. Not my ribs anymore, ignore those. Sitting in my favourite flower garden I want to forget even me. Shadow Look at your own shadow and walk on. Especially when in the evening’s light, he walks in front of you. When he is alongside and you glance at him sideways, there may be dense bloodshed if you walk into a lamppost. When he is behind you, why will you accept such an antithesis? Walk on, straight. When he is all over you, around you, warmth and shanti you will take from him. Sleep Yes, one day after love what will remain is sheer sex. On a viscous marsh we shall sleep all rain-soaked. Night and rain will get fiercer. When morning comes our sex-exhausted sleep-trench will be cloaked by soil. And then we shall sleep, and sleep… My Hands From the trees they have not plucked flowers, leaves. They have not gotten hold of anyone’s neck in a grizzly strangle-hold. Over the waves of your breasts they rested, assuming that the softened world lies there. All sounds of the world they thought had come to a halt. Hoping, one day they will be placed under another pair of hands. Right now the world wants to see blood in flood, so overwrought, twitchy it is. My Friends Make the bed for me. Cajole me to eat warm rice, fish made for me. Before that they offer me, with hands trembling, quivering, glassful of booze. Recite new poems, incandescent writings. I see the new strokes of their brush over paper and canvas. I dream and am imprisoned within a web of dreams. One day, all of us shall fly. Bewinged. My Body-less Head I have chopped off my own head and placed it at my feet. Blood rushes, in the way its atoms will. Drenches the earth. All the gifts of this world arrive and stand wordlessly by my side. Friends of the beheaded all. “If there are so many murders, there will be more suicides”—at the end of the writing they ruminate. But one can hear them aloud, plainly. With a loud thud my decapitated body falls over. ————————– adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Calcutta, Crow
Brinda Bose I what conversations do you hold with the room you grew up in? are they the colour texture stink of seaweed, soaked in the spirit of briny seas olive black with the dark weariness of faraway lands alive with the hope of survival in return exquisitely hardy in refuge,remnants most intimate, most distant more difficult than fleeting friends and lovers lost and found that old room swam you through every fall nick ephemeral passing elation swept out blood crusted bandages when wounds healed and smirked at your flickering jubilations having no memory and all memory, no eyes and ears and nose and mouth and fingers but all eyes ears mouth nose fingers your room baillemaps you each time you return tracking bruises that broke and made you fingering, lightly, all the laughter that birthed the crows feet at the corners of your eyes II finally, only one street defines this city the coffin of skeletal tramlines where collegiac ghosts rest on violent flashbacks on laughter coiled in cobwebs on raging literature crouched in crumbled pages: precarious, predatory on shelves holding crusted pavements and gross management tomes to ransom there was a time when all of poetry was an epiphany, wild and endless before recollections rolled anger roiled and ardour spent retreading bookstreet now where time is liquid, burning drowning infusions sugarblack melting argument smoking affection, o what affection was that… whoever knew that such an ageless street as this the ageing might reclaim hunting still for themselves, for others, for manuscripts torn, caffeine, grass, frenzy, ennui, rapture restless verses that spiral up and down those grimy stairs vomiting fear and tenderness insomniac III crawling this city’s face, grey termite tearing through a dusty shelf two millimeters in a year, or less.remembrances of what we said and did not say, what we did, slept, loved, lied, cried.but so much that we said we would do but have not, burning and yearning through alleys of conversations real and imagined. calcutta, crow. about all you know and think you know, about us together and apart walking along unbidden local traintracks and riverine, those glances which have met and held. of a time before we came to be, that a city existed in which we were born and played and hungered and wept, and knew, and did not know calcutta’s crow resolute resilient fretfully watching that odd tender touch that drops from your careless hand on my shoulder it has been so long and not so long at all that the city has held us, screaming and silent. all our lives when our lives have just begun. is it the old man bergson who meanders along with us unbearably light, henri henri hold on tight we said. oh is he the third who walks always beside us