The ten great poets presented here are unique in their own way. The defied not only the ruling elites and their social values but also did away with the canons laid down by Bengali academia for writing poems.
Sukanta Bhattacharya
Sukanta Bhattacharya (Bengali: সুকান্ত ভট্টাচার্য) (
Bhôṭṭācharjo (help·info)) (15 August 1926 – 13 May 1947) was a Bengali poet and playwright. Along with Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam, he was one of the key figures of modern Bengali poetry,
despite the fact that most of his works had been in publication
posthumously. During his life, his poems were not widely circulated, but
after his death his reputation grew to the extent that he became one of
the most popular Bengali poets of the 20th century. He has had a
significant influence on poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay and composer Salil Chowdhury who set some of his popular poems to music.The
poetry of Sukanta Bhattacharya is characterised by rebel socialist
thoughts, patriotism and humanism. Yet, it is characterised by
romanticism as well.Sukanta Bhattacharya was born on 15 August 1926 to Nibaran Chandra Bhattacharya, owner of Saraswat Library, a publishing and book selling enterprise, and Suniti Devi. He was the second of their seven sons, Manomohan, Sushil, Prashanta, Bibhash, Ashoke and Amiya being the other six sons. Manomohan was Nibaran Bhattacharya’s eldest son from his first marriage. Sukanta was closely associated with Manomohan and his wife Saraju Debi. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the former Chief Minister of West Bengal is his nephew—the son of his cousin. Sukanta was born at his maternal grandfather’s house at Kalighat, Calcutta (now Kolkata, West Bengal), although his family hailed from the village of Kotalipara in Faridpur of modern-day Bangladesh.
Suukanta spent his childhood at their house at Nibedita Lane, Bagbazar. He was sent to Kamala Vidyamandir, a local primary school where his literary career began. His first short story was published in Sanchay, the school’s student magazine. Later, another one of his prose writings, “Vivekanander Jibani”, was published in Sikha, edited by Bijon Bhattacharya.[1]
He got admitted to Beleghata Deshbandhu High School after having studied at Kamala Vidyamandir. He joined the Communist Party of India in 1944. He edited an anthology named Akal (Famine), which was published by the Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association, in the same year. He was a close friend of the poet Shubhas Mukhopadhaya. He appeared for the entrance examination from Beleghata Deshbandhu High School in 1945, but failed. He was the editor of the Kishore Sabha (youth section) of the Bengali daily organ of the party, Dainik Swadhinata, since its inception in 1946. He died of tuberculosis at the Jadavpur T. B. Hospital (later, K. S. Roy T. B. Hospital) in Calcutta at a very young age of 21. A comprehensive account of the poet’s life can be found in Kabi Sukanta Bhattacharya O Sei Samay written by the poet’s youngest brother, Amiya Bhattacharya.
Prodigious Sukanta’s poetry was published in magazines while he was alive, and except for Chharpatra his books were all published posthumously
The Testimonial – Poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya
The news came
From the child who was born today.
She has got the testimonial,
And therefore she proclaims her rights to the new
unknown world
With piercing cries.
She is helpless and small, yet her fist is raised,
Glowing in an incomprehensible oath.
No one understands.
Some laugh, some reprove.
I recognize her language, though.
I see the signs of a coming age
As I read the child’s credentials
In her hazy, misty eyes.
The new child has arrived. We must make place for
her;
And move away
Into the wrecked and dead wastelands
Of this old earth.
And leave we will. Yet as long as I breathe,
I will go on clearing the debris
with all my strength
From the face of this earth.
I will make this world habitable for this child;
This is my firm pledge to the newborn.
Once my work is done,
I shall bless the child
With my own blood.
And then, I shall become history
[Translated from ‘Chhadpatra’ (Bengali) by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta]
Oh Great Life poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya
No more of this poetry.
Bring on the hard, harsh prose instead.
Let the jingle of verse disappear
And the strong hammer of prose strike.
No need for the serenity of a poem;
Poetry, I give you a break today.
In the regime of hunger, the earth belongs to prose,
The full moon now reminds us of toasted bread.
Translated from original poem ‘He Mahajiban’ (Benglai) ]
Sen was born in a well-known Baidya family. Sen’s grandfather, Dinesh Chandra Sen, was a well-known writer and member of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. His father, Arun Sen, an academic, noted, “I am the son of an illustrious father and the father of an illustrious son!” Samar Sen, along with Subhash Mukhopadhyay, belonged to the second generation of modern Bengali poets. He gave up poetry fairly early, however, and devoted the better part of his later life to Marxist politics and journalism. He was the editor of the leftist newspaper Frontier, published from Kolkata, which was banned during the period of the Indian Emergency (1975 -1977) declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.[1]
Samar Sen, like his poetic contemporaries, grew up under the gigantic impact of Rabindranath Tagore. Yet Sen was perhaps the first to ‘break’ with the lyrical romanticism of Tagore and introduce “modern” concerns (disenchantment, decadence, avant-garde urban perspectives) into Bengali verse. Through his work, the influence of French and English modernism was first translated into Bengali verse; at the same time, the convergence of modernism and Marxism was evident early on in his poetic thought and style. His poetry was somewhat over-shadowed by his very original journalism, produced while he served as editor of the legendary Frontier. He was also known for his translations of Soviet literature; he spent nearly five years in Moscow working as a translator, although later in life he became doubtful about bureaucratic Communism.[3] Samar Sen also edited the radical journal Now, publishing a galaxy of prominent scholars and writers, including Joan Robinson and Satyajit Ray; his deputy editor was the playwright and actor Utpal Dutt. In his private life Sen was a man with a wry sense of humour, sometimes acerbic but often lethally accurate. He never regretted the sacrifice of what could have been a comfortable material life, supported by conventional measures of bourgeois success. His loyalty was always to the downtrodden. Some critics mourn his abandonment of poetry as a loss to Indian literature, reasoning that his acute perception and extraordinary command of languages would have continued to produce memorable verse of lasting significance. Sen decided, however, that poetry was a luxury in a world of gross deprivation and injustice and decided he would instead dedicate himself to agitating on behalf of the poor, regardless of the cost to himself. He remained committed to this cause for the rest of his life, despite experiencing significant poverty himself.
An Unemployed Lover poem by Samar Sen
I loaf around in the smugglers’ market.
In the morning, near the. water tap
Tired whores talk raucously.
In die night I hear the ship’s siren at Khidirpur dock;
Tired I brood sometimes on what I don’t know —
0 god of love, I puff at cigarettes, for sleep eludes me.
Sometimes I come on road and ogle at
Flaunting soft breasts of Anglo-Indian girls.
1 tell myself in drunken nights quite often
Deliver me from deathless love
Bring a new world to tlris world
Strilre a sharp day like steel.
The tired clamour at die water tap
Rouses me from sleep at mornings
And simmers in die blood all the time
•Mercantile culture’s empty desert
Subhash Mukhopadhyay ( Shubhash Mukhopaddhae (help·info); 12 February 1919 – 8 July 2003) was one of the foremost Indian Bengali poets
of the 20th century. He is also known as the “podatik kobi” in the
field of Bengali literature. A book of thirty of Subhash’s best known
poems in English translation, titled ‘ As Day is Breaking’, was
published in 2014 by Anjan Basu,a Bangalore-based writer/critic. The
book includes a rather detailed introduction to the poet’s work as well.[1][2] He was honoured with Jnanpith Award in 1991.[3]
In 1940, while still a student, he published his first volume of poetry Padatik (The Foot-Soldier).[5] Many critics regard this book as a milestone in the development of modern Bengali poetry. It represented a clear departure from the earlier Kallol generation of poets; and Subhash’s distinctive, direct voice, allied with his technical skill and radical world-view, gained him great popularity. In his poetry, Subhash grappled with the massive upheavals of that era which ruptured Bengali society from top to bottom. The 1940s were marked by world war, famine, partition, communal riots and mass emigration in Bengal. Subhash’s writings broke away from the traditional moorings of the establishment poets, and instead addressed the despair and disillusion felt by the common people. He remained throughout his life an advocate of the indivisibility of the Bengali people and Bengali culture. His radical activism continued unabated. He was one of the leaders of the “Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association”, formed in March 1942 in reaction to the murder of Somen Chanda, a fellow-writer and Marxist activist. Subhash remained attached with the Communist Party until 1982, and spent time in jail as a political prisoner briefly in the late 1960s. From the late 1950s onwards, Subhash’s poetry evolved into something more personal and introspective. The lyricism of Phul phutuk na phutuk, aaj Boshonto, one of his most famous poems, was a result of this period.
