a deep distance round herself,
the distance that is in a mustard-field’s far edge
or in a sal forest’s dark kohl.
My mind paused, seeing someone I knew
touched with the solemnity of the unknown.
Suddenly she put her newspaper down
and greeted me.
The path for socialising was opened
and I started a conversation –
‘How are you? How’s the family?’ and so forth.
She kept looking out through the window in a gaze
that seemed to be beyond the contamination of near-by days,
gave one or two extremely brief replies,
left some questions unanswered,
let me understand through her hand’s impatient gestures
that it was pointless to raise such matters,
better to keep quiet.
I was on another seat
with her companions.
She beckoned me with her fingers to come and sit next to her.
I thought it was bold of her to do so
and did as asked.
Softly she spoke,
her voice shielded by the train’s rumble,
‘Please don’t mind.
We’ve no time to waste time.
I’ve got to get off at the next station
and you’ll go further.
Never again shall we meet.
I want to hear from your mouth
the answer to the question that’s been postponed so long.
Will you speak the truth?’
‘I shall,’ said I. And she,
still looking out – at the sky – put this question,
‘Those days of ours that are gone –
have they gone entirely?
Is nothing left?’
For a minute I held my tongue,
then replied,
‘The stars of night are all within the deep
of the light of day.’
I was bothered with my answer. Had I made it up?
She said, ‘Never mind. Now go back to your seat.’
They all got off at the next station;
I continued alone.
[Santiniketan, 24 June 1936]
FROM Prantik (1938)
No. 5
Dogged follower at my heels, my unfulfilled past,
shadows of unslaked thirst risen from a ghost-land,
determined to keep me company, zealous in back-beckoning,
soft-playing on a sitar a tune that drugs, obsesses,
like a bee, hive-dislodged, humming in a hushed
deflowered garden: from the back onto the path before me
you cast the sunset-peak’s long shadow, fabricate
a tedious farewell twilight, ashen and pale.
Companion at my back, tear the bindings of dreams;
and those treasures of suffering, tinted futilities of desires,
which you have snatched and guarded from death’s grasp –
give them back to death. Today I’ve heard
in the cloudless post-monsoon’s far-gazing sky
a packless vagabond’s flute, and I’ll follow it.
[Santiniketan, 4 October 1937]
No. 14
Time for the bird to go. Soon its nest,
stripped, dislodged, song-silenced, will slip to the dust
in the forest’s tumult. With dry leaves and withered flowers
at dawn I’ll fly to the trackless emptiness
beyond the sunset-sea. For long has this earth
been host to me. Heady with mango blossoms,
greetings have come to me, sweet with Phalgun’s gifts;
ashok-buds have sign-solicited my tunes
and I’ve given them, love-juice-filled; while at times
Baishakh’s storms have gagged me with hot dust,
maimed my wings. Yet with all that I’m blest
with the honour of being alive. And when this shore’s
tiring journey ends, back-glancing for a moment,
I’ll honour, before I go, in humble salutation
the divinity that inhabited this incarnation.
[Santiniketan, summer 1934 (15 Baishakh 1341)]
No. 18
She-serpents hiss everywhere, exhaling poison-breaths.
Soft words of peace will sound like hollow jests.
Before I take my leave
let me invoke
those who, in human homes, are preparing themselves
to wage war against the monsters.
[Santiniketan, Christmas Day 1937]
FROM Akashpradip (1939)
The Dark Girl
Her colour a luminous dark, a coral necklace round her neck.
In amazement I had gaped.
She’d been staring too, without a trace of embarrassment,
her big eyes lampblack-stained, –
a girl approaching adolescence,
close to my age.
Clearly I recall the scene. The room’s south door
open to the morning sun. The nut tree’s crown
with its fine thick foliage against the sky’s pale blue.
Her young tender body draped in white,
the black border encircling her limbs,
then falling at her feet.
Two gold bangles ringed her shapely wrists.
Such was the reflection that fell on the stories I read
in vacation noontides. At times she beckoned me to lands
where the creator’s whims in many guises weave
unattainable mirages skirting a boy’s dreams.
A bodied enchantment
cast its invisible shade
on my body and mind, subtle yet tactile.
