Ode to that one who stood on a little hill

Ode to that one who stood on a little hill

You stood on a little hill
And with your words you filled
The blooming meadows below
You had remained like a glow
Upon the sky after a sunset,
Nightingale as sang at heaven's gate,
The most mellifluous one, ethereal, blessed,
How you longed for the music as you traced
The insignificant tiny things,glowworms insects
Bleating sheep, gnats and seasons dressed
In varied colors and flavour of their own,
A beautiful serene morn, a brief sojourn
To vales and riverside, oceans blue
How in your poems they get different hue,
And then your love for Fanny Brawne,
How it inundated you with musical sounds,
So many lyrical outpourings marvellous,
How it turned you both plebian and pious!

 ( a tribute to John Keats , on his birthday which is today)

On the hills, a revelation

On the hills, a revelation,

When the summer wanes
And the autumn passes by
Winter when is about to set in,
On the hills how is it to find
Flock of sheep grazing like cottony furry things,

They remind me how far away
From the crowd and din
Once on the hills of Bethlehem
The great shepherd took his flock
And letting them grazing
Sat on a hillock watching the beauty of the day,
The trees , the scent of flowers,
The sweet murmur of stream-
How they kept him soothed
Making him realise life
Which can be really wonderful
Bereft of all that could cause a stir,

Instead he just sat like a sage
And being struck by the wonder
Admired with his heart
What he saw and felt ,
At that moment perhaps
He inched towards that reflection
In his mind, mirroring nature's  perfection,
And sang glory to God
Who with utmost care
Created the place,

Then perhaps he became
What he was destined to be,
The shepherd great,

Then perhaps he knew it sure
What is it to feel and see
Beauty of epiphany.

একটা বড় গল্প চাই
কাগজ নিয়ে ভাবছি তাই,
অলস সময় যাচ্ছে চলে,
লিখবো ভেবেও যাচ্ছি ভুলে,
প্লটের মাঝে হোক সাবপ্লট,
কাহিনী জুটুক সাজুক পট,
কিবোর্ডে চলুক বিবাগী মন
মিস্টি সুরে পিয়ানো যেমন,

একটা বড় গল্প চাই...

সকালের মিঠে রোদে আলো মেখে ঝাউগাছ
বাতাসের সাথে করে কতো কথা, কতো কাজ,
দূর থেকে আরও দূরে ছড়িয়ে ছায়ার টান
ঢেউয়ের সাথে বুঝি অবিরাম করে স্নান।

A town of dreams

The first distinct memory of Malgudi to me is the depiction of a sleepy homely almost familiar town as shown in our black and white tv on Sunday mornings. Then there were children like me in the town doing stuff which I used to do in my childhood. There were Swaminathan and Mani and their schoolmates. They played cricket in the town's only playground. They went together to the river side and sat on the riverbank and savoured pickles.

Incidentally, the town I lived in at that time was also beside a river. I had also friends like Mani and we also played cricket. We had teachers too like Samuel and our fathers appeared more or less like Swami's. So watching the tv series at that time was like seeing incidents of our own lives.

Later in the afternoons when we played in the ground adjacent to our houses in our own sleepy muffassil town, we thought we were just redoing what had been shown on tv. Then when we picked up reading habits, we started exchanging between us storybooks. The books were varied- from detective and adventure novels to comic books or graphic novellas. At that time, some one got 'Malgudi days' from the library and as soon as we started reading we realised that the person who should be credited for creating such a wonderous town all by himself was not the director of the tv series actually but R.K.Narayan. The pictures drawn in the pages of the book as illustrations of certain episodes of the stories also moved us so much that one of my friends who had a penchant for drawing, started imitating the style of the artist who drew them. We were equally enthralled to know that the artist was also R.K.( but not Narayan , Laxman as he was , the brother of R.K.Narayan).

The town of Malgudi had that smell and flavour and ambience which could inspire any traveler to hunt for it. Infact for many years, we thought there was actually a town called Malgudi somewhere down south. We were really shocked when we were made to understand that there was no town like that. It was purely fictitious.It was really a hard pill for us to swallow . The river, the post office, the roads, the playground, the school, the whistle of train passing through the railway station, the peepul trees and mango grove- all came together in our impressionable young minds to make such an indelible mark that we sometimes even believed that our town was another Malgudi and R.K. Narayan was someone who had stayed in our town at one point of time or other.

For John

As you have dared to dream
And to stand straight and sing
The world still hopes to bring
Back you in every way,
For you dared to say
Strawberry fields are forever
And sang too for the drying river,

And for the drummer boy young
You wrote an invincible song,
As you have dared to rhyme
Against war , calling it a crime,
The world still hopes desperately
To bring back your glowing legacy.

The Winged One

And those birds which she kept caged in her soul for years long, they always wanted to go away flying , taking off from her shoulder perhaps. I just got the curious chance to see them as once she spoke about them. It had been a beautiful day of spring. The air was on the drier side. The trees were getting their new dresses. The roads of our town were getting fresh new coat of asphalt. She told me how one bird in her wanted to go all the way to Volos, a sea side town of Greece while another had the desire to go to Egypt. Then there had been another with a Mediterranean spirit. And another which longed to visit the Alps. And another which had an ascetic bent, finding calm only in lonely caves of the Himalayas.

