On the way to Goalanda / 21 June 1892

Rabindra Nath Tagore

[Rabindranath Tagore’s Chhinnapatra (literally, The torn letter) is a collection of letters written by him to a niece when he was between 26 and 34 years of age. Tagore wrote them while he was travelling extensively in East and North Bengal and in Orissa on family business.

In a book on Tagore, Kabir Swadharma (The poet’s own religion), a noted scholar, Sourindra Mitra wrote: “There is no dearth of famous and great books in the treasure trove of Bengali literature, but there is only one about which the term “intimate” can be used.” Mitra felt Chhinnapatra is a book that is intimate in the way Walt Whitman described one of his own books of poetry: “Who touches this touches a man”.

This is the third letter from Chinnapatra that I have translated and posted here.]

Been floating on the river the whole day …. What surprises me is that although I have gone along this waterway many a time, felt the special delight of being on this boat between the two banks [of the Padma], when I am back on the land for a couple of days, the memories seem to fade away.

I sit quietly, with captivating scenery on either side – hamlets, wharfs, fields showing up and vanishing; clouds floating in the sky and polychrome flowers blossoming in the fading lights of the dusk; the boat moving, deckhands fishing, the incessant, adoringly fluid sound of the water; as darkness descends, the vast stretch of water becomes absolutely still like a sleeping child, all the stars in the wide open sky wake up and watch from above; late in some nights when sleep evades me, I wake up and gaze into the two dark banks of the river dead to the world, jackals howling intermittently from the wildernesses bordering villages, and the noise of clumps of earth splashing water as the fierce silent stream of the Padma steadily chips off its banks.

As I watch the changing landscape, a stream of fancy flows through my mind, and on its two banks two banks, new desires take shape. Perhaps what lies before my eyes isn’t really fascinating, maybe, a tawny treeless sandbank stretches to the horizon, and on it edge is tied an empty boat – a faint river is flowing along under the shadow of a gloomy sky – I cannot express how I feel when I watch the picture … I think the desire that was born in me when I read the Arabian Nights – when Sindbad the merchant explored new lands and I, imprisoned in a storeroom under the watchful eyes of domestic helps, used to wander along with him – the desire that was born at that time still seems to be alive – whenever I see a lonely boat anchored on the riverbank I become restless. I am absolutely certain that if as a child I hadn’t read the Arabian Nights or the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, if I hadn’t heard fairy tales, such thoughts wouldn’t have crossed my mind while looking at the riverbank; the world would have looked different to me.

The mind of this tiny man is a massive mélange of reality and imagination. One doesn’t know what gets tangled with what else – how many stories, pictures, anecdotes, insignificant and important events have got knotted to each other – still getting tangled every day. If you could unravel the life of a man, so many minor and major stories would emerge.

438 words, Translated on Tuesday, 03 February 2015, Kolkata

Creative writing and Will Buckingham

We invest a lot of time and money to travel around, see places, know the unknown …. After coming back, we share our travel stories and post pictures on the Facebook. But most of us don’t realise that we are on a journey almost every day, a trip no less fascinating, an unending, cashless journey that gives us perhaps an even better opportunity to see – let me use a picturesque Indian English phrase here – new new things!

Every new person we get to know could be as fascinating as a quaint countryside or an electrifying city seeped in a different culture. And last Saturday, I happened to meet not one but three of them: a Bengali couple and a British novelist, lecturer, and philosopher based in Leicester, UK. Suman, a publisher, and his wife Sathi are a wonderful couple and it was great meeting them. But now let me now share with you twenty-five minutes of a three-hour workshop.

Will Buckingham was in our English Language Centre to do a workshop on creative writing. My colleague Chitra, who was coordinating the programme, asked me to join but unfortunately, I could go in only for the last part, when Will was talking about writer’s blocks.

Every writer experiences writer’s blocks from time to time. They are strange dark periods of lack of inspiration and creativity. In times like this, a creative person cannot think, cannot relate to their world of writing, and most importantly, cannot put pen on a piece of paper. A traffic jam, a bottleneck.  

