touching a corner of the pond
is as sinuous as a snake.
And I remember the old lines –
‘Deep the night of Shaon, deep the thunder’s moan…
at such a time I dreamt…’
Behind the picture of the Radhika of those days
near the poet’s eyes
there was a girl,
a bud of love just sprouting in her mind.
Shy she was,
her eyes shaded with lamp-black,
and ‘wringing, wringing’ her blue sari, she went
home from the ghat.
This stormy night
I want to bring her to my mind –
as she was in her mornings, evenings,
manner of speech, way of thinking,
the glance of her eyes –
that daughter of Bengalis the poet knew
three hundred years ago.
I don’t see her clearly.
She’s in the shadow of others, and these –
the way they fix their sari-ends on their shoulders,
the way they curve their hair into knots
sloping slightly on their necks,
or the way they look you straight in the face, –
well, such a picture
wasn’t in front of the poet three hundred years ago.
Yet – ‘Deep the night of Shaon…
at such a time I dreamt…’
That Srabon night the rainy wind did blow
as it does tonight,
and there are likenesses
between the dreams of yore and the dreams of nowadays.
[Santiniketan, 30 May 1936]
The Lost Mind
You are standing outside the doorway, screened by the curtain,
wondering whether to come into my room.
Just once I heard the faint tinkle of your bangles.
I can see a bit of your sari-end, pale brick-red,
stirring in the wind
without the door.
I can’t see you,
but I can see that the western sun
has stolen your shadow
and cast it on the floor of my room.
Below your sari’s black border I see
your creamy golden feet hesitating
on the threshold.
But I won’t call you today.
Today my light-weight awareness has scattered itself
like stars in the deep sky of the moon’s waning phase,
like white clouds surrendering themselves
to the blue of the post-rains.
My love
is like a field long abandoned by the farmer,
its boundary-ridges in ruins,
on which absent-minded primal nature
has re-asserted her rights
without giving it so much as a thought.
Grass has grown over it,
weeds without names have sprung.
It has merged with the wilderness around it,
as at the end of night the morning star
lets its own light’s pitcher sink
into the light of the morning.
Today my mind’s not hemmed in by boundaries,
so you might misunderstand me.
All the old signs are wiped out.
You won’t be able to hold me together anywhere
tight in any trussing.
[Santiniketan, 1 June 1936]
Tamarind Flower
Many were the riches I didn’t gain in my life,
for they were beyond my reach,
but much more I lost because
I didn’t open my palms.
In that familiar world
like an unsophisticated village belle
lived this flower, its face covered,
ignoring my neglect without a grudge –
this tamarind flower.
A squat tree by the wall,
stunted by the niggardly soil,
its bushy branches growing so close to the ground
that I hadn’t realised its age.
Over there lime flowers have opened,
trees have filled with frangipani blossoms,
kanchons have budded in the corner tree,
and in its prayerful striving for flowers
the kurchi branch has become a Mahashweta.
Their language is clear:
they have greeted me and introduced themselves to me.
Suddenly today some whispering from beneath a veil
seemed to reach my ears.
I spied a shy bud in a spot of the tamarind branch
on the wayside,
its colour a pale yellow,
its scent delicate,
a very fine writing on its petals.
In our town house there is
an aged tamarind tree I’ve known since childhood,
standing in the north-west corner
like a guardian-god
or an old family servant
as ancient as Great-grandfather.
Through the many chapters of our family’s births and deaths
quietly it has stood
like a courtier of dumb history.
The names of so many of those
whose rights to that tree through the ages were undisputed
are today even more fallen than its fallen leaves.
The memories of so many of them
are more shadowy than that tree’s shadow.
Once upon a time there used to be a stable below it,
in a tiled shed
restless with hooves.
The shouts of excited grooms have long departed.
On the other bank of history is that age
of horse-drawn carriages.
The neighing’s silent
and the canvas has changed its tints.
The head coachman’s well-trimmed beard,
his proud disdainful steps, whip in hand,
have, with the rest of that glittering paraphernalia,
gone to the great greenroom for costume-changes.