Later in the 1970s, Subhash’s poetry took a turn toward the narrative and the allegorical. But he never lost his technical facility nor his unique voice. Besides verse, Subhash also wrote works of prose including novels, essays and travelogues. He was active in journalism too, having served on the editorial staff of daily and weekly newspapers. He was an editor of the leading Bengali literary journal Parichay. He was also an accomplished and popular writer for children. He edited the Bengali children’s periodical Sandesh jointly with Satyajit Ray for a few years in the early sixties.[7]
Mukhopadhyay married Gita Bandyopadhyay, also a well-known writer, in 1951. They adopted three daughters and a son.
According to those close to him, Mukhopadhyay had become disillusioned with politics in his final years. He suffered from severe heart and kidney ailments, and died in Kolkata in July 2003. He was 84.
From the child who was born today.
She has got the testimonial,
And therefore she proclaims her rights to the new
unknown world
With piercing cries.
She is helpless and small, yet her fist is raised,
Glowing in an incomprehensible oath.
No one understands.
Some laugh, some reprove.
I recognize her language, though.
I see the signs of a coming age
As I read the child’s credentials
In her hazy, misty eyes.
The new child has arrived. We must make place for
her;
And move away
Into the wrecked and dead wastelands
Of this old earth.
And leave we will. Yet as long as I breathe,
I will go on clearing the debris
with all my strength
From the face of this earth.
I will make this world habitable for this child;
This is my firm pledge to the newborn.
Once my work is done,
I shall bless the child
With my own blood.
And then, I shall become history
[Translated from ‘Chhadpatra’ (Bengali) by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta]
Oh Great Life poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya
No more of this poetry.
Bring on the hard, harsh prose instead.
Let the jingle of verse disappear
And the strong hammer of prose strike.
No need for the serenity of a poem;
Poetry, I give you a break today.
In the regime of hunger, the earth belongs to prose,
The full moon now reminds us of toasted bread.
Translated from original poem ‘He Mahajiban’ (Benglai) ]
Samar Sen
Samar Sen (Bengali: সমর সেন;)(10 October 1916 – 23 August 1987) was a prominent Bengali-speaking Indian poet and journalist in the post-Independence era. Sen was a graduate of the Scottish Church College, at the University of Calcutta.Sen was born in a well-known Baidya family. Sen’s grandfather, Dinesh Chandra Sen, was a well-known writer and member of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. His father, Arun Sen, an academic, noted, “I am the son of an illustrious father and the father of an illustrious son!” Samar Sen, along with Subhash Mukhopadhyay, belonged to the second generation of modern Bengali poets. He gave up poetry fairly early, however, and devoted the better part of his later life to Marxist politics and journalism. He was the editor of the leftist newspaper Frontier, published from Kolkata, which was banned during the period of the Indian Emergency (1975 -1977) declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.[1]
Samar Sen, like his poetic contemporaries, grew up under the gigantic impact of Rabindranath Tagore. Yet Sen was perhaps the first to ‘break’ with the lyrical romanticism of Tagore and introduce “modern” concerns (disenchantment, decadence, avant-garde urban perspectives) into Bengali verse. Through his work, the influence of French and English modernism was first translated into Bengali verse; at the same time, the convergence of modernism and Marxism was evident early on in his poetic thought and style. His poetry was somewhat over-shadowed by his very original journalism, produced while he served as editor of the legendary Frontier. He was also known for his translations of Soviet literature; he spent nearly five years in Moscow working as a translator, although later in life he became doubtful about bureaucratic Communism.[3] Samar Sen also edited the radical journal Now, publishing a galaxy of prominent scholars and writers, including Joan Robinson and Satyajit Ray; his deputy editor was the playwright and actor Utpal Dutt. In his private life Sen was a man with a wry sense of humour, sometimes acerbic but often lethally accurate. He never regretted the sacrifice of what could have been a comfortable material life, supported by conventional measures of bourgeois success. His loyalty was always to the downtrodden. Some critics mourn his abandonment of poetry as a loss to Indian literature, reasoning that his acute perception and extraordinary command of languages would have continued to produce memorable verse of lasting significance. Sen decided, however, that poetry was a luxury in a world of gross deprivation and injustice and decided he would instead dedicate himself to agitating on behalf of the poor, regardless of the cost to himself. He remained committed to this cause for the rest of his life, despite experiencing significant poverty himself.
- … He is comparatively modern poet without being progressive. He has dedicated his first work to Muzaffar Ahmad. I pray that it should mean something more than a mere personal allegiance … Brevity is its (his poems’) soul … Samar Sen is an up-to-date representative poet. He needs to be progressive by informing himself with a sense of history. He has also yet to be symbolic. Still there is no doubt of his being a poet of a particular genre. (Dhurjati Mukherji)
- We talk about being rid of the influence of Rabindranath [Tagore]; as if we take it for granted that the influence of Rabindranath is inevitable in a young Bengali poet’s endeavour. But what amazes me is that this young poet has never been under the influence of Rabindranath. (Buddhadeva Bose)
Quotes
- Among those who are penning modern Bengali poetry, most of them haven’t joined a political movement, and that’s sad. But many of them are powerful writers and have impacted the middle class society. Reason? Because many of them have brought changes in their perspective and expression, breaking the ivory tower of a mere aesthetics of truth, beauty and goodness and by being conscious of the disgust and the multi-layered failure of the middle class life.
- In these times of dereliction and dismay, of wars, unemployment and revolutions, the decayed side of things attracts us most … Perhaps that is because we have our roots deep in the demoralized petty bourgeoisie and lack the vitality of a rising class.
- Our poetry (Bengali poetry) is basically without a tradition.
Urvashi – Poem by Samar Sen
Will you flow into our middle-class blood
Like clouds racing across the horizon
Or will you flow into our dismal lives
Now that you are so tired, Urvashi?
Like the fertile women who flow into
Chittaranjan maternity home
With the hungry fatigue of unfulfilled nights
And many sighs
How many green mornings like bitter nights
How much longer
Like clouds racing across the horizon
Or will you flow into our dismal lives
Now that you are so tired, Urvashi?
Like the fertile women who flow into
Chittaranjan maternity home
With the hungry fatigue of unfulfilled nights
And many sighs
How many green mornings like bitter nights
How much longer
An Evening Air – Poem by Samar Sen
I go out in the grey evening
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.I go out into the hard loneliness of the barren field of grey evening
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation. In the gathering darkness a long, swift train suddenly
Passes me like a lighting.
Hard and ponderous and loud are the wheels.
As ponderous as the darkness, and as beautiful.
I look on, enchanted, and listen to the sounds of lamentation
In the soft fragrant air.
The long rails, grey-dark, smooth as a serpent, shiver, and
A soft, low thing cries out in the distance,
But the sounds are hard and heavy,
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.I go out into the hard loneliness of the barren field of grey evening
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation. In the gathering darkness a long, swift train suddenly
Passes me like a lighting.
Hard and ponderous and loud are the wheels.
As ponderous as the darkness, and as beautiful.
I look on, enchanted, and listen to the sounds of lamentation
In the soft fragrant air.
The long rails, grey-dark, smooth as a serpent, shiver, and
A soft, low thing cries out in the distance,
But the sounds are hard and heavy,
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.
An Unemployed Lover poem by Samar Sen
I loaf around in the smugglers’ market.
In the morning, near the. water tap
Tired whores talk raucously.
In die night I hear the ship’s siren at Khidirpur dock;
Tired I brood sometimes on what I don’t know —
0 god of love, I puff at cigarettes, for sleep eludes me.
Sometimes I come on road and ogle at
Flaunting soft breasts of Anglo-Indian girls.
1 tell myself in drunken nights quite often
Deliver me from deathless love
Bring a new world to tlris world
Strilre a sharp day like steel.
