A translation of Jibananada Das’s Andhar Dekhecche, Tobu Ache (I have seen the dark and yet there is another) from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam
Art by Sohana Manzoor
I have seen the dark and yet there is another, greater dark I have known death and yet there is another death awaiting Behind is a whole history existing, but not accessible yet Is that grand narrative—one to whom the plot has another meaning; And to whom the sea sings another tune, and there is a different stirring Of the heart and of issues—and where the mind is illumined uniquely.
Fire, wind, water—primeval gods burst out laughing Spent—once spent—does one end up as pork? Ha! Ha! I burst out laughing— It was as if amidst the loud laughter, The carcass of a huge whale had suddenly surfaced in a dark ocean Making the entire earth become as overpowering as a whale carcass’s stench.
I had thought humans would progress steadily in history’s lap; Instead of playing with machines they had mastered They would mature from accumulated successes. And yet it is the machine that has become a power to reckon with It is Love that has been punctured and power that has prospered With the nuclear bomb—was the increase in knowledge Supposed to result in such a split?
The wisdom that we had gathered over time in life Just isn’t there—what we have is stasis—senility; Surrounded by all sorts of fears, we only have Fatigue and depression. We’ve become self-centered And have enclosed ourselves in shells. We’re too scared To break them and avoid unclean sexual exchanges Carried out in the dark. Oceanic, airy, sunlight soaked, Blood-drenched, death-touched words come and dance Like frightening witches—we are frightened---hide in caves— We would rather disappear—dissolve—disappear in Brahma’s Word. Our two thousand years of learning is thus much!
We keep ourselves busy with commissions—build bases—love the city and the port’s bustle The grass below our boots we consider only grass—nothing else alas— we’ve made the motorcar our prized possession Why do wagtails dance then—fingas and bulbulis flit from forest to forest?
Jibananada Das (1899-1954) was a Bengali writer, who now is named as one of the greats. In his lifetime, he wrote beautiful poetry, novels, essays and more. He believed: “Poetry and life are two different outpouring of the same thing; life as we usually conceive it contains what we normally accept as reality, but the spectacle of this incoherent and disorderly life can satisfy neither the poet’s talent nor the reader’s imagination … poetry does not contain a complete reconstruction of what we call reality; we have entered a new world.”
Nazrul’s Tumi Shundor Tai Cheye Thaki (Because you are so beautiful, I keep looking at you) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam.
From Public Domain
BECAUSE YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL
Because you are so beautiful, I keep looking at you Dearest, is that my real offence? If the chokor bird* cries While looking at the moon, the moon doesn’t shush it. Because I keep looking at flowers about to bloom Do flowers ever scold me? While viewing clouds Parched birds pine for rain, but the clouds don’t protest then. Even when they know the sun won’t shine on them, Silly sunflowers aren’t appeased. They are truly content Only when looking at their God. Charmed by your beauty, I got my sight back. Now, dearest, let my eyes have their feel!
*Partridge, a bird that is said to feed on moonbeams in mythology
1971 began and ended on a note of hope but in the course of the year we went through the whole gamut of human emotions: love for our motherland and hate for its enemies; desire for freedom and abhorrence at those who had curtailed our right to be ourselves; feelings such as anxiety, fear, even terror caused by the knowledge that at any moment we might be abducted and murdered; and excitement and elation at the thought that relief could not be far away. 1971 was the year when for months we lived from day to day, totally insecure in a Dhaka which had become like a city of the dead; it was also the year when we discovered what it meant to hope against hope. 1971, in short, was a cataclysmal year; for every Bengali it was the year of living dangerously.
The year must have begun innocuously enough; at this point in time, I have simply no recollection what I did or how I felt in January and February of that year. But certainly, hope must have been in the air; after Sheikh Sahib’s massive election victory all of us must have been feeling confident and secure in the knowledge that we were finally about to master our destiny. For me—temperamentally apolitical and not yet out of my teens at the beginning of that year—the first sign that something was seriously wrong came one day while we were watching a test match in Dhaka Stadium on the first of March. Suddenly, the game was interrupted and then abandoned as news came about Yahya Khan’s decision to not call a meeting of the Pakistani National Assembly. Pandemonium ruled for a while in the field, but soon everyone left, muttering that this cannot be, indignant that the army chief could not go against the resounding mandate given to the Awami League to change the course of Pakistani history.
