Under Tiger-striped Skies
Parimal Bhattacharya ‘I don’t know how fear, like an enzyme, triggers a chemical reaction of memory and imagination. Perhaps it plays such tricks: it not only paralyses the present and casts long shadows on the future, but also cuts up the past and exhumes strange phantoms. Fear alters the past in more insidious ways than a battery of lathi-wielding fanatics in a museum…’ [Excerpted and adapted from Dyanchinama.] Thamma, my grandmother, would sometimes talk about Sajid Mian who visited the house every winter to sell gur, date palm jaggery. A landless farm worker, he lived in the village of Bhabagachhi, around eight kilometers from our ancestral home. Sajid Mian took the date palms around his village on lease before the onset of winter, tapped their juices and thickened them in slow wood fire to make gur. He was, according to Thamma, the finest gur maker in the district. Like most members of her tribe, my grandmother too was a great storyteller who could bring to life the quotidian things of a lost world. The way she described it, we could almost taste the sweet, granular, amber-coloured liquid that Sajid Mian supplied to our house in slender terracotta pots. But how could Thamma, an orthodox Brahmin widow, allow in the kitchen, let alone taste, a food item prepared by a Muslim is a mystery. Perhaps the holy edicts that guided all her actions exempted gur from the list of polluted food since it contained no cereal. It never occurred to my mind to ask her. During the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, Sajid Mian visited our house along with his family, his wife and five children. They were skeletons wrapped in skins, Thamma used to say, the skins so dark and wrinkled that they resembled burnt paper that could be blown away. Following that visit, his wife would come to our house every evening, trekking the eight kilometers from their village, carrying a terracotta pot, to collect the watery starch of boiled rice. But after a few weeks, as the famine peaked, her visits ceased. Our family too had stopped eating rice. Bengalis had had their first taste of rooti – flattened bread and a frail cousin of North Indian roti – made of wheat that had begun to arrive in ship-loads from Australia. Did Sajid Mian take his family to the city? One could never know. Every day, endless streams of famished village people were turning up on the streets of Calcutta. Feeble voices begging for runny rice starch buzzed in neighbourhood lanes through the day; as night fell, barking street dogs fighting with humans for scraps of food in garbage dumps rent the air. The city people could catch some sleep early in the morning, when it grew quiet, when the phantom men and women died silently in footpaths and parks. Packs of jackals came from the vast eastern wetlands, their teeth and nails flecked with the first rays of the sun, before the municipal dumper trucks could clear away the bodies. Nobody knew where Sajid Mian had vanished. Grandmother never touched gur for the rest of her life. *** In the year 1943, the joint family of my late grandfather and his brothers split up. They continued to remain in the same large ancestral house, but the running of the household was separated along fraternal lines. Thamma, recently widowed, and her seven children got a separate kitchen. A mysterious incident from that period has since become part of our family lore. It was an unbearably muggy evening in the autumn of that year. Under the dim light of a castor oil lamp (kerosene had vanished from the market due to the war, and electricity was yet to come to our house) my little uncles and aunts were trying to do their homework. A few of them were listless, from hunger and heat, had even turned in on the floor. My father, the eldest of them, was not at home. The dinner was yet to be cooked. Chhotopisi, my youngest aunt, had started to speak a few words that summer. She was toddling around her siblings, prattling to herself, scrawling on the floor with a piece of chalk. The oil lamp flickered and cast big shadows of hunched children on the walls, coils of smoke hung in the still air. Chhotopisi crept up to a window that opened to a tiny, weed-choked garden. There, in pitch-darkness, fireflies danced and crickets chirped in arum bushes around a ditch. Chhotopisi, it has been said, stood there gazing out of the window for a long time, holding the window bars, and intoned softly: ‘Fear!’ The word, that she uttered for the first time in her life, set off a frenzy. My uncles and aunts began to scream hysterically and thrash their limbs on the floor. One of the aunts had a convulsive fit: her jaws were locked and lips turned violet. People gathered in no time carrying sticks and lanterns, and the garden was thoroughly searched. But nothing could be found there. All the uncles and aunts were very young then. Father, the oldest of them, was barely seventeen. War and famine, followed by the split in the joint family, had forced him to give up his studies and enroll as an ARP (Air Raid Precaution) warden. People were fleeing Calcutta fearing Japanese bombs dropping from the skies. As an ARP warden, my father’s job entailed patrolling the streets after the air raid sirens rang in the evenings, carrying a torch and a whistle that he would blow if lights were seen in the windows. In the city and its suburbs, people waited with bated breath in their darkened homes for the sirens to sound all clear. All the government buildings were painted black. During the Indo-Pak war in 1971, pieces of black paper were pasted on the window panes in our house. Streetlights, too, were put out. Swarms of fighter jets scrambled from nearby Palta airbase and flew
No Phallus, No Death
Udayan Ghosh Choudhury Tarpan (i) baba had said: however tall you grow, let your feet be grounded since then i am standing with my two legs on the ground ma, tell me how do i now wear my pants? (ii) in case the son does not earn enough, the father looks for a dark girl and then, tries to explain to others why we call her ‘krishnakoli’ (iii) after a certain age when ma still keeps saying “travel safe,” it feels like a pleasant announcement at the railway station “may you have a safe journey” such mechanical and disciplined telling and hearing is our destiny Truth’s Triad Once humans know, they don’t speak the truth. For instance, at last year’s party in our housing complex, the most sensuous woman’s two-and-a-half-year-old kid announced pop that her mother’s breasts are actually broken, that she is a broken woman. The woman managed with some rolling laughter and we carried on looking for the sherbet-kiosk. Unless one is disgusted, humans don’t ever speak the truth. For instance, in the biology lab, the girl, roll number 11, once told me: “Even dog’s piss is more precious than your trousers.” At that time, I used to have only one pair of trousers; used to wear it six days a week. Humans never deal in truth unless shielded behind glass. As we tried to free Baba’s body from the morgue, Chintu suddenly came up with this: “Poetry and all that jazz is bullshit! The real succour for man comes with Cerelac and saline.” Before flying to Canada, Kobita invited him to the terrace only to slap him hard. Come, let me tell you something about Snakes (i) We do not trust snakes even when they are teetering on the edge oftheir own death. We never think that just like the wing-torn butterfly, the snake too has a sweet heart, which is wailing, holding the last straw so that it can live a few more heartbeats. Rather, we feel joyously relieved that there will be none anymore to run after our sense of sinning—papabodha. No one will inject venom into our conscience. As we put the remnants of the snake’s body into the crepitating fire, we bluster: “You know, it is me who killed this one…” (ii) It’s our smiling face and the style of turning our heads that distinguishes each one of us from the other. Or else, come to think of it, blood-bones-flesh and procreation—whatever is a bird is also a snake. (iii) After trees die, no bird comes to it, no traveller. Only an emaciated snake sometimes comes enquiring after its well being. (iv) Have you heard of a sickly snake ever? Have you read? Nope. Nowhere sir! Because snakes live a very happy and contented life. There is no chapter on violence in the psychology of snakes. Kalipada-Syar On Saturdays, just short of noon, a three-wheeled tin cart would arrive at the school playing-ground. My caricatures and cartoons on the cover of ‘Kisholoy’ would all go haywire. Commotion, leaps, and our rushing, forming a cordon around gari-kaku. Nonchalant, raising the corner of his lungi, he would wipe sweat from his face and Kalipada-syar would not hit us with his talpata-fan; he would just scare us with it. We would stand at a safe distance and with eyes like the reporter’s camera, would catch a glimpse of that magical tin cart opening up its belly and breads, one after another, falling from it. Just like heroines at award functions—thrilling, attractive, proud. Kalipada-syar used to be fond of me and I used to love slightly burnt reddish brown breads. When syar would hand me one, on a thriving day, I would feel that I was holding a bonus, a gift of a dream. One day Kalipada-syar took me to a distance and with a face like a criminal, whispered: “See, you all are now in Class IV. Big boys! You understand things, isn’t it? Today, there is a shortage of breads. So, let us first divide that among the kids. And if there are still some left, you all will get.” We did not get. That day, while returning home, I was fuming at the road, at Kalipada-syar, at gari-kaku too. I could not understand how we had become big boys so soon! Actually syar, these days I comprehend a bit of that. To turn big means to turn yourself a little small every passing day, bit by bit… ——————————————— adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Moonlit Rats and Owls