shadowdances through our piledhighyesterdays and wipes the snot of obnoxious recollection on our sleeves as they brush against each other and smirk. calcutta, crow agnosco veteris vestigial flammae, i feel once more the scars of the old flame but what is that flame how high does it sear to leer up the skirt of ageing thighs where did it come from when did the match strike and blaze and touch a fingertip of jasmine attar to the languorous dip behind my ear which your hand reached out and licked calcutta’s crow somnolent satyr-ical hanging from the edge of the parapet looking into our eyes as we wander together and apart there and here, rapt lost hidden in the stench of stories we have shared in separate lives just like those old framed black and white replicas of our future selves having neither history nor logic that hang askew in that studio on the second floor where clocks stand frozen that no one visits except us. calcutta, crow ____________________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Two Glistening Wheels, a Bell and a Tiffin-Carrier
Krishna Kalpit Vishwa Hindi Sammelan The language in which we wail And shed tears They ride on it And fly up above those clouds One says I did not go Let me be counted among the tyagis Another says I did manage to Let me be regarded among the bhaagis One was tossing down the list-of-contents from the sky In the parched fields of Hindi-Patti A latest Hindi sheikh Had set up a harem of government committees Exiting one To enter the other Someone was being wrecked at principal The other at interest and the third in etiquette One was screaming: All life insult has been my lot Now let some honour be conferred on me too One was saying: Let me be given all the dough Into dollars shall I transcreate them The other said, no, I am the only one to play The unattainable veena An imperialist Was busy garlanding a communalist A woman, with the blood of the guiltless Went on signing strange advertisements A freakish soiree, this A piffling singer Was singing obscene bhajans An editor was looking for Repose at the shoes Of the foreign minister A reporter, in a Shastri-Bhavan drawer Fixed his permanent address One used to say I shall breathe my last in Italia One wished to be irrelevant in Spanish One would play hide and seek With an almost dead language One was sulking One was being sweet-talked One professor At Jawaharlal Nehru University Harlequin, ludicrous Spewing commentaries on Muktibodh One deadbody Was glued to the wings of the British Airways The other Had already chaired every Literary Circle, every Goshti of the future One soul had entered Next year’s every representative body A perplexing tableaux of globalization this In some strange brothel in Soho Someone was hoisting the Hindi langot And in the distant East In some dry, grainy desert village In a language in which the child stammered That used to be called Hindi Wherefore all righteous opposition? Shall only beggars of the future Barter and transact in this great language? A poet of this language Cuts into two his liver and regrets Chisels on with his poetry Tearing off page after page after page… —————– Tale of the Bicycle More humane than a human Is traipsing travelling hope A possibility, standstill The supple fingers of a flying kite The limber legs, their unwritten tale One can pick-out from the shadow of that kite Ganesh on mooshik Shivji on bayl Durga on sinh Kartik on mayur Indra on hathi Saraswati on hans Lakshmi on ullu Yamraj on bhaisa Mahajan in BMW President in airplane Mullah Nasiruddin on donkey Crowd in a train But on a bicycle, every single time a human being A workman—weary, spent A school going kid Or in the streets of Patna The wife of jankavi Laldhuyan Tied up sewing-machine on the carrier Cycle is the only conveyance in this wide world Which is not a vahan of any God There cannot be any memorial song for the cycle It is the only machine running towards life The oldest friendship between humans and machines Made into poetry by the Punjabi poet Amarjit Chandan And Vittoria De Sica enacted it in his film Through the dank and tortuous alleyways of poverty, pain and humiliation Where human beings live Till that point, only cycles can ply From the site of the event, one cannot come to the conclusion That the cycle was used against humanity When dead-bodies were removed and gunpowder-smoke cleared itself The glistening twin wheels of the cycle lay Right at the centre of the road The bell cast far away, adrift And that tiffin-carrier, in which—bomb not roti, That disappeared mischievously Till the end: the story of a bicycle Is the story of a man ——————– The poems first appeared in tirchhispelling.wordpress.com Translation: HUG adminhumanitiesunderground.org