If you are a creative person, nothing could be more frustrating. And I understand this well because I know the neck more intimately than the bottle. Anyway, here is Will Buckingham’s prescription to get over the malady.

He asked the twenty-odd participants to do an experiment. It was a simple experiment to write – trust me – without THINKING. Our task was to write without interruption for seven minutes. And the rules of the game were: 

1. You can write in any language;
2. You have to keep your hand moving;
3. You can write the worst rubbish in the universe;
4. You can’t go back, you can’t cross out anything;
5. You are free to wonder, and finally,
6. YOU CAN’T THINK – let your pen do the writing.

What was the result? As I wrote and tried to live up to the challenge to write the worst rubbish ever written in the English language, I kept looking at the twenty-odd people through a corner of my eye.

And trust me, everyone wrote continuously, no one looked away, seven minutes flew away in no time, and at the end, every one of the faces in the room glowed with creative happiness!

The moral of the story is perhaps this. It’s not your mind alone, but your hand too writes. And don’t worry – just write – writing will take care of writing.

POSTSCRIPT: It was good that I accepted Suman’s invite to join him, Sathi, and Will at a pub in the evening. The place was chock-a-block with people and the loud music blared from a speaker right next to us was not good for my elderly ears looking forward to retirement, but it provided us with the perfect privacy for an intimate chat.

Thanks Chitra, for asking me to attend the workshop.

Kolkata / 2 Feb 2015

It’s not words or songs alone; stillness writes the story of our life

I read these lines on the fb wall of Nibedita Bayen. Actually, Nibedita needn’t have mentioned the name of the poet. Only one man, Jibanananda Das could write Bengali so beautifully, or draw such enigmatic pictures of rural Bengal. I have made an attempt to translate the poem, although I know I’ve been able to capture only a tiny fraction of the unfathomable beauty of the original … 

বাতাসে ধানের শব্দ শুনিয়াছি- ঝরিতেছে ধীরে ধীরে অপরাহ্ন ভ’রে;
সোনালী রোদের রঙ দেখিয়াছি-দেহের প্রথম কোন্ প্রেমের মতন
রূপ তার- এলোচুল ছড়ায়ে রেখেছে ঢেকে গুঢ় রূপ-আনারস বন;
ঘাস আমি দেখিয়াছি; দেখেছি সজনে ফুল চুপে-চুপে পড়িতেছে ঝ’রে
মৃদু ঘাসে; শান্তি পায়; দেখেছি হলুদ পাখি বহুক্ষণ থাকে চুপ ক’রে,
নির্জন আমের ডালে দুলে যায়- দুলে যায়- বাতাসের সাথে বহুক্ষণ;
শুধু কথা, গান নয়- নীরবতা রচিতেছে আমাদের সবার জীবন
বুঝিয়াছিঃ শুপুরীর সারিগুলো দিনরাত হাওয়ায় যে উঠিতেছে ন’ড়ে,
দিনরাত কথা কয়, ক্ষীরের মতন ফুল বুকে ধরে, তাদের উৎসব
ফুরায় না; মাছরাঙাটির সাথী ম’রে গেছে- দুপুরের নিঃসঙ্গ বাতাসে
তবু ঐ পাখিটির নীল লাল কমলা রঙের ডানা স্ফুট হ’য়ে ভাসে
আম জাম জামরুলে প্রসন্ন প্রাণের স্রোত- অশ্রু নাই- প্রশ্ন নাই কিছু,
ঝিলমিল ডানা নিয়ে উড়ে যায় আকাশের থেকে দূর আকাশের পিছু;
চে’য়ে দেখি ঘুম নাই- অশ্রু নাই- প্রশ্ন নাই বটফলগন্ধ-মাখা ঘাসে।

I’ve heard grains of rice dripping in the afternoon breeze;

Seen the golden sunlight – like one of the first loves of the body

Her quaint beauty hidden beneath flowing hair, a pineapple garden

I’ve seen grasslands; and sojne flowers dropping silently

On tender blades of grass; peace; I’ve seen a yellow bird quietly swinging

With the draft on a lonely branch of the mango tree for hours.