And then for a while: hartals[1], demonstrations, slogans, meetings, public displays of discontent, and the will to oppose and resist on one side and display of the carrot as well as the stick on the other. In fact, the month of March showed a whole nation in a state of ferment, ready to go to any length against a brutal but posturing force.
A first climax was Sheikh Saheb’s[2] speech of March 7. Hearing it now, I cannot but think: is it as stirring for people of this generation as it was for ours? Contemplated in retrospective, the speech seems to be the quintessence of the Bengali spirit in 1971: inspired, defiant, pulsating, and resolute. It considers the dangers ahead but is emphatic about the need to put up resistance and counter whatever measures were taken to contain us.
The real climax, of course, came on the night of March 25. That night I was in Sylhet, visiting my sister and her husband, along with my father and two other sisters. In Sylhet that night we could have no idea that Dhaka had become the scene of carnage or that our family, friends, and acquaintances were in the greatest of danger. It was only next morning, waking up to discover that Sylhet town was under curfew, and listening to Indian radio and the BBC, that we began to have an inkling of how devastated Dhaka had become in a night and in how much jeopardy our loved ones were.
Throughout the next week we alternated between a feeling of joy at the knowledge that Bengalis were fighting back and a foreboding that a grievous wound had been inflicted on us. We were elated by Major Zia’s declaration on the radio about independence and the reports of resistance everywhere; we were depressed by the news items transmitted in the air waves about Dhaka as a city that had been flattened by heavy weapons and was still burning. Since, our house was close to Farmgate, we were full of anxiety: had my mother and the sister we had left behind survived the mass slaughter of Dhakaites that was being narrated everywhere except on Radio Pakistan?
After a few days my father decided that he had had enough of waiting and uncertainty; he and I would head for Dhaka and determine for ourselves the fate of my mother and sister. My brother-in-law and three other sisters would remain in what seemed the relative safety of Sylhet. Little did we realise as we left them on a day in early April the hardship and suffering they would go through in the next few months, fleeing from tea garden to tea garden and even to the safety of Tripura[3] to escape the pillaging Pakistani army. Only after we were reunited with them in Dhaka in July did we get to know of their travails as they attempted to evade the marauding forces.
The trip to Dhaka was a tense and an unforgettable one. A few images are etched in my memory vividly: driving through the tea gardens, we saw tea garden workers with bows and arrows, determination wrought on their faces. In Brahmanbaria, we heard gripping stories of the confrontations that had taken place in Comilla and saw the intense preparations being taken in the town itself to resist the Pakistani onslaught. But the most vivid memory of the journey are the scenes of mass exodus we witnessed as we neared Dhaka: men, women, and children on foot or on rickshaws, looking harrowed, wearily fleeing to village homes from the city to escape genocide. Not a few of the people we met told us not to be so foolhardy as to return to Dhaka.
Thankfully, we managed to reach our Indira Road home without facing any unpleasant situations and found that my mother and sister were safe. But there were troop movements all the time and stories of mass arrests of young men during curfew. The elders of my family decided that I would be safer in my uncle’s house in Dhanmondi than in a house in the Farmgate area.
In the few weeks that I stayed in Dhanmondi I managed to get in touch with some of my friends. The news they told me was horrifying: Dr. Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, my tutorial teacher, and the man who first made me feel that I had the sensitivity to be a student of Shakespeare, and who went beyond his role as a tutor to talk to me about his passion for radical humanism, as well as Mr. Rashidul Hasan, who taught us Blake and was as humble and meek as some of the denizens of The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, had been brutally murdered. More horror stories: one of my school friends, Arun Chowdhury, and his father, could no longer be traced after they had been abducted from Ranada Prasad Saha’s Narayanganj home along with the millionaire philanthropist; one of my uncle’s in-laws, a Rajshahi University professor, had also disappeared after being picked up by the army; other people that we knew had been shot at or humiliated or hurt. A friend who had joined her family in Bogra had witnessed their house being burned and the family had barely managed to escape with their lives. The whole Bengali nation appeared to be bleeding and bruised.
