Jayanta Kumar Manta

Date of Publish: 2025-07-26

A Few Poems by Jayanta Kumar Manta

 

1

(Jivem Sharadah Shatam)

A Hundred Autumns to Live

I yearn for a hundred autumns

 

On a morning of late Aahin1

As I run my fingers over panicles of milching paddy

The water pearls on them utter a soft prayer

 

The spread field sets loose the winds

The sweet scent of wildflowers

And I drown in the endless warbles

Of a flock of birdlings

 

Such life there is in today

 

Yesterday I returned

Along a path of scorching death

Tomorrow the blackness of stranger days awaits

 

Yet

I yearn for a hundred autumns

A hundred autumns my heart desires

1Aahin- Sixth month of the Assamese Calendar

 

2

(On an evening of Phagun)

 

A flock of rain sweeps over me in mid-Phagun

My sun-stricken soil

Drenched in it

Its exhalations

Clawing their way into me

 

The fallen leaf wishes

 

My earthly human, my earthly world

I shall love you again

 

3

Morite Chaina Aami Ei Sundor Bhubone*

(I Wish Not to Die in This Divine Land)

 

 

A bed of yellow sunflowers beckons to me

The March sun and rain

Breathe life into their green expanse

 

Why so blazing a yellow

Why so vivid a green

 

A bed of yellow sunflowers

Quells the terror of death

 

After two and a half decades or a hundred years

Surpassing plagues and currents of half-burnt bodies

Van Gogh, I remember you

 

A bed of yellow sunflowers faces the sky

It isn’t death, it isn’t death, it isn’t death

 

 

*The first line of Rabindranath Tagore’s famous poem “Pran” from his collection of poems Kori o Komal in Sanchayita

 

4

The sight of you pained me today. A promise

We made to together make a home, soothed by the shadows

of broad-headed trees, soaked in sweet bird songs

A front yard alive with tittering children

The chatters of the afternoons

Shared with next door friends

At the nongola-gate1, immersed in the fragrance of the

Madhoimaloti2 that would stand hanging its head

Under the weight of blossoming flowers

 

Which outlander has rowed against the currents of the familiar river

What colours are their lips smeared

Blood in the waters, blood in the air, ashes and bones strewn

A fair of the merchants of evil sits in our fields

A long river of hate courses through your veins and mine

We barricade the doors, darkness nesting in our eyes

And sharpen our weapon for our next-door friends

 

After so many moons, the sight of you pained me today

I couldn’t hold onto the earth under my feet

Hordes of merchants have traded us again and again

For many moons, in the arcane bazaar of death

 

1Nongola-gate- A gateway seen in front of village homes that comprise of three to four bamboo rods suspended parallelly one above the other in a horizontal manner held in place by sticking their ends into holes drilled on two vertical poles at either end.

 

2Madhoimaloti- A vine-like twining climber ornamental flowering plant native to India. Often planted near the gate to decorate it.

5

(Thirty Nine Years of Silence)

 

 

The blunt spear with which

On the banks of Aalichinga lake

During the Miya wars of ‘83

Harison kai’s father Bajuwa

Tore open Rahmat Bano’s carrying belly

Was tucked away in the barn loft

For ages

 

The child that had not yet finished the time

Inside its mother’s womb

Was squirming for a while, outside

He was but Medhi1 of the village Naamghar2

 

Mitingbar, who served a marakia3 at Kalia uncle’s

Invited us on our way to school and back

To see the wooden staff of buffalo keepers’

Stained with blood

The third teacher at school told us

Not to read the story of Karbala

That blackened the pages of our Kuhipaths4

 

The mite devoured bamboo haft had long since wasted away

Its thirty nine Sots5 of fire, smoke and ashes

Falling into thirty nine Bohaags6 of earth, clouds and water

A few days ago

With the rust-rotten spear as her aid

Harison kai’s adopted daughter Nandita was

Jabbing at colocasias in the mud puddles of their field

 

During the last farm season

When my sister-in-law had stones in her gallbladder

She was taken to the town for operation

After selling the cows to Aatikur of the other village

And even before that

They’d brought back incanted waters

For treating vertigo

 

The old man Bajuwa’s bones have grown flowers on them

Uncle Kalia is gone too

Mitingbar was taken by blood dysentery

And our clothes by now were soiled so we left

 

That day, we’d sent papayas to Aatikur from our backyard, a crateful

Ripened before pick

‘Sir, it’s the month of Ramzaan’, he’d said

And upon hearing the first word leave his mouth

The one he uttered to address me

I felt a shapeless lump

Harden in my throat

 

1.Medhi- An officer incharge of a Sattra engaged to collect annual contribution from the disciples

2Naamghar- a prayer house for congregational worship associated with the entire Assamese community and the Ekasarana sect of Hinduism, in particular, that is native to Assam.

3.Marakia- a person who borrows someone else’s cattle for farming and so conducts farming for both their own household and for the person they borrowed the cattle from.