In the morning sunshine of ten o’clock
day after day from under that tamarind tree
came a carriage without fail to take me to school,
dragging a young lad’s load of helpless reluctance
through the crowded streets.
No, you won’t recognise that boy today –
neither in his body, nor in his mind, nor in his situation.
But poised and serene, the tamarind tree still stands,
indifferent to the rises and falls
of human fortunes.
I remember one day in particular.
From the night on the rain had poured in torrents
till by daybreak the sky was the colour
of a madman’s eyeballs.
Directionless, the storm blew everywhere
like a huge bird beating its wings
in an invisible cosmic cage.
The street was water-logged,
the yard flooded.
Standing on the veranda I watched
how that tree lifted its head to the sky, like an angry sage,
reprimands in all its branches.
On each side of the lane the houses looked like nitwits:
they had no language with which they could complain
against the sky’s torment.
Only that tree in the tumult of its leaves
could voice rebellion
and hurl arrogant curses.
Ringed by the mute insensibility of brick-and-wood,
it alone was the forest’s delegate,
and on the rain-pale horizon I saw its commoved greatness.
But when, spring after spring,
others got their honours, like ashok and bokul,
I knew the tamarind as a stern and stoical porter
at the outer gate of the monarch of all seasons.
Who knew then how beauty’s softness lurked
i
n that harsh giant’s bosom, or how high it ranked
in spring’s royal court?
In its floral identity I see that tree today:
like the Gandharva Chitrarath,
vanquisher of Arjun, champion charioteer,
practising singing, lost in his art, alone,
humming to himself in the shades of Nandan-garden.
If then, at an appropriate moment, the eyes
of the adolescent poet of those days had spied
the furtive youth-drunkenness of the middle-aged tree,
perhaps in the early hours of some special day,
made restless by the buzzing wings of bees,
I might have stolen just one bunch of those flowers
and placed it, with trembling fingers, above
someone’s joy-reddened earlobes.
And if then she’d asked me, ‘What’s its name?’
I might have said –
‘If you can think of a name
for that sliver of sunshine that has fallen across your chin,
I shall give this flower the same name.’
[Santiniketan, 7 June 1936]
The Nap
Unsummoned, I came,
planning to play a trick,
meaning to take by surprise
the busy housewife with her sari-end tucked into her waist.
No sooner had I stepped on the threshold than I saw
her form stretched out on the floor
and the beauty of her nap.
In a far neighbourhood in a house of wedding a shanai
played to the tune of Sarang. The day’s first part
had gone in that morning drooping in Jyaishtha’s heat.
Her two hands in layers under a cheek,
she slept, her body relaxed,
fatigued by a festive night,
beside her unfinished housework.
The current of work was waveless in her limbs,
like River Ajay’s last waters, exhausted,
lying in the margins in a season of no-rain.
In her slightly open lips hovered
the sweet unconcern of a closing flower.
The dark lashes of the sleeping eyes had cast
shadows on the pale cheeks.
In front of her window the weary world
trod softly, going about its business
to the rhythm of her tranquil breathing.
The clock’s hints
ticked on a corner table in the deaf room.
A calendar swung in the wind against the wall.
The mobile instants, stalled in her resting awareness,
had converged into one steadfast moment,
opening its bodiless wings
over her deep sleep.
Her weary body’s sad sweetness was spread on the ground
like a lazy full moon that hadn’t slept all night
and now in the morning was at an empty field’s last limits.
Her pet cat miaowed by her ear,
reminding her of its need for milk.
Startled, she woke up, saw me, quickly pulled
her sari over her breast and said with pique,
‘Shame! Why didn’t you wake me before?’
Why? I couldn’t give an adequate answer to that.
Even someone we know very well we don’t know entirely –
this is something that is suddenly revealed to us.
When laughter and conversation have come to a halt,
when the vital wind is stilled within our minds,
what is it then that appears
in the depths of that unexpressed?
Is it that sadness of existence
that can’t be fathomed,
or that mute’s question to which the answer plays
hide-and-seek in the bloodstream?
Is it that ache
of separation which has no history? Is it a dream-walk
along an unknown path to the call of an unfamiliar flute?
