Water

Everything has remained the same

The river is flowing
The twists in its flow giving it beauty
The hills,
Encompassing dust and smoke
The trains running, even if behind time
The birds carrying sparks of fire in their
                                 beaks
Utter wild cries
As which the forest receds
Dead cicadas lie in pairs atop the gnarled
                                 tree trunk
And the milch cows with their dry teats.

You are climbing the hill
While I build a house at its foot
Anthills pile up in the half built house.

We bathe our eyes with the darkness
Thirst hangs from our throats like bells
There is no water anywhere
A thirsty curlew weeps in the skies
And a group of young men
Are mounting long-horned buffaloes to
                                 search for water
We stride up the hill
We dig into rock.

Here must begin our search for water
Blood does not yield water
We must trace marks on the surface of
                                 water.

             [ Translated by Swargojyoti Gohain ]

 
You and I in the office room

When all alone
In the vacant office room
After office hours
I move over to the empty chairs
And sit there on the
Opposite side of my office table

A short while ago visitors sat there in rows
And as it were
I watch myself intently with ‘their’ eyes My seat is a soft cushioned cosy chair
With ample span for watching around
Conversely now I observe myself with their eyes
My manner of speaking, my tantrums and their overgrowths
I echo back the questions I put to them
Or questions I thought I would ask
But did not perchance ask

I activate “their ears” and to hear my answer
I go on wishing “their” desires
Observe my irritations caused by their
Continual repetition of the same questions,
Now I try to find out through their eyes
If the irregularities kept hidden in my file
Are accessible to them?

I measure the fatigue caused by
The ten visits even for getting a single work done
I try to repulse ‘their’ fatigue
Refused the improper requests
And exhale their sighs

If I can rightly enter into their thoughts
And wield their expectations
Truth will find no hiding place
Nor will it get truncated,
I notice where the irreducible truth
In its totality lies:
The two opposite of my glass-topped table in unison.

When the joyless evening files into my room
Along with the oncoming darkness
I clearly discern a round face tinged with sorrow:

Whose face is it,
Mine or that of someone who came to visit me?

             [ Translated by Hirendra Nath Dutta ]

 
Saga of an empty bottle

Every morn I fill the
Empty bottles with water.
You can’t fill them in the eve.
For, they are full to the necks
With memoirs. Then.

A bottle shows itself up
Only when its void
Its childhood, seam of life
Its debris and bondage all.

Look at that kerosene bottle
Patches of black all over.
Its worldly senses ripen soon
Like those of orphans.

You know someone well
When he is not there
Like you see the light only now
Of a long dead star.

Let them sate on their own.

Some spaces remain always void
Come let’s go there
If dejected towards sunset
We’ll watch the dance of
empty bottles.

             [ Translated by Atulananda Goswami ]

 
The Stool

I clearly hear my wife
Looking for me
Her needs are high above
At a height she can’t reach
She needs my height

She hasn’t been able to find me
Now and then I get lost in this way
She scours for me
On our first wedding night
I got lost
In the glow of her dowry

Today too I’m pretending to be asleep
I can hear her voice cold as a serpent
Finding no response she dragged out a stool
Lying under the bed
(I hadn’t seen the stool before)
Mounted upon the stool
She got hold of her needs
With her nimble hands one after another

The wheel of worldly life rolled again
This time its sound really
Lulled me to sleep
In my slumber
I grew envious of the wooden stool……..

P.S. - My daughter is thirteen
I pray she grows tall enough
Not to need a stool.

             [ Translated by Krishna Dulal Barua ]

 
Goal Keeper

Things look hazy here
There’s light down to the roots
Yet drops of darkness
Drip down from the leaves. Someone told him
He too looked from afar,
Those are but fire flies
But no.
He is Akbar Miyan
Roaming with a bidi twixt his lips
In that dismal dark. What to do
Kick a goal or keep it
The ball’s hanging in the air
A goalless game
Empty stands
Deafening applause
Sweating legs and swelling veins
Referee unseen
In the height of viewers strain
One needs a comic relief
Could we keep the goal as keepers all
Whom do we ask
Albair Camus
Did not he keep many a goals
For Algeria.

             [ Translated by Atulananda Goswami ]

 
The Mart

It’s Sunday, market day
a day measured out
after the scales are set Whatever you have not is mine
what I do not is yours Come, let’s sit at the market
and fly each other like kites Come, let’s unburden the sighs in our bosom
shed the extra weight off our body
and make room for the fresh Out topping this market there’s another
a cyber mart
that grows into a village
in land, air and water
the unseen roots of that village
(we’ll go there too, if we can) Come, let’s sit facing each other
you sell your haves
I barter my ’nones’
let’s measure out our market worth
in this busy, crowded market
you on this side, me on the other
a rainbow in between When our pockets are empty
we become one
Come, let’s get drenched in the rain
and forget who sold whom We’ve nothing left to sell now
nothing even to buy
It’s empty
Emptiness is weightless like the soul
Come, let’s go back empty-handed
and in the west, see a fulfilled sundown
after each sundown, history too is soiled.

             [ Translated by Pradip Acharya ]

 
The hand

On the loom
She’s weaving
A hand of her own

In the depths of her bosom
A flock of sapphires
Stiffen to a stockade

An army of ants
Thatch at the gateway
A little later would begin
A pitcher of conflict

In the struggle the sapphires would melt
As water shatter the embankment
The ants would break into cheers

She would begin to weave
A beau’s hand .

             [ Translated by Krishna Dulal Barua ]