Nevertheless, no one felt defeated and hope still flickered as a candle newly lit and solidly fixed will even in the darkest night. For one thing, there were the daily broadcasts from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra[4]containing news about Mujibnagar and organised resistance all over the country. Then there was the knowledge that some friends had crossed the border and were receiving training so that they could be inducted into the Mukti Bahini[5]. Everywhere one could view the resentment against the Pakistani army being concentrated to the point when it would rebound upon them.
Eventually, my parents decided that we would take a house in a part of the city which was relatively free from regular army patrolling and I rejoined them in a Central Road flat. But, really, no part of the city was completely safe. One night, to take just one example, the boys of the neighbouring family climbed the wall separating our two houses because the army had raided the house next door and stayed with us till next morning. I still remember how tense we were that night and nervous and indignant.
Gradually, we learned to sleep better and not hear the stray shots that were fired into the night by who knows whom. Inevitably, we adapted to a life lived mostly indoors, listening to the radio or the tape recorder all day, or reading, or playing cards. But we had to be very careful about everything that we did: the radio had to be toned down, books with insidious sounding titles not read, and visit to and from friends of our age restricted. Fear of army raids constricted us and forced us to make life a diminished thing. Only my father would go out regularly to spend the day in office or shopping; his greying hair gave him a kind of limited freedom that we could not hope to have.
However, consolations for lives lived under such strained circumstances were not impossible to seek even in those days when we would rarely venture into natural light. By June, bombs which were beginning to explode at regular intervals all over the city announced loudly to us that the Bengali capacity to resist, far from being diminished, had transformed itself in spectacular fashion. My father told us one day that he was one of many people who had been donating money for freedom fighters who were now infiltrating into the city in large numbers. In July and August, the Mukti Bahini activity in Dhaka intensified and I even met a few of them. Also, every once in a while, a close friend suddenly disappeared from Dhaka and those of us who still remained in the city still unsure of what we should do talked about his decision to join the freedom struggle and his daring with a mixture of admiration and envy.
Of course, we knew that the life of a freedom fighter was far from a glamorous one, and full of risks. Exactly how hazardous their life could be was driven home to us when in late August a number of them were caught and murdered. Because we knew a few of these valiant fighters personally or by name, for some time, indeed for perhaps the only time that year, we felt depressed and shaken. But another few weeks and many amongst us roused ourselves and felt hopeful again. True, there had been a setback and some of the muktis[6]who had become legendary in a short time because of their exploits had been killed or imprisoned, but September showed that the spirit of resistance was very much alive.
Explosions could once again be heard in and around Dhaka and were signs to us of the vigour and irrepressible nature of our freedom fighters. By October, Swadhin Bangla[7]Radio broadcasts regularly reassured us that there were advances being made on the diplomatic front by our government-in-exile and that on the battlefield our reconstituted Bangladesh army were beginning to engage the Pakistani forces and defeat and demoralise them.
By early November, Nasim Mohsin, my best friend at that time, decided that it was time for him to join the freedom fighters and that the moment for a decisive assault on the Pakistani army was near. I was with him when he contacted some local muktis about crossing over to training camps in Tripura. They told him that the borders were already the site of daily skirmishes and that he should postpone the journey for a while till they could confirm a safe crossing. Desperate to become part of the freedom struggle, Nasim ignored their advice and our pleas to be patient and left us, never to be seen again. Much later, we were to discover that he had been captured by collaborators of the Pakistani army in a village in the Comilla border. They then handed him over to the local Pakistani troops who summarily shot him.