The tired clamour at die water tap
Rouses me from sleep at mornings
And simmers in die blood all the time
•Mercantile culture’s empty desert
Subhash Mukhopadhyay
Shubhash Mukhopaddhae (help·info); 12 February 1919 – 8 July 2003) was one of the foremost Indian Bengali poets
of the 20th century. He is also known as the “podatik kobi” in the
field of Bengali literature. A book of thirty of Subhash’s best known
poems in English translation, titled ‘ As Day is Breaking’, was
published in 2014 by Anjan Basu,a Bangalore-based writer/critic. The
book includes a rather detailed introduction to the poet’s work as well.[1][2] He was honoured with Jnanpith Award in 1991.[3]Mukhopadhyay was born in 1919 in Krishnanagar, a town in Nadia district in the province of West Bengal.[4][5] An excellent student, he studied philosophy at the Scottish Church College in Calcutta, graduating with honours in 1941.[6]
Like his contemporary Sukanta Bhattacharya, Mukhopadhyay developed strong political beliefs at an early age. He was deeply committed to the cause of social justice, and was active in left-wing student politics through his college years. Following graduation, he formally joined the Communist Party of India. He thus became one of a handful of literary practitioners with first-hand experience as a party worker and activist.In 1940, while still a student, he published his first volume of poetry Padatik (The Foot-Soldier).[5] Many critics regard this book as a milestone in the development of modern Bengali poetry. It represented a clear departure from the earlier Kallol generation of poets; and Subhash’s distinctive, direct voice, allied with his technical skill and radical world-view, gained him great popularity. In his poetry, Subhash grappled with the massive upheavals of that era which ruptured Bengali society from top to bottom. The 1940s were marked by world war, famine, partition, communal riots and mass emigration in Bengal. Subhash’s writings broke away from the traditional moorings of the establishment poets, and instead addressed the despair and disillusion felt by the common people. He remained throughout his life an advocate of the indivisibility of the Bengali people and Bengali culture. His radical activism continued unabated. He was one of the leaders of the “Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association”, formed in March 1942 in reaction to the murder of Somen Chanda, a fellow-writer and Marxist activist. Subhash remained attached with the Communist Party until 1982, and spent time in jail as a political prisoner briefly in the late 1960s. From the late 1950s onwards, Subhash’s poetry evolved into something more personal and introspective. The lyricism of Phul phutuk na phutuk, aaj Boshonto, one of his most famous poems, was a result of this period.
Later in the 1970s, Subhash’s poetry took a turn toward the narrative and the allegorical. But he never lost his technical facility nor his unique voice. Besides verse, Subhash also wrote works of prose including novels, essays and travelogues. He was active in journalism too, having served on the editorial staff of daily and weekly newspapers. He was an editor of the leading Bengali literary journal Parichay. He was also an accomplished and popular writer for children. He edited the Bengali children’s periodical Sandesh jointly with Satyajit Ray for a few years in the early sixties.[7]
Mukhopadhyay married Gita Bandyopadhyay, also a well-known writer, in 1951. They adopted three daughters and a son.
According to those close to him, Mukhopadhyay had become disillusioned with politics in his final years. He suffered from severe heart and kidney ailments, and died in Kolkata in July 2003. He was 84.
Whether Flowers Bloom Or Not – Poem by Subhash Mukhopadhyay
Whether flowers
bloom or not
it’s spring today
On the paved footpath
with feet dipped in stone
a rather wooden tree
laughs out loud
chest bursting with fresh green leaves
Whether flowers bloom or not
it’s spring today.
The days of masking the sun
and then unmasking it
of laying people down in the lap of death
of picking them up again
those days that have passed this way
let them not return
That lad of many voices
who for a coin or two
would chirp like a koel down the street
in the ceremonial yellow of twilight?
those days have taken him away
With the sky like a red and yellow wedding invitation
on her head
clasping the railing to her breast
a dark and ugly unwed girl down this alley
played with such idle thoughts
Right then
there fluttered in, shamelessly, right onto her body,
oh damnation! A stupid, awful, foolish butterfly!
Then the sound of a door slamming shut.
Hiding his face in the dark
that sinewy tree
was still laughing.
[Translated by Antara Dev Sen]
bloom or not
it’s spring today
On the paved footpath
with feet dipped in stone
a rather wooden tree
laughs out loud
chest bursting with fresh green leaves
Whether flowers bloom or not
it’s spring today.
The days of masking the sun
and then unmasking it
of laying people down in the lap of death
of picking them up again
those days that have passed this way
let them not return
That lad of many voices
who for a coin or two
would chirp like a koel down the street
in the ceremonial yellow of twilight?
those days have taken him away
With the sky like a red and yellow wedding invitation
on her head
clasping the railing to her breast
a dark and ugly unwed girl down this alley
played with such idle thoughts
Right then
there fluttered in, shamelessly, right onto her body,
oh damnation! A stupid, awful, foolish butterfly!
Then the sound of a door slamming shut.
Hiding his face in the dark
that sinewy tree
was still laughing.
[Translated by Antara Dev Sen]
Let Me Never See – Poem by Subhash Mukhopadhyay
Under the sky’s cataract-blinded eyes
where ancient darkness stoops
its head sagging to its knees
a walking stick in its hand
All through the night
and through the day
where only drip drop
drip drop
leaves fall on the ground
Like a steam-boat’s rating
where memory all the time
sounds with a line
life’s water’s depth
I know
the icy winds of winter
will one day
push me over there
Earth, let me never
see the face
of that day
Before that happens
please tie my eyes
to my two feet
like a pair of anklets
where ancient darkness stoops
its head sagging to its knees
a walking stick in its hand
All through the night
and through the day
where only drip drop
drip drop
leaves fall on the ground
Like a steam-boat’s rating
where memory all the time
sounds with a line
life’s water’s depth
I know
the icy winds of winter
will one day
push me over there
Earth, let me never
see the face
of that day
Before that happens
please tie my eyes
to my two feet
like a pair of anklets
At Day’s End – Poem by Subhash Mukhopadhyay
Flooding the western sky
with a pool of blood,
like a highwayman
glaring at passersby,
to his own camp retreated
the Sun.
Long after,
for an investigation on the spot
to twist day into night,
as in a black police-van,
stampeded
the evening.
And as soon as light was switched on
from window,
jumped out
the darkness.
No sooner had I drawn the curtain aside
than, like a frightened deer,
embraced me suddenly
the wind.
[Translated by Shibdas Bannerji]
The Stride – Poem by Subhash Mukhopadhyay
with a pool of blood,
like a highwayman
glaring at passersby,
to his own camp retreated
the Sun.
Long after,
for an investigation on the spot
to twist day into night,
as in a black police-van,
stampeded
the evening.
And as soon as light was switched on
from window,
jumped out
the darkness.
No sooner had I drawn the curtain aside
than, like a frightened deer,
embraced me suddenly
the wind.
[Translated by Shibdas Bannerji]
The Stride – Poem by Subhash Mukhopadhyay
Standing on one leg, arms reaching up
hair piled high in unkempt yogi knots
a tree peers down
and the more he sees the more he is amazed.
The woman who goes door to door
baby on her hip
washing dishes
and at night
sleeps on a mat under a tree
the woman discarded by her husband
disdained even by death.
Oh how shameful!
She’s pregnant again.
At the water tap
to cover up that shame
he toddles up carefully
to hand his mother the tattered sari
a tiny life crowned by shame
why, just the other day
he used to crawl on the pavement!
Which means
On this earth
one more pair of eyes
one more head held high
arms like the wings of a bird
swinging on either side
will stride through
feet firmly on the ground
Standing on one leg
forever in the same spot
the tree
with arms outstretched and hair in
yogi knots
peers down
and the more he sees the more he is amazed
[Translated by Antara Dev Sen]
hair piled high in unkempt yogi knots
a tree peers down
and the more he sees the more he is amazed.
The woman who goes door to door
baby on her hip
washing dishes
and at night
sleeps on a mat under a tree
the woman discarded by her husband
disdained even by death.
Oh how shameful!
She’s pregnant again.
At the water tap
to cover up that shame
he toddles up carefully
to hand his mother the tattered sari
a tiny life crowned by shame
why, just the other day
he used to crawl on the pavement!
Which means
On this earth
one more pair of eyes
one more head held high
arms like the wings of a bird
swinging on either side
will stride through
feet firmly on the ground
Standing on one leg
forever in the same spot
the tree
with arms outstretched and hair in
yogi knots
peers down
and the more he sees the more he is amazed
[Translated by Antara Dev Sen]
Binoy Majumdar
Binoy Majumdar (Bengali: বিনয় মজুমদার) (17 September 1934 – 11 December 2006) was a Bengali poet. Binoy received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005.