'But how do you keep them in you for so many years, without setting them free? Do they not quarrel? Do they not chatter and freak you out?'

I asked her that day of spring when the weather had been particularly enchanting. The scent of blossoms was lingering in the air. The sky was clear like the one we oft see in picture postcards.

And hearing my query she smiled.

'A woman can keep a thousand birds in her and yet she can be perfectly sane with them, for she has a bit of her in each one of them and each one of them is her part. She knows them all too well and she feeds them, cares for them, loves them, caresses them and gives them the shelter. A woman is like a bird sanctuary. She keeps the chirpings as another layer of her emotive expressions. '

She said.

No she simply did not say that.

She spelt that.

I heard the wings fluttering soon after... wings of many birds, all fluttering at once.

গ্যারেজের পাশে এক চিলতে জমি। আমাদের সরস্বতী দি যে কিনা আমার সহধর্মিনীর সর্বক্ষণের কাজের সাথী ঐ অল্প একটু জায়গায় নানা ফুলের গাছ বসায়। জবা, টগর,গোলাপ,গাঁদা,রক্ত করবী—আরোও কত কি। শিউলী গাছটিও তারই তত্ত্বাবধানে তর তর করে বেড়ে উঠেছে দু বছরে। কিন্তু গত বছর পর্যন্ত গ্যারেজের ছাদ ছাড়িয়ে বড় হয়ে ওঠা সত্ত্বেও তাতে ছিল না কোনো ফুল। গত শরতেও বাড়ির সকলের সাথে আমিও ভেবেছি কি করা যায় গাছটি নিয়ে।  আগে ঠিক ওই জায়গাটাতে ছিল এক কাগজফুলের গাছ। রথের মেলা থেকে কেনা। সেটি ডালপালা বিস্তৃত করে গ্যারেজের ছাদ প্রায় ছেয়ে ফেললেও ফুলের আবির্ভাবে সজ্জিত হতে পারে নি কোনোদিনই। সবার মতো আমিও তাই ভাবতে বাধ্য হচ্ছিলাম বোধহয় মাটিতে সারের ঘাটতি রয়েছে বা বোধহয় মৌমাছি বা প্রজাপতির আগমন নেই আমাদের ঐ এক চিলতে  জমিতে। ফলে ‘পলিনেসন্’ হচ্ছে না। সরস্বতী দির অবশ্য ঐ সব তথাকথিত চিন্তা মাথায় আসে নি কোনোদিন। শিউলী গাছটির প্রতি তার মায়া ছিল অটুট। গ্রীষ্ম হোক কি শীত, তার বিশেষ খেয়াল থাকতো সবসময় গাছটার প্রতি। যদি কখনো বন্ধুদের সাথে খেলতে গিয়ে আমার ছেলে বা তার বন্ধুরা ঐ গাছটির গায়ে বল মারতো নিতান্তই অনিচ্ছাকৃতভাবে, খেলার ছলেই, সরস্বতী দি যদি তা দেখতে পেতো , সব কাজ ফেলে পড়িমরি করে ছুটে যেতো তাদের দিকে। আমার ছেলে বা তার বন্ধুরা মজা পেয়ে হাসতো।  ’গাছটাতে তো ফুল হয় না।  কি হবে ওটাকে রেখে?’ এই ছিল যুক্তি সবার।  ব্যতিক্রম শুধুমাত্র  সরস্বতীদি। 

এবছর যখন সবাইকে অবাক করে দিয়ে গাছটি ফুলে ভরে গেল, সরস্বতীদির মুখে এক অনির্বচনীয় গর্বের ভাব ফুটে উঠেছিল। আমরাও গাছটির নীচে দাঁড়িয়ে ফুলের সুবাস নিয়ে শরতের সৌন্দর্য আরও একবার নূতন করে অনুভব করেছি আর আমার বার বার মনে পড়েছে আমার মার কথা আর সেই ফেলে আসা শিউলী গাছটির কথা যা আমাদের পুরোনো একতলা বাড়ির  পিছনে ছিল ঠিক একটা ডুমুর গাছের পাশে। দুটিই আমার মায়ের যত্নে লালিত।

আরশীতে তুই

ঠিক যেমন জিউকবক্সে পড়লে আধুলি
সেভেন্থ স্ট্রিটের প্রান্তে অফিসারদের ক্লাবে
এরিক ক্লাপটন গাইতেন গান
রোজ সন্ধ্যেবেলায় ,
ঠিক তেমনি তোর রক্তিম মুখ,
আরশী জুড়ে সলাজ চোখ,
রোদে পোড়া শরীর জুড়ে আমার
আঁকে আনাবেলের ছবি—
তুই যেন রুপালী আলোয়
ডিঙিনৌকোয় দিয়েছিস্ পাড়ি
আর আমি মেঘের ভেলায়।