Late November and our excitement grew: the Bangladesh army was no longer content with skirmishes and raids and was now attacking the Pakistanis frontally. By late November war looked inevitable as desperate Pakistani tactics drew India into the campaign. Finally, on the night of December 3, the Dhaka night sky was spectacularly lit by tracer bullets and then invaded by Indian bombers targeting military installations. The next day all of us were on roof-tops watching dog-fights and cheering Indian jets attacking the airport and the cantonment, oblivious to the danger from shrapnel and debris from shattered planes.
Over the next two weeks, our joy grew by the hour, for every Swadhin Bangla Radio broadcast or Indian radio bulletin informed us of Pakistani reverses and detailed advances made by the liberation forces. In our enthusiasm we did not realise that we were going through dangerous times in the capital city as the Pakistani army and its collaborators, their backs against the wall, were becoming more and more vicious. It was only later that we discovered that the brother of a friend who had joined the freedom fighters had been picked up by the Pakistani army during this time and would disappear from our sights forever. And as the liberation forces closed in on Dhaka, rumours spread of youths and prominent people being abducted. Undoubtedly, the scariest memory I have from this period is of a Pakistani plane droning one night, which we knew had dropped bombs on an orphanage the previous night in a bid to discredit the Indian Air Force. It was a moment when we felt totally vulnerable and at the mercy of forces whose reason had become warped to the extent that they could indulge in mass destruction of innocents merely to smear India in the eyes of the world.
Nothing the vicious Pakistani military/propaganda machine could do, however, could thwart the logic of history and prevent liberation, and by December 15 we were hearing the booming of artillery in and around Dhaka. On December 16, we headed for the Ramna Race Course area because we heard that a surrender ceremony was scheduled there in the afternoon.
But we could only go as far as the Hotel InterContinental, where we got caught in a cross-fire. A friend who was with me got slightly hurt as a splinter from a bullet pierced his leg. We took him to his house and then scattered, telling ourselves that we had not survived nine months of occupation only to get killed at the moment of liberation. But by evening we were out in the streets celebrating with muktis, among whom I could see at least one close friend, firing his Sten gun into the air. The year of living dangerously was ending, and the time for unmitigated hope had finally come to stay with us, at least for a while!
Ramakrishna Mission Durga Puja, Dhaka. From Public Domain
The very first time I heard Shah Abdul Karim’s [1]heart-stirring song “Age Ki Shundor Din Kataitam[2]”, I was transported to my childhood years in Dhaka’s Ramakrishna Mission Road, where we revelled during Durga Puja. Karim remembers lyrically “how happily” he and other village youths would spend their childhood days, “Hindus and Muslims/Singing Baul and Ghetu songs all together.” Karim’s song always strikes a responsive note in my heart because I recall how joyously my friends—whether Muslim or Hindu—and my family members would spend the Puja days every year in our Ramakrishna Misson Road paara or neighbourhood. Although my memories of those days have dimmed considerably by now, one thing I still remember clearly is this: after the two Eids, Durga Puja was the most important festival to light up our young lives then. Alas, those days are gone, not only for me, but for most people growing up in a paara in Dhaka.
One explanation for the spontaneity with which we would participate in the Ramakrishna Mission Puja festivities was demography. Our paara consisted mostly of Muslims but also of not a few Hindus. Our nearest neighbours, for instance, were two Hindu families. True, the events leading to 1947 Partition had created a divide of sorts between people speaking the same language but belonging to different religions, yet, on most occasions, we interacted freely with each other. Every day we would hear the ululations linked to prayers in our Hindu neighbour’s house just as they would listen to the azaan[3] drift into their homes five times a day from our neighbourhood mosques (sans loudspeakers!), summoning the faithful to join the congregation. On Puja days, they would send us prasads[4] and we too would share sweets our mothers would cook for our religious festivals with them. Pakistan was very much a state built around one religion, but do I deceive myself or were ordinary people much more secular and much less bigoted then?