4.Kuhipaths- Books used to teach students at the preparatory and primary level in Assamese schools. Kuhi’ meaning ‘Tender’ and ‘Path’ meaning ‘Lesson’ as it was solely aimed at a tender mind.

5.Sot- The last month of the Assamese calendar falling between mid-March and mid-April

6.Bohaag- The first month of the Assamese calendar falling between mid-April and mid-May

 

6

Ambubachi reminds me of Aai1-Pitaai2 today

Biren from Kamakhya had once said

The place is an active energy centre

Earth’s centre of force

 

Something we didn’t learn in ninth standard geography, I thought

Indeed, we are skeptical beings

Sophist non-believers

Disciples of Abraham Kovoor

Who ponder interminably before believing

In futility still

Tatras naiba naiba sa3

 

Before they passed

I had taken Aai-Pitaai on a tour

Catching a glimpse of the goddess after half a day in a tailless queue

My mother’s voice utterly drowned

By the cacophony of Bengal-seasoned voices and words

Of swarms of downstream women

 

Outside, someone was offhandedly cutting off

Pigeon heads on a bothi4

Inside the Manikut of our house

Aai had placed carefully

The red cloth bought from a roadside shop

 

There was tumour in my mother’s breasts

And accumulated water in her belly

Human sorcery, an unfriendly spell

Making a pot within flesh

An aunt from our village said

After moving from home to hospital and hospital to home

A few times

Aai finally rested in our backyard

 

Aai’s red cloth was now nowhere to be found

 

The cancer in his liver, took father

Withering him away day after day

Without food

One day with my own eyes I saw

The raspy voice falling suddenly silent

Pitaai rested his head beside Aai in our backyard

 

Ambubachi reminds me of Aai-Pitaai today

Where is the Goddess? Where?

A fatal sickness ravages our neoteric world now

While the rivers carry with their currents,

An undying stream of half-burnt bodies

Tainted air in our lungs

The oxygen only lessens

And lessens

 

Where is the Goddess? Where?

From her dark sanctuary, from a

Vermillion smeared stone, from her cocoon of sacrificial blood

Flowers, ghee5, batasha6 and holy chants

Will she emerge

And sprinkle the sacred waters

Is it time

 

 

1Aai- Mother in Assamese rural tongue

2Pitaai- Father in Assamese rural tongue

3.Tatras naiba naiba sa- Sanskrit Shloka that means ‘even so, it’ll never happen’

4.bothi- a long curved blade that cuts on a platform held down by the foot

5.ghee- clarified butter used in South Asian cooking and also as a part of auspicious rituals

6 .batasha- a pan-Indian sweet made from sugar and jaggery that is widely used in Temples, Gurdwaras & at home as prasadam for daily pujas prayers, all across India.

 

7

(Burning Kaliram Kokaai1)

 

 

The open field brings tears to my eyes, kokaai! The culms

So shriveled and dry! I break their roots

Searching for grasses with moist faces

 

The seven knotted bamboo bier looks to the sky

 

The sounds of Kalamoni’s nagaras2 break headfirst into my chest, at high noon

As kokaai’s chariot is let down at the edge of the field

The Naamgeet3 ladden wind with its melancholic tunes

And the rhythms of Pobita and Bakuli mahi’s4 relentless claps

Bounce off my heart

 

In the end kokaai, you’ve left

 

The pearl I wore

Is lost to the sands

And I’m unable to catch it, oh my guru5

My darling mother shall now cry

 

The Naamgeet laden wind bounces off my heart

 

A bamboo bursts without warning

Scattering the scent of burning ghee and mustard into the air

And into me

 

1.Kokaai- Used to address an elder brother or someone holding a similar stature

2.Nagara- A kind of small kettle drum

3.Naamgeet- A collective song in the Assamese community performance on various social occasions by a group of people

4.Mahi- Used to address someone’s mother’s younger sister or someone given the same stature

5.Guru- teacher

Translated from original Assamese by Daradi Patar

About the poet:

Jayanta Kumar Manta (1968 ) is an Assamese poet practicing poetry since his schooldays. His works have been published in several Assamese periodicals and literary magazines. His poetry collections published so far include "Sugabhir Shipar Nishwas"(2002), "Desh-Kaal-Bhavishyat" (2022), "Ahonte Teon Baghar Chal Ekhan Pindhi Ahichil" (2023) "Kandhar Deshar Mahakabya" (2024) and "Aru Dantichaharir Duparia Etat Edin" (2024).
He is presently serving as an Associate Professor, Department of Botany in Handique Girls' College, Guwahati.

About the translator:

Daradi Patar is a translator based in Guwahati, Assam. Her works have been published by Indian Literature, The Antonym Magazine, Storytel India, NEZINE, Sahitya Ekhon among others. She has also edited and translated a number of children's history books for IDS Kolkata's Itihaashe Haatekhori series and contributed translations to the short story collection Windborne, published by The Antonym..