Manash Bhattacharjee Today is the sixtieth death anniversary of Jibanananda Das (17 February 1899 – 22 October 1954). Shaking himself off Tagore’s Victorian and mystical influences, Jibanananda made the most distinctive mark in the early modernist phase of Bengali poetry. There was as much a new, naturalist lyricism in his poetry as much as new ways of describing time. Time in Jibanananda’s poems was not an abstract, contemplative category, but an optical one, visible in the passing of seasons and the activities of birds and insects. It is through time one measures two intimate aspects of human life: waiting and memory, and Jibanananda’s poetry is replete with imageries where the lover waits and remembers through the passing of time, most intensely captured through naturalistic images. Nature in Jibanananda’s poetry does not resonate with the exuberant charms found in Tagore, but appears, rather, in slow, terrible images of decay. The birth of each new season and activity in nature also marks an end, a death of the previous season. There is also ‘human’ nature, and Jibanananda’s sensibility is equally tilted towards the harsh, primitive naturalism of ‘human nature’. The sexual ‘nature’ of feelings is often described in predatory terms, through the dangerous lures hiding in the dark belly of nature. This created controversy around his poems. Jibanananda was a master of bleak images, and the shadow of pessimism haunted his poems. The effects of early industraialisation and the moving away from village to city life disturbed him. This theme would become the preoccupation of many later poets from Calcutta. To conclude with a word on his most celebrated and well-known poem, Banalata Sen: Today the poem reads like an allegory imagining an impossible juxtaposition—a Bengali woman from a mofussil town of Bangladesh, belonging to the ‘vaidya’ caste, being emblematic of a Buddhist era that flung across ‘national’ boundaries, mapping a geography and time most palpably remote. The poem is perhaps still as enigmatic as ever because it manages to violently juxtapose the petty everydayness of contemporary life with a longing for a place, an era and a pair of eyes that no longer exist. ——————————– After the Harvest The harvest was over who knows when – hay, leaves, various remains, broken eggs scattered in the fields – snake skin, nest-like cold. Beyond all these, at the heart of the field, sleep a few familiar people, strangely inert. There someone else sleeps too – day and night the one I used to meet for a long time. With heart-games, so many misdeeeds I committed on her. Peace still reigns: deep green grass, grasshoppers today envelop her thoughts and the taste of her dark questions. Simple You will never come to hear this song – tonight my call will float in air along the pathway, yet this song comes to heart. Yet I do not forget the language of calling – love still stays alive in the heart, I still sing into the earth’s ear into the star’s ear; I know you will never hear it – tonight my call will float in air along the pathway, yet the song comes to heart. You water, you wave – your body paces like sea-waves – your simple mind floats by the surge of sea waters; some wave she doesn’t know touched her in which darkness; a wave she doesn’t know searches her in the dark; you are Sindhu’s night-waters, Sindhu’s night-waves; who loves you, does anyone carry you in his heart. You go along the surge of waves and far-flung waters behind call you back. You are only a night’s single day; A crowd of men and women Call you far away – so far away – To some sea coast, forest – field – or A sky where floats a make-believe Light of falling stars, Or a sky where the bent Moon like a crescent Raises up – sinks – your life’s taste For you are them, all; Where tree branches shake In a cold night – like the white Bone of dead hands – Where the forest takes dark Primal smells to heart And sings a song. You had come like a Night’s wind to the solitary Heart‘s song And gave whatever a night could. After Twenty Five Years For the last time when I met her in