Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Though you came
You came so far floating by
Floating your raft in the Gangur water
Like Behula, finally you came
Anchored at harbour: far away island’s flooded banks.
Ganga witnessed passing of much water
The soil of Bengal became red, your heart melted
To transform tears into gold. Though, you came.
All your ways got obstructed, all rivers walked
Towards home. You are a lonely
Traveller, one day on a stormy night carrying
Your own corpse you sailed your paper boat
In the sea.
Then many roads, many yards passed going beyond
Many eras, like the dead husband Lakhindar
Your corpse reached the port.
If destiny permits, we shall meet again
Shedding your ego in the air you told
One day: if love is true
We shall meet again. Honesty never
Deprives.
One day you wanted to be the proverbial duck/ duck of subochani
You urged for boundless love, rebirth of household bliss.
You prayed: Oh God, end this war
Return the life-resemblance, like Iswari Patni
Wish only for the domestic life, love, well-fed progeny.
Was because of this we met again? Perhaps the untainted
Prayer of love changed into the proverbial duck/ duck of subochani, banked at the harbour
Perhaps by the soft touch of the heart’s sunlit love
Your body also regained life.
YOU AND YOUR SHADOW
I called you raising my hand
You came running on a thread to
The pitch-less road of Haldia.
Your golden structure is getting burned in the scorching
Heat of Chaitra.
You blew away your depressed household that was
Gradually getting faded.
Then turning your face you came here
On the pale dusty skeleton road.
No one is there at the Chowrasta crossing now.
Deserted surrounding
Depressed patrol booth
Standing alone the vacant podium of police.
Sweaty face.
Strong footsteps.
Sari’s end at the waist.
Like a village woman you shouted, I am free, I am alone
I wish to live in my own ways.
No audience was there in the meeting
No one is standing nearby
Olive shirt, police van
Or some squandering crow
Water cannon. Vagabond.
Only a girl and her shadow standing there continuously
Listened to your speech. And in excitement her little body
Trembled slowly.
But standing nearby a century old banyan tree
In whose curves of broken wrinkles from scorched deep
Caves in oozing vigor your whole body is burnt
Now in tempestuous stormy wind.
In that wind your hair is flying
The clips and hair pins are slipping from your hair.
Flying away the besor of nose
The bracelet is lying on the pale grass.
Leave. Leave everything. Leave in this way. Let the way start from zero.
Today, standing far from the din of the women’s day
In this secluded midday’s scorching heat your sweaty bright face
Let be seen by that little girl, and her shaking shadow, who one day
Will create a map of her colorful life and will script
I white the first slogan of her life : I have learned by
Watching my mother that even without holding anyone’s hand
One can live life, as I once came here alone out of the dark
Womb, or as Maroni’s mother went alone silently
Crossing hundred years at the lakeside wooden pyre,
Like that. One can live alone Comrade
On this tough globalization day…….
For the kind information of all, Maroni’s mother has no one
Throughout the world. No one.
Short biography
Chitta Mandal, a bengali poet of Kolkata, west bengal, India. He was born in Bangladesh in the year 1952 and now a national of India. He is the masters of bengali language & literature and journalism. He retired from Rabindra bharati University as professor. He obtained his doctoral degree on the poems of sixties of bangladesh and it’s impact on social and democratic movements of bangladesh. He has 30 books to his credit both in original and editing. The subjects cover the folklore, feminism, rabindra nath tagore, derozio, Nelson Mandela, liberation war of bangladesh 1971, dalit movement and literature, film movement of Latin America and the women studies in bengali. His books of poems like ‘ জতুগৃহে স্বপ্নরথী’, ‘ রাজনৈতিক কবিতা’ and ‘ একটি নারীবাদী গপ্পো কিংবা খড়দহে কুরুক্ষেত্র’ gave him fame and honour.