Another reason for the ease with which we moved in and out of Ramkrishna Mission stemmed no doubt from the attitudes of the people who directed Ramkrishna Mission. Much like the Catholic American missionaries who ran the school and college where I would get my basic education, the saffron-clad men of this mission were always tolerant of paara children irrespective of their religion. We were allowed to play football in the Mission field, bathe in its pond for hours, pick the bokul flowers from its trees or while they were strewn in the shades, chat for hours on its lawn, or read in its reading room. Occasionally, one of the missionaries who would spend most of their time meditating or leading prayers for Hindus, would even drop in for a chat with my parents, both devout Muslims but very pleased to have others in our midst. Sure, there were limits even then, for we would not go inside Hindu prayer rooms, and our Hindu friends would never disturb us during our prayer times, but open-mindedness and forbearance ensured that most of the spaces we lived in in our community were shared ones.
Dhakkis or drummers performing. From Public domain
In any case, Durga Puja in Ramkrishna Mission was the most memorable experience of another religion I have ever had. The moment we would hear the tak dum tak dum of the drums pervade the spaces of our neighbourhood in the mostly warm but occasionally hot and humid end-autumnal days full of fleecy clouds in nearly always blue skies, our hearts would flutter. Those thrumming, magical beats announced unmistakably that the time for another fun-filled Saradiya[5]Puja week had come! The dhakkis or drummers, I do believe, were our Pied Pipers, for we would sprint like the spellbound children of Hamlin then to the open field in front of the mission prayer hall the moment we heard them. We would find them there pounding away on their drums, swaying and smiling and showing off their skills on those ponderous-seeming but colourfully decorated and deep-echoing dhols!
The whole of Ramkrishna Mission became a spectacle of sights, smells, and sounds for the next few days. No matter where or when we went to the Mission during the festival, we would experience a riot of colours, a medley of sounds, and a range of flavours that made the Durga Puja days[6] unforgettable. During Durga Puja, Ramkrishna Mission was truly in the carnivalesque mode, for there was an unmistakable mela or fair-like quality to it.
Hindu men and women would come dressed in their fineries, the married women glowing because of their vermillion smeared-foreheads and multi-coloured saris, the men looking happy and yet self-conscious in their bright but heavily-starched new dhotis[7], and the children beaming and giggling because of anything and everything. We too would dress up for the occasion because, whether Hindu or Muslim, this was an occasion to meet people, mingle, chat, display and (for the boys) ogle.
Playing ManjirasBlowing the Conch shellFrom Public Domain
The sound of the drums would merge with the tinkle of manjiras[8], the chiming of bells, the unique note coming from conch shells, the ululation of women, the chanting of the mysterious but solemn-sounding Sanskrit prayers and the incessant chatter of not quite focused devotees. Indeed, there was a constant buzz in the Mission compound every day from mid-morning till late in the evening. In the Mission field, hawkers would sell hot and spicy pickles and chutneys, delectable sweet and/or sour savouries, and flavoured and syrupy drinks. At times the missionaries and volunteers would serve watery but delicious labra khichuri to anyone who cared to line up and eat from the plantain leaves. The smell of the different food items sold through the day would blend with the smoke and scent of the ceremonial dhups or incense lighted for the occasion. The press of the crowd, the feeling of excitement exuded by the people who sat to watch events or wander from place to place, and the assorted Bangla dialects heard all around us created a matchless mix.
But of course, Puja was mainly a holy occasion for the Hindus of the city. While we Muslim children did not understand a lot of what went on and were often mystified by the seemingly endless cycle of rituals, there was much to keep us absorbed in at least a few of the religious events. At the centre of the Puja, undoubtedly, were the idols built for the occasion. They are traditionally unveiled on the sixth day of the moon and placed on a pandal, a temporary structure erected for the veneration of the goddess Durga. Even if we did not know the import of all that we saw, who could not but be overwhelmed by the centrepiece, the resplendent goddess, ten weapons in her ten hands, a benign smile on her face, glowing in light golden colours, draped in a flaming red sari, standing on her lion mount, taming the demon Mahisasur.
Also awe-inspiring were the attendant deities (how “filmy” are the idols made now!). We were captivated by the welcoming melodies of “agamoni” and intrigued by the “Chandipat[9]” or reading from the Hindu scriptures. Day and night we were captivated by the rituals of anjali as the deity was offered flowers and prayers.