Before which silent mystery did I pose
that unspoken question, ‘Who are you? In which world
will your final identity unfold itself?’
That morning, across the lane in a primary school
children were shouting their tables in a chorus;
a jute-laden buffalo cart was wringing the wind
with its wheels’ groans; somewhere near by
builders were banging into place a new house-roof;
below the window in the garden
under a chalta tree
a crow was dragging and pecking
at a discarded mango stone.
Over all that scene time’s distance has now cast
its rays of enchantment.
In the indolent sunshine of a perfectly commonplace
midday lost in history those details
ring the picture of a nap, giving it a halo
of beauty never seen before.
[Santiniketan, 10 June 1936]
The Uncoupling
You came with the soft beauty
of the green years,
brought me my heart’s first amazement,
the first spring-tide to my blood.
The sweetness of that love, born of half-knowing,
was like the first fine golden needlework
on dawn’s black veil, the sheath
of furtive unions of gazes.
As yet birdsong was
inchoate within the mind; the forest’s murmur
would swell and then fade away.
In a family of many members
in secrecy we began to build
a private world for the two of us. As birds
gather straws and twigs, a few every day, to build,
so the things we gathered for that world of ours were
simple, collections of bits
fallen or blown from moments that passed by.
The value of that world lay
not in its material, but in the way
we created it.
Then one day from that dual management of the boat
you went ashore at some point, by yourself;
I kept drifting in the current, while you sat
on the further bank. In work or play
our hands never joined again. The twosome split,
the structure of our life together was cracked.
As a green islet, newly painted upon
the canvas of the sea’s dalliance-restless waves,
can be wiped off by one tumultuous flooding,
so did it vanish – our young world
with its green beauty of new sprouts
of joys and sorrows.
Since then many days have passed.
When, of an Ashadh evening pregnant with rain,
I look at you in my mind, I see you still
ringed by the magic of that emerging youth.
Your age has not advanced.
In the mango buds of your springtime the aromas
still assert themselves; your middays live,
just as separation-pained, even today,
with the call of doves, as before.
To me your memory’s remained
amongst all these ageless identities of nature.
Lovely you are in immutable lines,
fixed on a steadfast foundation.
My life’s flow never stopped
at any one spot.
Through depths, difficulties,
conflicts of good and bad,
thoughts, labours, aspirations,
sometimes through errors, sometimes through successes,
I’ve come far beyond
the bounds that were known to you.
There I’d now be a foreigner to you.
If you could today, this thunder-echoing evening,
come and sit before me, you would see
in my eyes the look of a man who’s lost
his sense of direction
on the beach of an
unknown sky,
in his track through a blue forest.
Would you then, sitting by my side,
speak in my ears the remnants of bygone whispers?
But look, listen: how the waves are roaring,
how the vultures are screaming,
how the thunders are rumbling in the sky,
how the dense sal forests are tossing their heads!
Your speech would be a surfing raft of sport
in a vortex of mad waters.
In the old days my whole mind
joined with your whole mind in unison.
That’s why new songs surged
in the joy of first creation
and it seemed
that the yearnings of epochs had fulfilled themselves
in you and me.
Then did each day bring word
of the arrival of a new light,
like stars opening their eyes in primeval times.
Hundreds of strings have
mounted my instrument these days.
None of them are known to you.
The tunes you practised in those days
may be shamed on these strings.
What was then the natural writing of felt emotions
would now be copying, tracing a model hand.
Yet the tears spring to my eyes.
On this sitar had once descended the grace
of your fingers’ first tenderness.
That magic is still within it.
It was you who gave this boat the very first push
from the green banks of adolescence: it still has
the momentum from that.
So when in midstream today I sing my sailing songs,
your name may get caught
in some sudden melodic expansion.
[Santiniketan, 20 June 1936]
A Sudden Encounter
A sudden encounter in a train compartment,
just what I thought could never happen.
Before, I used to see her most frequently in red,
the red of pomegranate blossoms.
Now she was in black silk,
the end lifted to her head
and circling her face as fair and comely as the dolonchampa.
She seemed to have gathered, through that blackness,