Late Binoy Majumdar was born in Myanmar (erstwhile Burma) on the 17 September 1934. His family later moved to what is now ThakurnagarWest Bengal in India. Binoy loved mathematics from his early youth. He completed ‘Intermediate’ (pre-University) from the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta. Although he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering graduate from Bengal Engineering College, Calcutta, in 1957, Binoy turned to poetry later in life. He translated a number of science texts from the Russian to Bengali. When Binoy took to writing, the scientific training of systematic observation and enquiry of objects found a place, quite naturally, in his poetry. His first book of verse was Nakshatrer Aloy (in the light of the stars). However, Binoy Majumdar’s most famous piece of work to date is Phire Esho, Chaka (Come back, O Wheel, 1960), which was written in the format of a diary. The book is dedicated to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a fellow-Calcuttan and contemporary of Majumdar. Professor Narayan Ch Ghosh has written number of articles on the writings of Binoy Majumder analysing mathematical aspects of Binoy’s poems. According to Ghosh Phire Esho, Chaka(Come back, O Wheel) published during 1960 was reflection of Binoy’s mind for recalling progress – wheel symbolizes. Professor Ghosh had described ‘Balmikir Kabita’ of Binoy Majumder was continuation of Ratnakar Balmiki (first poet) through ‘Balmikir Pratibha’ by Rabindranath Thakur. Ghosh stated that Binoy’s poem ‘Eka Eka Katha Bali’is a Lyrics to Lonely Talk like a vision of poetic melancholy by John Milton Or like ‘Teach me half the gladness/That thy brain must know;/Such harmonious madness/ From my lips would flow,/The world should listen then, as I am listening now’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though he knew his predecessor Bankim Chandra, first successful Novelist in Bengali – Binoy’s mother tongue, had written ‘Keo Kakhno Eka Thakiona’ (No one lives alone).
Late Binoy Majumdar was born in Myanmar (erstwhile Burma) on the 17 September 1934. His family later moved to what is now ThakurnagarWest Bengal in India. Binoy loved mathematics from his early youth. He completed ‘Intermediate’ (pre-University) from the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta. Although he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering graduate from Bengal Engineering College, Calcutta, in 1957, Binoy turned to poetry later in life. He translated a number of science texts from the Russian to Bengali. When Binoy took to writing, the scientific training of systematic observation and enquiry of objects found a place, quite naturally, in his poetry. His first book of verse was Nakshatrer Aloy (in the light of the stars). However, Binoy Majumdar’s most famous piece of work to date is Phire Esho, Chaka (Come back, O Wheel, 1960), which was written in the format of a diary. The book is dedicated to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a fellow-Calcuttan and contemporary of Majumdar. Professor Narayan Ch Ghosh has written number of articles on the writings of Binoy Majumder analysing mathematical aspects of Binoy’s poems. According to Ghosh Phire Esho, Chaka(Come back, O Wheel) published during 1960 was reflection of Binoy’s mind for recalling progress – wheel symbolizes. Professor Ghosh had described ‘Balmikir Kabita’ of Binoy Majumder was continuation of Ratnakar Balmiki (first poet) through ‘Balmikir Pratibha’ by Rabindranath Thakur. Ghosh stated that Binoy’s poem ‘Eka Eka Katha Bali’is a Lyrics to Lonely Talk like a vision of poetic melancholy by John Milton Or like ‘Teach me half the gladness/That thy brain must know;/Such harmonious madness/ From my lips would flow,/The world should listen then, as I am listening now’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though he knew his predecessor Bankim Chandra, first successful Novelist in Bengali – Binoy’s mother tongue, had written ‘Keo Kakhno Eka Thakiona’ (No one lives alone).
8th March, 1960 – Poem by Binoy Majumdar
One bright fish flew once
to sink back again into visible blue, but truly
transparent water – watching this pleasing sight
the fruit blushed red, ripening to thick juices of pain.
Endangered cranes fly, escaping ceaselessly,
since it is known, that underneath her white feathers exist
passionate warm flesh and fat;
pausing for short stalls on tired mountains;
all water-songs evaporate by the way
and you then, you, oh oceanfish, you…you
or look, the scattered ailing trees
foliaging expansive greenery of the world
churn it up with their deepest, fatiguing sighs;
and yet, all trees and flowering plants stand on their own
grounds at a distance forever
dreaming of breathtaking union.
An experimental short film about Roy, Ebang Falguni (The Lost Lines Of A Beauty Monster), was shown at foreign film festivals. Entirely shot on DVcam, score is composed by Monomix, and run time is 21 min 06 sec. This film had two screenings at the River To River Florence Indian Film Festival, Florence, Italy on Wednesday December 8th, 2004 at 23:00 hrs and on Saturday December 11th, 2004 at 18:00 hrs. It featured in Indian Short Shorts section with English and Italian subtitles. It was produced by Subhankar Das (A Graffiti Expressions Presentation, 54 Jatin Das Road, Kolkata-29) and directed by Sharmi Pandey.[2]
He is famous for his book Nashto Atmar Television [নষ্ট আত্মার টেলিভিসন] (literally means: “Television of Spoilt Spirit”) published on the Independence Day of 1973, a day considered to be the date signifying the end of Modernism in Bengali Poetry. Some of his poems published in the anthology Amar Rifel Amar Bible athoba Falguni Royer Falguni Roy are:
NONCHALANT CHARMINAR poem by Falguni Roy
ma, i can’t smile well-scrubbed twisted-smirks in your noble society anymore
in the godly dense ocean of kindness with krishna’s duffed up white teeth with studious eyes of the devil i can’t
anymore in a ramakrishnian posture use my wife according to the matriarchal customs
substitute sugar for saccharine and dread diabetes no more i can’t no more with my unhappy organ do a devdas again in khalashitola on the registry day of a former fling.
my liver is getting rancid by the day my grandfather had cirrhosis don’t understand
heredity i drink alcohol read poetry my father for the sake of puja etc used to fast venerable dadas in our para
swearing by dharma gently press ripe breasts of sisters-born-of-the-locality on holi
on the day ma left for trips abroad many in your noble society had vodka i will nonchalantly from your funeral pyre light up a charminar thinking of your death my eyes tear up then i don’t think of earthquakes by the banks or of floodwater didn’t put my hand on the string of the petticoat of an unmarried lover and didn’t think of baishnab padavali ma, even i’ll die one day.
at belur mandir on seeing foreign woman pray with her international python-bum veiled in a skirt
my limitless libido rose up ma because your libido will be tied up to father’s memories even beyond death i this fucked up drunk am
envying you carrying dirt of the humblest kind looking at my organ
i feel as if i’m an organism from another planet now the rays of the setting sun is touching my face on a tangent
and after mixing the colour of the setting sun on their wings a flock of non-family-planning birds is going back towards bonolata sen’s
eyes peaceful as a nest – it’s time for them to warm the eggs –
A PERSONAL NEON poem by Falguni Roy
i am completely talentless so i touch the tip of the nose with my tongue
to prove my talent
sometimes while walking in front of manik bandyopadyay’s house
i wonder – the same street through which manik bandyopadyay
walked, i worthless, phalguni roy, am walking, inside the second class
of a tram sometimes i wonder – was it this tram that had once
trampled upon jibanananda’s body –
i have been moving on in this way – in this way my earth sun stars have been moving
at that moment when my foetus was formed another death had fallen upon the solar family
a friend of mine sits in a bar and drinks alcohol from far-off regions of the world quite often –
one day he became very angry and called me a toddy-addicted
ganja-addicted fucker
i consider dronacharya a murderer
for snatching away eklavya’s thumb
manik bandyopadyay’s specs
your paddy ridden field in baishak is my soul’s stamp – not the heart’s
in the winter fog i exhale smoke – not a cigarette’s
in bed bereft of a woman i masturbate early in the morning
in whose tummy will my child arrive
one for which i will provide two morsels of rice?
without a party flag i have been surviving without
the love of a woman i have been surviving in order to listen to
rabindranath’s songs at twelve thirty in the afternoon sun i have been surviving
no i never wanted to be rabindranath never ever i have never wanted to love
sumita never ever had never wanted her body have never wanted mita’s
body had only wanted her love but nothing happened to me
but of course the khan army in bangladesh the US mines from the coast of tonkin
and the CRPF hiding behind the sand bags in kolkata have left
the china nixon treaty has been signed white black America has sent
a jeep to the moon some grains in bharat some armymen in vietnam
and some athletes for the Olympics
hindu bengalis
have killed
hindu bengalis
in kolkata – then under
netaji
lenin and
gandhi’s statues
the wellwishers of shahid minar have called a public meeting – hence –
a lot of things have happened but i’ve still not got a job
and so haven’t got a wife
hehehehehe
the prostitute’s pimp and the bride’s parents never let their women
in our hands if we don’t show them some money
but will we all keep our organs settled inside a loincloth
and become sanyasis?