For most of us, one of the more fascinating moments of Durga Puja came on the ninth day, when a little girl was made the kumari, symbol of pristine beauty. But the climactic event was the immersion of the deity in the mission pond on the last day. From the morning of this day we would witness intense activity. First, devotees would begin preparations to move the deity, then the pandal would be carried to the pond to the sound of ululations, and finally the Durga would be immersed in the pond water to chants affirming her victory and predicting her triumphant return the next year.
The Durga Puja days mesmerised all of us in the paara in many other ways. For instance, the dhaakis seemed to punctuate the days and nights of the Puja week with aarati[10]and ritual dances, gyrating and drumming with abandon and delighting us children. In the evenings, kirtans or devotional songs absorbed older people who were content to muse to musical tunes even in the middle of a crowd. But what fascinated most people young or old was the jatra[11] that was staged in any one of these evenings. Like the morality plays that I would read about later in my English Studies when studying the history of the theatre of Elizabethan England, this folk genre had angels and demons, characters like Vice and Conscience, music and dance, pathos and farce. In short, it was made out of a recipe guaranteed to please. Its plot, typically taken from an episode of a Hindu epic, was of the kind that would keep children as well as adults spellbound.
Jatra performed on an open (often makeshift)stage with the audience sitting all around it. From Public Domain
All in all, Durga Puja was a truly enthralling and synaesthetic experience; no wonder our senses were satiated by the end of the Puja week! The most important thing, I now realise, was that for nearly a week our paara came alive and we became part of a carnival that went on for days. And in the process our neighbourhood managed to come somewhat closer, for this was one religious occasion where differences were overcome to a great extent.
In 1967, my family moved from Ramakrishna Mission Road to another part of Dhaka and I have never been to another Durga Puja held there since then. But by 1965, a change had already come over our paara. The India-Pakistan war of 1965 had widened the rift created by Partition, a rift that seemed to have been bridged to a great extent in our neighbourhood. A few of our Hindu neighbours left for India after the war. The rest, I know from subsequent visits, have migrated to India over the decades. The Ramkrishna Mission Puja, I hear, is still a huge event, but I doubt very much if the whole neighbourhood comes alive during puja week like it did when I was there.
Will coming generations in our part of the world ever rediscover the joy that comes from knowing that despite different beliefs, people can participate spontaneously in each other’s festivals and even delight in them fully? In 1985, after six years spent in Canada, I remember walking past a Durga Puja pandal in Khulna with a nephew. I asked him, “Have you ever gone inside and enjoyed the puja festivities?”
“No,” he said, “there is a smell that comes from the dhup that they use that I can’t stand. Besides, we aren’t supposed to!” It was a moment that first made me realise that the dream of a secular, tolerant, humane Bangladesh had received a jolt in the years that I had been away. Subsequent events have been even more upsetting for those of us who believe in the values encapsulated in that part of our original (1972) constitution that was later “amended”. It is thus that Shah Abdul Karim’s song has so much resonance for me that every time I hear it, I keep thinking of the Durga Puja celebrations in Ramakrishna Mission that I had been part of once upon a time: “How happily once we village youths/ Would spend our days, Hindus and Muslims/…./ I keep thinking: we’ll never be happy like then/ Though I once believed happiness was forever/ Day by day things get worse and worse.”
(Published in Daily Star on October 20, 2007)
[1] Shah Abdul Karim (1916-2009) was a baul musician of note.
Nazrul’s Shukno Patar Nupur Paye(with ankle bells of dried leaves) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam
Bokul or MedlarChapa or Champaka flowersFrom Public Domain
With ankle bells of dried leaves The wild wind dances away. Making waves sparkle and sway, The wild wind goes on its way. At the pond’s heart, lotus flowers collect. Bokul and Chapa buds lie strewn. Restless waterfalls stream and sparkle. As she darts across the field, Taking off her wildflower ornaments And unfurling her unruly hair at the sky The crazy dust-covered woman keeps dancing. Like an Iranian child in a frontier world Treading desert spaces, she enthrals all Fair-complexioned, sand-coloured ornaments Draping her body, she comes darting!