the field I said, ‘One day at such hour come again – if you so desire – after twenty five years’. Saying this I returned home. Later the moon and stars died so many times in the field, in the moonlight rats and owls in search of paddy fields came and went; with eyes closed on the left and right so many people fell asleep; I alone stayed awake; though times arrives faster than the flight of stars, twenty five years don’t get over. Then – one day the field is again full of yellow grass; dew drops float on leaves, dry branches, everywhere; the sparrow’s broken nest is wet with dew; broken bird-eggs on the road, cold – stiff; cucumber flowers, one or two rotten white cucumbers, broken spider webs, dried-up spiders over leaves and stems; the road is visible in the bright moonlight; a few stars are seen in the cold sky – rats and owls roam over the fields their thirst even today quenched by seeds, twenty five years however were long over. A Strange Darkness A strange darkness has set upon this world. Today the blind Are the most clear sighted Those without any love, friendliness or stirrings of pity: the world today is paralysed without their advice. Those who still have deep faith in human beings; even now before whom great truths, art and piety come naturally: today their hearts are food for vultures and jackals. Banalata Sen A thousand nights I have walked this earth. From the Singhalese sea to the Malaya ocean in the dead of night
Tales from an Asati (Asati-Kathan)
Anjana Chakrabarty for shaitaan Pebble Dipping at this river In dress untainted Sankha-sindoor adorned At your tread thakur this pebble I fix to a twig No, not seeking children Nor husband’s health An unalloyed asati I am Another’s husband Who I have desired all my life Fasten him to this pebble And drop him—thhok! Right in front of my feet thakur Just for once. ****************** He My cross My nails My crown of thorns My tortuous death I have lugged them all unto him Smiles, vanity, this make-up Beneath jollity waking up With such ease can he spill blood Everyday *********** Tigress Sniffing, sniffing, the pale telephone A stray knock, leaping to the door Pointless nail scratches so Phone calls one or two, an sms may be (work related) Or perhaps a shadow lengthening there—afar Ah, then wagging tongue –swishing, twitching Raised tail, ah-tu-tu fondness Vaulting upto the moon To be doggish more than a dog can be Is how the days go by… And people think—tigress ! ********** Global Warming How close does the sun come to the earth? Days of rain have evaporated, like a miser’s perfume In every direction a scalding sun now, its rays blistering Phanimanasha Brambles Weariness Two people, unable anymore to lie together Poems, too, are combustible Sets ablaze The destined twosome **************** After the Rain Finally, it all eked out today Chunks and chunks of pain Golden filigreed sun One or two sparrows come out to play Wiping wet eyes they look up at the sky On such cloud-clear days I even wish I could love your wife. *********** Hazarduari A house met in a dream Rows of closed doors, rooms And you sleeping in one Your light body awake in lean darkness From such a distance its spark And heat Raging, flaring colour Scorching down a whole lifetime Just that I don’t know How many more demons Succubus Man-eating boa Three-headed dogs have I to cross Before that door comes unhinged ************* Shame In the dream there were no clothes Since you have not looked at me for days Since you have not shrouded this hungry body with yours Since you have not bedecked my naked body with a caress In this winter With no food, clothing In public, among so many people I was dying, splintered by shame ************** Otherworldly Following every ritual—pindo-daan, mukhagni Communes, fraternity, relations Beyond all trials and chhi chhi Quitting the vestures of our bodies Our souls have emerged The electric furnace has devoured Body and all else Ashes mingled with water Come now Let us draw close and make love Scrape claw lacerate each other For one more lush life ************* Relationship A lifetime of alap-vistaar Surdas? Shall this muffled, garbled relationship Never arrive at that jhala? Yours and mine? ************** Tune Tune is disguised fire Which you did not know Scalding throat tongue lips it will Slide you off your perch And then pour over you a river of fire *************** Bolted Attic No, I do not unlock the door anymore Do not dust Or spray baygon No garland or chandan Long ago I have tossed you Into the bolted attic Just beside the broken doll ************ Anjana Chakrabarty teaches English at Beltala Balika Bidyalaya, Kolkata. adminhumanitiesunderground.org