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We four brothers! A kilo divided into four parts! The eldest owns a multi-storied.
The one next to him has four cars. The younger one to him, a doctor
And I’m a few dry circles, pressed from three corners.
A seer* or two, a basketful or two
A pair from mother’s ears, a pair from her hands, two sets of Pat and Muga silk
Father’s old umbrella, the wrist watch and the walking stick.
The half-broken umbrella and the blind man’s stick
Walked home with me.
The steps carried a familiar cough and redolent fragrance of ripe betelnut.
We grew as it were on bamboo bedsteads. We swam naked in the same ditch.
When the field of the Saaon month entwined my legs I know not what smell I got
I wrenched my heart. We four got divided over there.
One morning they flew away to the town and I lay in the field.
The milky scent of unripe rice made me fall down with face upward
I kept watching the flight of birds coming to feed on rice. I frightened away the quails
True. But our childhood kept hanging from the steelyard
All things were divided. The backyard orchard had four parts. The dich had
four squares
A basketful or two, a quarter or two. This is good…this is mine
None was there beside me. Only time came as a gust of wind
And whispered into my ears—how many quarters after death from head to toe.
*In the old system of weight and measurement, a “seer” (almost equal to a kilogram
today)was used for the weight of solid materials.
The man who loses his life for love is a man with a true mind
He was a man with a true mind
He did not want to smell Janaki’s body
Nor did he forcefully want to make her sit on his thighs…
He was not a characterless hero
Nor was he a cruel criminal who killed his brother
Because the Lankans didn’t want to be atheists, in their hearts!
One who bears love in his eyes
One who bears love in his heart
Cannot squash the delicate parts of a woman’s body
Only those are hideous
Who cannot trust their wives or sisters…
Ravan’s sacrifice still speaks of love
Tell tales of human love
Whose arms have a thousand elephants’ forte
Whose bosom let lotuses bloom
His death is only momentary
His death is for those
Who have never discovered
Love’s definition…
The grieving weeping in Lanka melted one day
Janaki kept looking at the silver moon
She was not
A woman who lost
Her bosoms in the chest of another man
She was not a woman who disrobed herself weeping mutely
Lanka was then burning
The gold turned yellow and the gardens
Turned copperish gradually…
Ravan’s speechless look
Even then sent
A sensation of vernal love
Yet he didn’t embrace Sita forcefully
Nor did he leave her in bed
Riddled with his sperm….
Lanka realised
The outcry from Ravan’s heart
The seashore realised that
Love signifies sacrifice
So, one day he cried out at a cruel moment.
The arrow that pierced his heart made him suffer terribly.
And even today,
Those lovers cry out
Who know how to touch beautifully the cool shadow of love
Even today, those lovers sometimes lose
Definitions of love and life
Because of the theatrics of spoiled lovers.
The moon at play drinks in water
time and again to her heart's content
Contended she frolics
at the beach
The sea in spate is crazy
about the moon
The anxious hands clasp
the lotuses many times
I've touched the cool night the frolicking sea
At dust tired and lonely
I'm at the edge of boundless waters
Then
a fish coming close to the bluff
winks at me and asks “ Are you okey?”
My fingers buried in my hair getting moist in mist
I gaze at the fish
In its eyes a pair of coppery beads
are fretting
Confined beyond touch
the lonely aquatic witness of the days turning back
drops down slowly being the tears in its ember eyes
Stirring bubbles the fish
gets hidden in the watery clothes
Maybe he gets it
“How happy I am! ”
When in the night's gloom
I came carrying a flower
in my hand and unlocked
the closed door
She stammered trying to
say something to me.
It was raining hard outside
and a roaring wind blew on.
I moved to the window
and my hands stretching out
I tried to fly the flashy fly.
Let her be free !
Free be the fly !
Now, not even a frog croaks
in my sunburnt yellow garden,
let along a bumblebee.
How strange !
What's this at the crack of dawn ?
A coral hibiscus by the window !
Last night, right here
my hands unfolding
I spread her icy woes.
And this flower !
I wonder if it not be
her treasured memento!
Translated from Assamese into English by DR. HASINUS SULTAN
SPLENDOUR OF DAZZLING COLOUR
The little kid passed swiftly
Before him something amazing
Splendour of dazzling colour.
The sunburnt, pitch-black kid
Carries a sack in his hands
His nose carries mucous stains
He picks up with one hand
A plastic bottle with stains of betel nuts and ‘shikhar’
And creates music striking it against his thigh.
Who knows the sack might contain an umbrella
Used in the forest during rainy days.
Splendour of dazzling colour
A river keeps drying, becomes an oil painting
Giridhar’s sorrows—the ritualistic feast serves no meat!
Boiled food in great variety.
Can this damned night be spent doing nothing! The little finger
Is about to tremble.
Tonight, at the prayer house, the village assembly for
Religion too.
Splendour of dazzling colour
Someone speaks to people in a public place
My people! Whatever I’m today has been possible for you
Thunderous applause follows it. Aunt Khiru comments—
Surely you are! You licked the gravels that were to
Pave our paths.
Splendour of dazzling colour
Now read the poem with the third eye
Wherever you stop is the colour.
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