Nazrul’s song performed in Bengali by legendary singer, Feroza Begum (1930-2014)
Nazrul’s lyrics transcreated by Professor Fakrul Alam
Roomu Jhoomu Roomu Jhoomu
Roomo Jhoomo Roomo Jhoomo—anklet bells sound. Addicted to dancing, bangles jingle jangle to that beat. The dresses’ borders keep swaying in the restless wind. Who could be moving with such wantonly dancing feet? Stranger though she is and so close to the riverbank I think I know this dancer on the move. Her movements Fill this heart of mine. Her swan or peacock-like steps Cast a spell, like a mirage in a desert will. With her smile She even enchants the forest deer. Her big eyes dance, Making the sea waves lilt. Forests in the high hills sway, Sway away to the beat and music of her dancing feet.
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Ghumaite Dao Shranto Robi Re (Let Robi Sleep in Peace) was written by Nazrul in 1941 for Tagore, when he died. It has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam …
Tagore takes his leave on August 7, 1941. Photo from Public Domain
Let the spent Robi sleep on. Please, please don’t try to wake him up. Let not the one who spread light all his life Be awakened; don’t disturb his sleep. Let the one who gave light and delighted thousands, And has now collapsed at mother earth’s bosom, Be ritually smeared with sandal paste on his forehead; Don’t redden his face by weeping incessantly! Even at the risk of straining yourself, stretch out your palms To accept the power and the strength he has given you. The departed Sun and Supreme One will enable us to succeed Let the poet sleep on! The departed Sun’s glow will still light up our interiors. So, from within yourself pay him homage every day. Don’t make him weep by shedding continuous tears!
A recording of the first performance of Nazrul’s lyrics in Bengali
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Acche Dukho, Acche Mritu (Sorrow Exists, Death Exists) was written by Tagore when his wife, Mrinalini Devi, died in 1902. His lyrics have been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam.
Photos from Public Domain
Sorrow exists, death too; partings scald as well And yet peace, and yet delight, arise eternally. Life goes on; the sun, moon and stars keep smiling! Spring comes to gardens singing varied tunes. Waves scatter and fling themselves up again. Where old flowers shed, new flowers blossom. Overall, there’s no decay, no lasting misery, And in such fullness the mind seeks solace
A rendition of Tagore’s song by the legendary Debabrata Biswas (1911-1980)
Nur Jahan, Nur Jahan, Floating down a river you came To a land full of clouds A land of gardens—Iran! You had your plate filled With Nargis flowers, poppies and roses And had brought them all along. You brought as well legends Of Shirin and Farhad and Shiraz. With your graceful and slim self came Bulbuli, Dilruba and Rabab’s songs. Your love healed even Emperor Salim’s lunacy! You daubed sandalwood paste on yourself And bore the stigma in front of everyone -- A stigma the moon bears in the blue sky Smilingly. It’s what is written in lovers’ tales. I’ll ensure that it ambles along pathways Forever, questing for love’s pleasures, Despite any infamy linked to the affair.
Jahangir(Prince Salim) and his beloved empress, Nur Jahan
Nazrul’s Nur Jahan sun by the legendary Feroza Begum
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Projapoti or Butterfly by Nazrul, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam
Projapoti! Projapoti!
Butterfly, dear butterfly, From where did you get such colourful wings? Wings flaming red and blue, Such sparkling, wavy wings! I see you getting drunk sipping the honey of wildflowers. Be my friend; share some of the liquor with me. Lend me your pollen-tinted golden-silvery wings as well. My mind doesn’t like the idea of going to school anymore. Butterfly, dear butterfly—please, please take me along As your companion. You dance in the wind as you go… This day, why not share your delight with me too? I don’t want to wear the dress I have on anymore. Let me wear your flaming, sparkling dress from now on!
A rendition of the song in Bengali by a legendary singer, Feroza Begum (1930-2014)
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