I dared not speak to her. My heart ached
with the softest tune that hummed –
‘She’s far, far away,
as far as the shirish tree’s furthest branches from where
slowly the faint scent drips to our inner depths.’
One day she left me a card inviting me
to her dolls’ wedding.
Boisterously merry were her guests, whilst I, a shy lad,
dreadfully embarrassed, kept to a corner. The evening passed
in vain, and I can’t even recall
what I had to eat at the party, but I observed
how her nimble feet went busily back and forth
with the black border dancing round their movements.
From the corner of my eyes I noticed how her bangles
seemed to have tied the solid sun to her hands.
Her gentle, coaxing voice I also heard,
which, when I came home, echoed in my head
for half the night.
Then one day
I got to know her without impediments. One day
I called her by her pet name. My awe went
and even banter was exchanged.
Sometimes we made up charges against each other
and made angry scenes – all in pretence.
Sometimes cruel jokes in cutting words
hurled real hurt.
Sometimes she gave me a bad name,
calling me careless.
Sometimes I saw her in casual disarray,
busy with cooking, quite unembarrassed.
How many of my male follies she would deride
with her sharp, female pride!
One day she said, ‘I know how to read palms.’
My hand in hers, her head lowered, she read the lines,
then said, ‘Your temperament
shows a poverty in love.’ I gave no rejoinder at all.
False calumny it was, but the sting was anaesthetised
by her touch, my true prize.
Yet the pain
of incomplete knowing still remained.
Beauty’s distance never seems to wane –
so near, and yet so far, without end.
On the western h
orizon the days fade,
mixed with gladness and with sadness’s shade.
The essence of blue was distilled by Chaitra skies,
and now this Ashwin light
plays its holiday shanai in the gold rice-fields.
Slowly drifts the boat, to no port, weighed with dreams.
[Santiniketan, 31 October 1938]
Green Mangoes
Three green mangoes were lying under the tree
in the mild sunshine of the Chaitra morning.
When I saw them, my hands didn’t itch to get them
with a restless impatience.
Then I knew, sipping my tea,
how the wind had changed on my sails,
how the ferry-ghat in the east had dimmed.
Once upon a time, the chance getting of a green mango or two
was my golden key, unlocking the secret cell
of a whole day’s gladness. Now
there’s no such padlock, nor is a key required.
Let me begin at the beginning.
For the first time in my life a bride was coming
from another family to ours.
My mind, which was then like a boat at anchor,
was suddenly tossed by a flood-tide.
Overflowing the bounds of what I’d been allotted
came fate’s bounty to me,
shaking off all those old, torn, mundane days
and nights from the whole house.
Three times a day for some days
the wedding music played, changing the daily language
around us, and in all the rooms
the lights made a fuss in lanterns and chandeliers.
The marvellous opened
in the midst of the too familiar.
Decked in colours, feet dyed in lac,
someone came, hinting she wasn’t a person
of limited value, belonging to this world,
but was unique, past compare.
For the first time to the boy’s eyes was revealed
something that could be seen, but couldn’t be known.
The flutes stopped playing,
but not what they implied:
our bride remained,
girded by marvel’s invisible rays.
Her treaties, quarrels, sports were all with her groom’s sister.
Conquering shyness, I would try to get a little close,
my mind in a whirl because of her sari’s stripes,
but her frowns would soon let me know I was just a kid,
nor was I female, but of a different tribe.
She was just a month or two older
or perhaps younger than I was.
Yet I had to concede
we were made with different ingredients.
How I yearned to build a bridge towards her
with something, no matter what!
One day this unfortunate fellow acquired from somewhere
some gaudy handwritten books.
He thought they would stun her,
but she laughed, and said,
‘What shall I do with these?’
Such tragedies, ignored by history, cannot draw
sympathy from any source.
This one crushed the boy, heaping on him humiliation
for whole days and nights.
Who was the judge who could assess and declare
the value of those handwritten books?
Despite all that, I found that the lady of rank
was quite interested in claiming petty dues:
there her wooden seat was at floor-level.
She loved to eat green mangoes
mixed with shulpo greens and chillies.
There was a tiny door through which such treats could be shared
even by a boy and a mere kid like me.
Climbing trees was strictly forbidden.