I know it’s not words or songs alone; stillness writes the story of our life

Rows of areca-nut trees, shivering in the wind through days and nights,

Whisper incessantly, holding creamy flowers in their breasts;

Their festivities never end. The kingfisher’s partner is dead, yet

In the lonesome waft of the afternoon, his polychrome wings flare up.

The happy stream of life that trees are – they shed no tears, question nothing.

They fly away, their wings twinkling from the sky to a sky far beyond …

I look around – the grassland smelling of banyan fruits

Doesn’t sleep, doesn’t cry, doesn’t ask questions.

Kolkata / 29 January 2015

Bakkhali

When Arundhati suggested that we visit the second most well-known sea beach in West Bengal during my rare weekend off recently, I didn’t feel excited because of my experience in the most popular sea beach in the state, Digha. Digha is possibly the dirtiest and the most disorganised seaside resort in the world and I didn’t expect much from its less illustrious cousin, Bakkhali. But in our house, I decide only important matters that could change the course of history. All minor decisions are taken by my wife. So last Saturday, we were off in our middle-aged car driven by a young Bubai.

We went along NH 117 which is reasonably good, although only two-lane for most parts. Intermittent rains and the small towns on the way slowed us down repeatedly and the one-hundred-and-thirty-kilometre drive took five hours. To make things a little more complicated, we had to take a ferry across a narrow river. When we reached the filthy banks of Hatania Dewania River teeming with brightly painted fishing boats, the men who run the only barge to transfer vehicles across were having lunch. In Bengal, we have stopped asking meaningless questions like why people who run an important public service should take breaks at a fixed hour like sarkari babus and shut down a highway in the process. Or why a two-hundred metre river on a busy national highway can’t be connected by a bridge in the twenty-first century.

But after reaching the sea-beach, we felt that the less-than-smooth journey was a blessing in disguise. Even in a Saturday afternoon, the place hadn’t been taken over by relentless fun-seeking city dwellers playing Sunidhi Chowhan songs. Shacks selling trinkets and small eats hadn’t encroached every square inch of the beach. There were visitors, but the beach was pristine and the pace was relaxed. Push carts were selling fried fish, corncobs, and bhelpuri. Some enterprising villagers were renting out plastic chairs to tourists, something that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

We hired two chairs from Ms Ankita Basak @ Rs.10 an hour. As we watched the monsoon clouds change colours in the setting sun, the sea was moving towards us in the high tide. We lazily hung our feet and waited for the waves to reach us. But before the sea could, a gust of rain from the Bay of Bengal dashed towards us.

Back in our overpriced but under-maintained hotel, we decided to play Scrabble sitting down in the second floor balcony looking into darkness. (My wife had forgotten to take the umbrella and medicines for emergencies, but luckily, I hadn’t left our Scrabble set behind!) Mother Nature possibly knew about our trip and decided to make it a full moon night. As we listened to the rustling sound of sea breeze blowing through trees, the moon played hide-and-seek with clouds. If there was heaven on earth, it was here, it was here, it was here.

We went to Henry Island next morning. Surprisingly, to reach this island you don’t cross any water body. The entire area is under the Fisheries Department of the state government. Entry is restricted and so there is no one there except for government employees who run the establishment. Their main job is to help fishermen and they maintain huge sweet water ponds to hatch fish. They also run two tourist lodges in one of which we had excellent luchi and alur dam for breakfast. More bliss!

From the entrance of the government property, a road leads to the sea through marshy lands with huge fishing tanks all around and deep green mangrove trees with their roots sticking out of ground. The land beneath our feet is soggy, thanks to many months of rains. Time seems to have stopped flowing here. Crabs and snails live their unhurried lives in peace with the universe. As I watch a snail undertaking a trans-continental journey, I recall Grapes of Wrath, where Steinbeck has given a graphic description of a turtle crossing a highway. The description runs into pages and as you read it you actually see the turtle.

We cross a colourfully painted flimsy bamboo bridge to reach the seashore. If only we didn’t have to go back! <>

Kolkata / 13 August 2014