tear up for martyrs and become ministers?
once on my way to vote i saw a hungry person die
in the voting line their name was called as a proxy and their ration card
confiscated my father died even after receiving good dietary
medication and even His ration was confiscated – i have finally seen
death makes no difference between the rich and the poor or between the bourgeois and the communist
yet some deaths are lighter than a bird
yet some deaths are heavier than the mountain
hai bharatbarsha! will my death be heavy or light
hai bharatbarsha! will i be a dead body or a martyr – or will i die the way buddhadev
died when he tried to find a reason behind death?
death – are you just extinction or are you a passport to reincarnation?
who will tell me where is my real path?
who has provided me with life inside my heart – who will tell me what price is my heart?
who will provide me with pen and paper to write poems?
if i’m sick who will provide me with dietary medication?
who will provide for my food if i’m hungry?
who’ll provide me with a woman if i long for love?
can the state provide for everything?
can communism make the last boy first?
can socialism make a bad poet into a good one?
yet the vedic song of praise songhocchodhong songbaddhong etc means
our paths become one
our languages become one
our thoughts become one . . . this higher communism
was constructed by indians four thousand years before marx was born
our meals become one
our clothes become one . . . magical magical
but if after listening to this someone gets up and says our wives become one then
i mean i mean i’ll run away because i cannot i cannot think of sex with a woman and
sucking up to the guru as one and the same thing
so even after sucking our mother’s milk we can’t ever think of sucking our mother’s flesh
but after sucking the milk out of the cow we’ve had the cow’s flesh.
( Translated by Sourodeep Roy )
Manibhushan was born in a family of Sanskrit pundits in a small town, Sitakunda, in the district of Chittagong, now in Bangladesh, in 1938. The town was surrounded by the mountains and the sea. Metaphors of nature and religious-puranic traditions found place in his poetic journey at different points of time. Manibhushan later settled in a jute mill town, Naihati, and earned his livelihood as a school- teacher. The everyday life of the subaltern people in the town found expression in his poems.[2]
Manibhushan started publishing his poems in the 1950s. The brutal counter- insurgent violence of the Indian state against the Naxalites found place in his second book of poems, Utkantha Sharbari, published in 1971. However, his collection of poems, Gandhinagare Ratri, published in 1974, marked a revolution in the world of Bengali poetry. In a sense, this book is the testament of the burning 1970s. The first poem incorporated in the collection, Gandhinagare Ek Ratri, was a vivid poetic narrative of the killing of a subaltern political activist, Gokul, by police firing, his mother’s pathos, typical responses of middle- class characters and angry protest by a jute mill labourer. The poem ended with a line from Rabindranath Tagore. The aesthetic chemistry of the poem violated all conventions.[3] It is quite natural that Manibhushan Bhattacharya’s poetry took different turns in changing times. Writing poetry for him was nothing but dialogue with the self. So, romance and revolution got merged in his poetry. He decided to write mostly for little magazines. The mainstream media maintained a silence regarding his creative endeavours, but he cared little for such a “culture of silence” and his poems reverberated loudly nonetheless.
to sink back again into visible blue, but truly
transparent water – watching this pleasing sight
the fruit blushed red, ripening to thick juices of pain.
Endangered cranes fly, escaping ceaselessly,
since it is known, that underneath her white feathers exist
passionate warm flesh and fat;
pausing for short stalls on tired mountains;
all water-songs evaporate by the way
and you then, you, oh oceanfish, you…you
or look, the scattered ailing trees
foliaging expansive greenery of the world
churn it up with their deepest, fatiguing sighs;
and yet, all trees and flowering plants stand on their own
grounds at a distance forever
dreaming of breathtaking union.
If You Never Come Again – Poem by Binoy Majumdar
If You Never Come Again – Poem by Binoy Majumdar
If you never come again, never blow through these steaming regions
like cooling drifts of the upper air, even that absence is an encounter.
Your absence is as of the blue rose
from the kingdom of flowers. Who knows, some day
you may yet appear. Maybe you have, only you are too close.
Can I smell my own hair?
Marvellous sights have been seen.
A full moon was to have risen last night –
only a quivering sickle appeared!
It was an eclipse.
I have given up strewing grain on the ground
to have the birds join me at lunch.
Only when the baby is cut adrift
does it have its free hunger and thirst;
like taking off a blindfold to be confronted with
a curtain, being born
into this vast uterus, lined with a sky porous with stars.
like cooling drifts of the upper air, even that absence is an encounter.
Your absence is as of the blue rose
from the kingdom of flowers. Who knows, some day
you may yet appear. Maybe you have, only you are too close.
Can I smell my own hair?
Marvellous sights have been seen.
A full moon was to have risen last night –
only a quivering sickle appeared!
It was an eclipse.
I have given up strewing grain on the ground
to have the birds join me at lunch.
Only when the baby is cut adrift
does it have its free hunger and thirst;
like taking off a blindfold to be confronted with
a curtain, being born
into this vast uterus, lined with a sky porous with stars.
The Pain Remained With Me – Poem by Binoy Majumdar
The pain remained with me a long time.
Finally the ancient root was cut –
from immersion I emerged blinking into light.
I am restored to health now though the season is gray.
Surgery everywhere; this tea table was once the flesh of a tree.
Finally the ancient root was cut –
from immersion I emerged blinking into light.
I am restored to health now though the season is gray.
Surgery everywhere; this tea table was once the flesh of a tree.
27th June 1961 – Poem by Binoy Majumdar
Like wet gorges our feel
limited, confined; valleys, woods and hills
all covered in fog and clouds for the past few days.
Tell me how much of the multitudes of earthly taste
does the failed buds of a cat’s tongue feel ?
Yet all the crisp and subtle, sharp experience,
like flower thorns or the incisiveness of orbits
of distant stars, of the far beyond.
Anyway, despite it, the stupendous air of the sky
not large currents, fluxes with crosswinds.
Unsuppressed by the conflicts of these uncertain
excitement, the pine still grows erect
like true desire, towards a lightening sky.
limited, confined; valleys, woods and hills
all covered in fog and clouds for the past few days.
Tell me how much of the multitudes of earthly taste
does the failed buds of a cat’s tongue feel ?
Yet all the crisp and subtle, sharp experience,
like flower thorns or the incisiveness of orbits
of distant stars, of the far beyond.
Anyway, despite it, the stupendous air of the sky
not large currents, fluxes with crosswinds.
Unsuppressed by the conflicts of these uncertain
excitement, the pine still grows erect
like true desire, towards a lightening sky.
Falguni Roy
Falguni Roy (1945–1981) [[[Bengali language|Bengali]]: ফালগুনী রায়] was an anti-establishment Bengali poet born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Along with Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Samir Roychoudhury, Subimal Basak, Debi Roy (Haradhon Dhara), Utpal Kumar Basu, Binoy Majumdar, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Basudeb Dasgupta, Roy was also associated with the Hungryalist movement.[1]An experimental short film about Roy, Ebang Falguni (The Lost Lines Of A Beauty Monster), was shown at foreign film festivals. Entirely shot on DVcam, score is composed by Monomix, and run time is 21 min 06 sec. This film had two screenings at the River To River Florence Indian Film Festival, Florence, Italy on Wednesday December 8th, 2004 at 23:00 hrs and on Saturday December 11th, 2004 at 18:00 hrs. It featured in Indian Short Shorts section with English and Italian subtitles. It was produced by Subhankar Das (A Graffiti Expressions Presentation, 54 Jatin Das Road, Kolkata-29) and directed by Sharmi Pandey.[2]
He is famous for his book Nashto Atmar Television [নষ্ট আত্মার টেলিভিসন] (literally means: “Television of Spoilt Spirit”) published on the Independence Day of 1973, a day considered to be the date signifying the end of Modernism in Bengali Poetry. Some of his poems published in the anthology Amar Rifel Amar Bible athoba Falguni Royer Falguni Roy are:
- ‘Amar Rifle amar Bible’ (আমার রাইফেল আমার বাইবেল)
- ‘Manik Bandyopadhyayer Choshma’ (মানিক বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়ের চশমা)
- ‘Kritrim Saap’ (কৃত্রিম সাপ)
- ‘Aamader Swapno’ (আমাদের স্বপ্ন)
- ‘Kobita Bullet’ (কবিতা বুলেট)
- ‘Biplober Gaan’ (বিপ্লবের গান)
- ‘Aami Aamar Moton’ (আমি আমার মতন)
- ‘Manusher songe kono Birodh Nei’ (মানুষের সঙ্গে কোনো বিরোধ নেই)
- ‘Nashto Atmar Television’ (নষ্ট আত্মার টেলিভিসন)
- ‘Sesh Bibriti’ (শেষ বিবৃতি)
- ‘Baektigato Bichhana’ (ব্যক্তিগত বিছানা)
ma, i can’t smile well-scrubbed twisted-smirks in your noble society anymore
in the godly dense ocean of kindness with krishna’s duffed up white teeth with studious eyes of the devil i can’t
anymore in a ramakrishnian posture use my wife according to the matriarchal customs
substitute sugar for saccharine and dread diabetes no more i can’t no more with my unhappy organ do a devdas again in khalashitola on the registry day of a former fling.