Whenever the wind blew, I would rush into the garden
and if, by a stroke of luck, found even one fruit
snatched from its minor rarity, I would see
how green, how shapely, how beautiful,
what a wonderful gift of nature it was.
The glutton who splits and eats it hasn’t seen
its incomparable beauty.
One day I gathered mangoes in the middle of a hailstorm.
She said, ‘And who asked you to fetch these?’
I said, ‘Nobody,’
left the whole basket on the floor and went off.
Another time I got stung by bees.
She said, ‘There’s no need to take so much trouble to get fruit.’
I kept quiet.
I grew in years.
Once I got a gold ring from her;
there was something memorable inscribed on it too.
I lost it, bathing in the Ganges,
couldn’t recover it.
Even now the green mangoes fall
under the trees, year after year.
There’s no way I can find her again.
[Santiniketan, 8 April 1939]
FROM Nabajatak (1940)
Birthday
No, I don’t know
the figure you folks have fashioned
with so many decorations,
nor does He who dwells within me know
that effigy of my name inscribed with your signatures.
The bounds of His creation
are beyond the range of your vision.
On time’s ocean’s shore
the Maker of forms
shapes that image, by Himself, in secrecy
behind a screen of varied mysteries.
From the outside
through mingled dark and light
some see it in one way, some in another.
Fragments of forms and shadows,
tricks of the imagination,
gaps in between: even so is an identity fashioned
against the backdrop of the unknown.
In His temporal playroom
the Sculptor shaped me as a toy,
worked with clay and light,
black and white.
Who doesn’t know its brittleness,
how time’s wheel will crush it to smithereens?
The gift it bears
professes, for a brief while, to be deathless,
then in a trice eludes us,
leaving behind a few handfuls of dust
and that death-night that washes all traces away.
Sportive crowds,
do you suppose the puppet you have made
will escape the grasp of great and greedy dust
and abide for ever in light?
I wonder today
if my own secret Maker
smiles in a corner of His eye
when you imagine
such an event.
[Written at Puri on his birthday in 1939 (25 Baishakh 1346)]
Romantic
Yes, they call me a romantic.
And I accept it:
I am a traveller to delight’s sacred springs.
Love, I have indeed
dyed the shawl that wraps me.
When I come to your door,
I sing dawn’s Bhairab, invoke its furor.
I pluck the scent of spring
in tuberoses
and invade your lonely room’s gentle breezes.
Softly I read you poems
which are rhythmic.
The rhythms are interspersed
with structured statements artfully prepared.
When you hear such things,
the smile on your lips acquires a drunken tinge.
When I play Multan
on my flute,
my inner mystery finds its melodic route.
I place you at the centre of a sphere of fantasies,
carefully peeling off its dusty sheath:
myself I make that world.
I trick the Creator,
picking colours and flavours from His workshop,
> nicking a touch of His magic.
Much of that is fantasy, I know;
much, indeed, is a shadow.
When you ask me – ‘Can this be realistic?’ –
I say, ‘Never, for I am a romantic!’
There it is – the realistic world;
I know too well how to get there
and get back.
I pay back what I owe it –
that’s not done in words, and I do know it –
I fully accept my liabilities.
There’s poverty there, and disease, and ugliness;
women there are placed under duress.
There I discard my shawl and don my armour,
for jobs must be done that know no mercy whatsoever.
Let drums give us courage where we must renounce and suffer:
never let me be an amateur realist out there.
There let beauty walk hand in hand
with the terrifying.
[1939? First published in the magazine Kavita, Poush 1346 (December–January 1939–40)]
FROM Sanai (1940)
Coming and Going
Love came
with such quiet steps
I thought her a dream.
I didn’t ask her to sit down.
When she took her leave, no sooner had she opened the door
than I heard the sound.
I rushed out to call her back.
By then she was a bodiless dream
fading into the night’s dark,
in the far path her lamp-flame
a reddish mirage.
[Santiniketan, 28 March 1940]
Impossible
When separation, I reckoned, was total,
I was walking all alone, without an aim,
Srabon clouds dark-leaning on the wood’s head,
keenest lightning cleaving apart night’s breast;
River Baruni’s liquid purr from afar. –
My mind kept saying: Impossible, it’s impossible!
On many such nights, her head against my arm,
I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems Page 23