my liver is getting rancid by the day my grandfather had cirrhosis don’t understand
heredity i drink alcohol read poetry my father for the sake of puja etc used to fast venerable dadas in our para
swearing by dharma gently press ripe breasts of sisters-born-of-the-locality on holi
on the day ma left for trips abroad many in your noble society had vodka i will nonchalantly from your funeral pyre light up a charminar thinking of your death my eyes tear up then i don’t think of earthquakes by the banks or of floodwater didn’t put my hand on the string of the petticoat of an unmarried lover and didn’t think of baishnab padavali ma, even i’ll die one day.
at belur mandir on seeing foreign woman pray with her international python-bum veiled in a skirt
my limitless libido rose up ma because your libido will be tied up to father’s memories even beyond death i this fucked up drunk am
envying you carrying dirt of the humblest kind looking at my organ
i feel as if i’m an organism from another planet now the rays of the setting sun is touching my face on a tangent
and after mixing the colour of the setting sun on their wings a flock of non-family-planning birds is going back towards bonolata sen’s
eyes peaceful as a nest – it’s time for them to warm the eggs –
A PERSONAL NEON poem by Falguni Roy
i am completely talentless so i touch the tip of the nose with my tongue
to prove my talent
sometimes while walking in front of manik bandyopadyay’s house
i wonder – the same street through which manik bandyopadyay
walked, i worthless, phalguni roy, am walking, inside the second class
of a tram sometimes i wonder – was it this tram that had once
trampled upon jibanananda’s body –
i have been moving on in this way – in this way my earth sun stars have been moving
at that moment when my foetus was formed another death had fallen upon the solar family
a friend of mine sits in a bar and drinks alcohol from far-off regions of the world quite often –
one day he became very angry and called me a toddy-addicted
ganja-addicted fucker
i consider dronacharya a murderer
for snatching away eklavya’s thumb
manik bandyopadyay’s specs
your paddy ridden field in baishak is my soul’s stamp – not the heart’s
in the winter fog i exhale smoke – not a cigarette’s
in bed bereft of a woman i masturbate early in the morning
in whose tummy will my child arrive
one for which i will provide two morsels of rice?
without a party flag i have been surviving without
the love of a woman i have been surviving in order to listen to
rabindranath’s songs at twelve thirty in the afternoon sun i have been surviving
no i never wanted to be rabindranath never ever i have never wanted to love
sumita never ever had never wanted her body have never wanted mita’s
body had only wanted her love but nothing happened to me
but of course the khan army in bangladesh the US mines from the coast of tonkin
and the CRPF hiding behind the sand bags in kolkata have left
the china nixon treaty has been signed white black America has sent
a jeep to the moon some grains in bharat some armymen in vietnam
and some athletes for the Olympics
hindu bengalis
have killed
hindu bengalis
in kolkata – then under
netaji
lenin and
gandhi’s statues
the wellwishers of shahid minar have called a public meeting – hence –
a lot of things have happened but i’ve still not got a job
and so haven’t got a wife
hehehehehe
the prostitute’s pimp and the bride’s parents never let their women
in our hands if we don’t show them some money
but will we all keep our organs settled inside a loincloth
and become sanyasis?
tear up for martyrs and become ministers?
once on my way to vote i saw a hungry person die
in the voting line their name was called as a proxy and their ration card
confiscated my father died even after receiving good dietary
medication and even His ration was confiscated – i have finally seen
death makes no difference between the rich and the poor or between the bourgeois and the communist
yet some deaths are lighter than a bird
yet some deaths are heavier than the mountain
hai bharatbarsha! will my death be heavy or light
hai bharatbarsha! will i be a dead body or a martyr – or will i die the way buddhadev
died when he tried to find a reason behind death?
death – are you just extinction or are you a passport to reincarnation?
who will tell me where is my real path?
who has provided me with life inside my heart – who will tell me what price is my heart?
who will provide me with pen and paper to write poems?
if i’m sick who will provide me with dietary medication?
who will provide for my food if i’m hungry?
who’ll provide me with a woman if i long for love?
can the state provide for everything?
can communism make the last boy first?
can socialism make a bad poet into a good one?
yet the vedic song of praise songhocchodhong songbaddhong etc means
our paths become one
our languages become one
our thoughts become one . . . this higher communism
was constructed by indians four thousand years before marx was born
our meals become one
our clothes become one . . . magical magical
but if after listening to this someone gets up and says our wives become one then
i mean i mean i’ll run away because i cannot i cannot think of sex with a woman and
sucking up to the guru as one and the same thing
so even after sucking our mother’s milk we can’t ever think of sucking our mother’s flesh
but after sucking the milk out of the cow we’ve had the cow’s flesh.
( Translated by Sourodeep Roy )
Malay Roychoudhury
Stark Electric Jesus – Poem by Malay Roychoudhury
Oh I’ll die I’ll die I’ll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I’ll do where I’ll go oh I am sick
I’ll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can’t resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain’s contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn’t you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I’d have gone two billion light years and kissed God’s ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I’ve forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I’ll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I’ll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven’t had to learn copulation and dying
I haven’t had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops
after urination
Haven’t had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn the usage of French leather
while lying on Nandita’s bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya’s
fresh China-rose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain’s cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I’ll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of
Shubha’s bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your
violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents?
Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me
like my dead brother without Shubha?
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of a magnet’s brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished
with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending in to your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart’s exhaustive impatience
I’ll disrupt and destroy
I’ll split all in to pieces for the sake of Art
There isn’t any other way out for Poetry except suicide
Shubha
Let me enter in to the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora
In to the absurdity of woeless effort
In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart
Why wasn’t I lost in my mother’s urethra?
Why wasn’t I driven away in my father’s urine after his self-coition?
Why wasn’t I mixed in the ovum -flux or in the phlegm?
With her eyes shut supine beneath me
I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seize Shubha
Women could be treacherous even after unfolding a helpless appearance
Today it seems there is nothing so treacherous as Woman & Aet
Now my ferocious heart is running towards an impossible death
Vertigoes of water are coming up to my neck from the pierced earth
I will die
Oh what are these happenings within me
I am failing to fetch out my hand and my palm
From the dried sperms on my trousers spreading wings
300000 children gliding toward the district of Shubha’s bosom
Millions of needles are now running from my blood in to Poetry
Now the smuggling of my obstinate legs are trying to plunge
Into the death-killer sex-wig entangled in the hypnotic kingdom of words
Fitting violent mirrors on each wall of the room I am observing
After letting loose a few naked Malay, his unestablished scramblin
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I’ll do where I’ll go oh I am sick
I’ll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can’t resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain’s contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn’t you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I’d have gone two billion light years and kissed God’s ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I’ve forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I’ll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I’ll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven’t had to learn copulation and dying
I haven’t had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops
after urination
Haven’t had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn the usage of French leather
while lying on Nandita’s bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya’s
fresh China-rose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain’s cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I’ll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of
Shubha’s bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your
violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents?
Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me
like my dead brother without Shubha?
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of a magnet’s brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished
with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending in to your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart’s exhaustive impatience
I’ll disrupt and destroy
I’ll split all in to pieces for the sake of Art
There isn’t any other way out for Poetry except suicide
Shubha
Let me enter in to the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora
In to the absurdity of woeless effort
In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart
Why wasn’t I lost in my mother’s urethra?
Why wasn’t I driven away in my father’s urine after his self-coition?
Why wasn’t I mixed in the ovum -flux or in the phlegm?
With her eyes shut supine beneath me
I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seize Shubha
Women could be treacherous even after unfolding a helpless appearance
Today it seems there is nothing so treacherous as Woman & Aet
Now my ferocious heart is running towards an impossible death
Vertigoes of water are coming up to my neck from the pierced earth
I will die
Oh what are these happenings within me
I am failing to fetch out my hand and my palm
From the dried sperms on my trousers spreading wings
300000 children gliding toward the district of Shubha’s bosom
Millions of needles are now running from my blood in to Poetry
Now the smuggling of my obstinate legs are trying to plunge
Into the death-killer sex-wig entangled in the hypnotic kingdom of words
Fitting violent mirrors on each wall of the room I am observing
After letting loose a few naked Malay, his unestablished scramblin
Chicken Roast – Poem by Malay Roychoudhury
Puff your plume in anger and fight, cock,
delight the owner of knife
smear sting with pollen and flap your wings
As I said: Twist the arms and keep them bent
roll the rug and come down the terrace
after disturbed sleep
Shoeboots-rifle-whirring bullets-shrieks
The aged undertrial in the next cell weeps and wants to go home
Liberate me let me go let me go home
On its egg in the throne the gallinule doses
asphyxiate in dark
fight back, cock, die and fight, shout with the dumb
Glass splinters on tongue-breast muscles quiver
Fishes open their gills and enfog water
A piece of finger wrapped in pink paper
With eyes covered someone wails in the jailhouse
I can’t make out if man or woman
Keep this eyelash on lefthand palm-
and blow off with your breath
Fan out snake-hood in mist
Cobra’s abdomen shivers in the hiss of female urination
Deport to crematorium stuffing blood-oozing nose
in cottonwool
Shoes brickbats and torn pantaloons enlitter the streets
I smear my feet with the wave picked up from a stormy sea
That is the alphabet I drew on for letters.
(Translation of Bengali original ‘Murgir Roast’)
delight the owner of knife
smear sting with pollen and flap your wings
As I said: Twist the arms and keep them bent
roll the rug and come down the terrace
after disturbed sleep
Shoeboots-rifle-whirring bullets-shrieks
The aged undertrial in the next cell weeps and wants to go home
Liberate me let me go let me go home
On its egg in the throne the gallinule doses
asphyxiate in dark
fight back, cock, die and fight, shout with the dumb
Glass splinters on tongue-breast muscles quiver
Fishes open their gills and enfog water
A piece of finger wrapped in pink paper
With eyes covered someone wails in the jailhouse
I can’t make out if man or woman
Keep this eyelash on lefthand palm-
and blow off with your breath
Fan out snake-hood in mist
Cobra’s abdomen shivers in the hiss of female urination
Deport to crematorium stuffing blood-oozing nose
in cottonwool
Shoes brickbats and torn pantaloons enlitter the streets
I smear my feet with the wave picked up from a stormy sea
That is the alphabet I drew on for letters.
(Translation of Bengali original ‘Murgir Roast’)
Preparation – Poem by Malay Roychoudhury
Who claims I’m ruined? Because I’m without fangs and claws?
Are they necessary? How do you forget the knife
plunged in abdomen up to the hilt? Green cardamom leaves
for the buck, art of hatred and anger
and of war, gagged and tied Santhal women, pink of lungs shattered
by a restless dagger?
Pride of sword pulled back from heart? I don’t have
songs or music. Only shrieks, when mouth is opened
wordless odour of the jungle; corner of kin & sin-sanyas;
Didn’t pray for a tongue to take back the groans
power to gnash and bear it. Fearless gunpowder bleats:
stupidity is the sole faith-maimed generosity-
I leap on the gambling table, knife in my teeth
Encircle me
rush in from tea and coffee plateaux
in your gumboots of pleasant wages
The way Jarasandha’s genital is bisected and diamond glow
Skill of beating up is the only wisdom
in misery I play the burgler’s stick like a flute
brittle affection of thev wax-skin apple
She-ants undress their wings before copulating
I thump my thighs with alternate shrieks: VACATE THE UNIVERSE
get out you omnicompetent
conchshell in scratching monkeyhand
lotus and mace and discuss-blade
Let there be salt-rebellion of your own saline sweat
along the gunpowder let the flint run towards explosion
Marketeers of words daubed in darkness
in the midnight filled with young dog’s grief
in the sicknoon of a grasshopper sunk in insecticide
I reappear to exhibit the charm of the stiletto.
(Translation of Bengali poem ‘Prostuti’)
Are they necessary? How do you forget the knife
plunged in abdomen up to the hilt? Green cardamom leaves
for the buck, art of hatred and anger
and of war, gagged and tied Santhal women, pink of lungs shattered
by a restless dagger?
Pride of sword pulled back from heart? I don’t have
songs or music. Only shrieks, when mouth is opened
wordless odour of the jungle; corner of kin & sin-sanyas;
Didn’t pray for a tongue to take back the groans
power to gnash and bear it. Fearless gunpowder bleats:
stupidity is the sole faith-maimed generosity-
I leap on the gambling table, knife in my teeth
Encircle me
rush in from tea and coffee plateaux
in your gumboots of pleasant wages
The way Jarasandha’s genital is bisected and diamond glow
Skill of beating up is the only wisdom
in misery I play the burgler’s stick like a flute
brittle affection of thev wax-skin apple
She-ants undress their wings before copulating
I thump my thighs with alternate shrieks: VACATE THE UNIVERSE
get out you omnicompetent
conchshell in scratching monkeyhand
lotus and mace and discuss-blade
Let there be salt-rebellion of your own saline sweat
along the gunpowder let the flint run towards explosion
Marketeers of words daubed in darkness
in the midnight filled with young dog’s grief
in the sicknoon of a grasshopper sunk in insecticide
I reappear to exhibit the charm of the stiletto.
(Translation of Bengali poem ‘Prostuti’)
Manibhushan Bhattacharya
Manibhushan Bhattacharya (1938–2014) was a major poet who transformed the language of Bengali poetry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His poems were published in famous literary journals including the Buddhadev Basu-edited Kabita, Porichoy, Chaturanga and Purbasha.[1] Manibhushan questioned the dominant mode of writing poetry in his poems and transformed the language of poetry from within. In one of his poems, he expressed that it is futile to read the accomplished poets and stated that he only reads Samar Sen’s prose in Frontier.Manibhushan was born in a family of Sanskrit pundits in a small town, Sitakunda, in the district of Chittagong, now in Bangladesh, in 1938. The town was surrounded by the mountains and the sea. Metaphors of nature and religious-puranic traditions found place in his poetic journey at different points of time. Manibhushan later settled in a jute mill town, Naihati, and earned his livelihood as a school- teacher. The everyday life of the subaltern people in the town found expression in his poems.[2]
Manibhushan started publishing his poems in the 1950s. The brutal counter- insurgent violence of the Indian state against the Naxalites found place in his second book of poems, Utkantha Sharbari, published in 1971. However, his collection of poems, Gandhinagare Ratri, published in 1974, marked a revolution in the world of Bengali poetry. In a sense, this book is the testament of the burning 1970s. The first poem incorporated in the collection, Gandhinagare Ek Ratri, was a vivid poetic narrative of the killing of a subaltern political activist, Gokul, by police firing, his mother’s pathos, typical responses of middle- class characters and angry protest by a jute mill labourer. The poem ended with a line from Rabindranath Tagore. The aesthetic chemistry of the poem violated all conventions.[3] It is quite natural that Manibhushan Bhattacharya’s poetry took different turns in changing times. Writing poetry for him was nothing but dialogue with the self. So, romance and revolution got merged in his poetry. He decided to write mostly for little magazines. The mainstream media maintained a silence regarding his creative endeavours, but he cared little for such a “culture of silence” and his poems reverberated loudly nonetheless.
He was a very whimsical man poem by Manibhushan Bhattacharya
He wrote
His words made people think and burn
Those who burned came one day
And cut his right arm off
He practiced writing with his left
He wrote
His words made people think and burn
Those who burned came one day
And cut his right arm off
He practiced writing with his left
They returned
And cut his left arm off
Readers came to say, ‘Dictate your words
We’ll write them down’
He spoke, they wrote
When told of this the government executioners came
Spitting into his mouth
They inserted crumpled rags and cements
To shut it up forever
The man signaled to his readers
Come with me to the seashore
With the big toe of his right foot
He wrote on the endless expanse of sand
Readers copied his words
The hounds came in silence
This time they bit off both his feet
Before leaving
Listening to the ocean roar
He smiled. For…
By then three other writers
More powerful and far-seeing
Than him
Had arrived
( Translated bu Arunava Sinha )
And cut his left arm off
Readers came to say, ‘Dictate your words
We’ll write them down’
He spoke, they wrote
When told of this the government executioners came
Spitting into his mouth
They inserted crumpled rags and cements
To shut it up forever
The man signaled to his readers
Come with me to the seashore
With the big toe of his right foot
He wrote on the endless expanse of sand
Readers copied his words
The hounds came in silence
This time they bit off both his feet
Before leaving
Listening to the ocean roar
He smiled. For…
By then three other writers
More powerful and far-seeing
Than him
Had arrived
( Translated bu Arunava Sinha )
Saileswar Ghosh
Pradip Choudhuri
Pradip Choudhuri is a Bengali poet and essayist born near Calcutta (now Kolkata ) on . He first became known as a member of the Hungry generation movement . He writes in his mother tongue but also in English and French.
Pradip Choudhuri spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Calcutta. He tells in an interview with Alain Jégou that up to the age of six, his “first passion was kite flying”, counting the goats, playing and running on the tracks of a abandoned railway.
Having followed his father, a teacher, through various changes, he has lived in Delhi and the state of Tripura . His first poetic compositions, when he was 13 or 14 years old, are traditional love poems.
In 1963 he returned to Calcutta and became a student at Visva-Bharati University in the spring of 1964. That’s when his real poetic journey began: he began publishing a quarterly magazine of art and literature, Swakal (Owning the weather). In the late 1960s, this publication will become Pphoo , a trilingual journal, English, French, Bengali.
Student and poet protester very virulent, he is excluded from his university, because of writings deemed obscene and subversive. He then becomes friends with young poets and writers, including Utpalkumar Basu, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Falguni Ray, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Samir Roychoudhury, Malay Roychoudhury, Debi Ray, Subimal Basak, Tridib Mitra, Sobo Acharya, Saileswar Ghose and Subhas Ghose. considered one of the leaders of the ” Hungry Generation “, the “Hungry Generation” who will quickly receive the support of the American ” Beat Generation “, especially Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti .
Since then, Pradip Choudhuri has remained faithful to a poetic “ideal” based on freedom, even marginality, the rejection of the social and literary establishment, of the bourgeois spirit. His fraternity of spirit with Jack Kerouac has never failed.
Not much traffic here, I can easily remove my head from the trunk and lay it aside, move the bottoms from their place, can get entrapped without looking at my body, merely by lifting up my face from this cold sand in this cold sun, or else I run down the avenue, Hotel Du Mauriere, trash, trash, after that strange cold I feel out of sorts for days, nothing seems to jell, a coffee less week, as I return to the Bengali language from my exile, or as I read Corso’s poetry sitting at home, or swim in the bathtub with Henry Miller (nowadays I don’t), naked, naturally, O God, I have to be at least about that even when turning non-human, or else my unspeakable chin has moved 1/5″, constipation in 1965, someone tears my mustache and munches on them, rots in my skin bag the juice of wasted youth—crossing the sky, I walk alone deep in the heart of the sky—
( Translated by Jyotirmoy Datta )
Pradip Choudhuri spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Calcutta. He tells in an interview with Alain Jégou that up to the age of six, his “first passion was kite flying”, counting the goats, playing and running on the tracks of a abandoned railway.
Having followed his father, a teacher, through various changes, he has lived in Delhi and the state of Tripura . His first poetic compositions, when he was 13 or 14 years old, are traditional love poems.
In 1963 he returned to Calcutta and became a student at Visva-Bharati University in the spring of 1964. That’s when his real poetic journey began: he began publishing a quarterly magazine of art and literature, Swakal (Owning the weather). In the late 1960s, this publication will become Pphoo , a trilingual journal, English, French, Bengali.
Student and poet protester very virulent, he is excluded from his university, because of writings deemed obscene and subversive. He then becomes friends with young poets and writers, including Utpalkumar Basu, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Falguni Ray, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Samir Roychoudhury, Malay Roychoudhury, Debi Ray, Subimal Basak, Tridib Mitra, Sobo Acharya, Saileswar Ghose and Subhas Ghose. considered one of the leaders of the ” Hungry Generation “, the “Hungry Generation” who will quickly receive the support of the American ” Beat Generation “, especially Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti .
Since then, Pradip Choudhuri has remained faithful to a poetic “ideal” based on freedom, even marginality, the rejection of the social and literary establishment, of the bourgeois spirit. His fraternity of spirit with Jack Kerouac has never failed.
His works :
The phenomenal existence of Jack Kerouac: his influence on the modern consciousness (Tempus Fugit, Belgium, 1987 – New edition: The Abstract Hunter, Mazères, 2010)
- The False Name That Was Jack Kerouac (Any Road, Montreal, 1987)
- Quebec Kerouac Blues – collection (Writings of the Forges, Ottawa, 1989)
- Places of Asylum, Places of Exile – collection (Poetry Clandestine, Saint-Lô, 1994)
- Ratri (The Night) (Editions Pphoo, Calcutta, 1996)
- The Black Hole (1996)
- Blood Game – collection (Éditions Hors jeu, France, 1997)
- Religion Poetry (Editions Le Givre de l’Eclair, France, 2000)
- Big kiss to all lost bitches (Éditions Pphoo, 2004)
Pradip Choudhuri’s poem GOL PARK
Swimming With Henry Miller by poem by Pradip ChoudhuriNot much traffic here, I can easily remove my head from the trunk and lay it aside, move the bottoms from their place, can get entrapped without looking at my body, merely by lifting up my face from this cold sand in this cold sun, or else I run down the avenue, Hotel Du Mauriere, trash, trash, after that strange cold I feel out of sorts for days, nothing seems to jell, a coffee less week, as I return to the Bengali language from my exile, or as I read Corso’s poetry sitting at home, or swim in the bathtub with Henry Miller (nowadays I don’t), naked, naturally, O God, I have to be at least about that even when turning non-human, or else my unspeakable chin has moved 1/5″, constipation in 1965, someone tears my mustache and munches on them, rots in my skin bag the juice of wasted youth—crossing the sky, I walk alone deep in the heart of the sky—
( Translated by Jyotirmoy Datta )
Arunesh Ghosh
Arunesh Ghosh (born: December 29, 1941-death: 24th August, 2011) is a renowned poet , novelist , essayist and translator of Bengali literature .
In 1965, when some participants (ie Shaileshwar Ghosh and Subhash
Ghosh) testified against the Hungry Generation case, the movement broke
down. In the mid-seventies decade, Arunesh Ghosh tried to revive the Hungryalist movement through his “giraf” little magazine.
He lived in Mathabhanga village of Cochbihar district of north Bengal and in the end of the new movement, he inspired about twenty poets and writers in North Bengal. Among those who have been named as the new Hungry agitators are the short story writer Alok Goswami, and poet Raja Sarkar, Rishta Malakar, Bijatosana Das, Samiran Ghosh, Manoj Rout, Bikash Sarkar, Subrata Taya, Nakul Mandal, Tanumay Sarkar, Dibakar Bhattacharya, Vijay De, Unim Dasgupta, Jamaluddin, Anubhav Sarkar, Rajiv Singha, Maloy Majumder, Sumanth Bhattacharya, Arun Banik, Selim Mustafa, Rossraaj Nath etc. . Despite being highly educated, he was a basic school teacher in his village for the rest of his life. He did not want to leave the village. He was the master of the family in the family’s home. That is why he is also called an exceptional household poet. He was a prominent swimmer, but still he was drowned while bathing in the pond. There is a doubt among the critics about whether he had committed suicide. He was very worried about the political awesomeness of West Bengal. Many people think that he was frustrated in the end.
He lived in Mathabhanga village of Cochbihar district of north Bengal and in the end of the new movement, he inspired about twenty poets and writers in North Bengal. Among those who have been named as the new Hungry agitators are the short story writer Alok Goswami, and poet Raja Sarkar, Rishta Malakar, Bijatosana Das, Samiran Ghosh, Manoj Rout, Bikash Sarkar, Subrata Taya, Nakul Mandal, Tanumay Sarkar, Dibakar Bhattacharya, Vijay De, Unim Dasgupta, Jamaluddin, Anubhav Sarkar, Rajiv Singha, Maloy Majumder, Sumanth Bhattacharya, Arun Banik, Selim Mustafa, Rossraaj Nath etc. . Despite being highly educated, he was a basic school teacher in his village for the rest of his life. He did not want to leave the village. He was the master of the family in the family’s home. That is why he is also called an exceptional household poet. He was a prominent swimmer, but still he was drowned while bathing in the pond. There is a doubt among the critics about whether he had committed suicide. He was very worried about the political awesomeness of West Bengal. Many people think that he was frustrated in the end.
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