Tag: English

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Stories

After the Gherkin

Deborah Blenkhorn

A Mrs Tadpole Mystery by Deborah Blenkhorn

Parry Lines was an ordinary fellow, so much so that even his friends couldn’t be bothered to find out his actual name and were content to call him “Parallel,” his nickname since childhood.  Regular, indeed nondescript features were surmounted by his trademark bald pate; the most you could say was that occasionally he wore a bright plaid shirt in neon pastels to liven things up a bit.

Ten weeks A.G. (After Gherkin)

Yet his death (by gherkin) caused a butterfly effect that changed the world.  Until the incident with the gherkin, the most notable thing that had ever happened to Parry was when his surprisingly dashing teenaged son had consumed an entire teacup full of gravy during Thanksgiving dinner.  Honoured guests had watched in horror as Parry Jr. (PJ for short), notable for his twinkling hazel eyes and flowing chestnut hair, gulped down the rich, brown fluid–though they should have expected something of the kind when he poured the gravy from the pitcher on the table into the China cup ready at his place setting for after-dinner tea.

Present at that event, and at the gherkin incident as well, was Mrs. Honoria Tadpole, English professor and amateur sleuth.  Her demure, conservative appearance (she always wore a smart, tailored suit–or at least the best the local thrift shop could provide–and had her silver-blonde hair cut in a perky, short bob) and her self-effacing manner and diminutive (if plump) stature belied the sharpest mind north of California. It would fall to her to unravel the complicated mystery that the local paper dubbed “Gherkingate.” 

Interviewed by the features’ editor, as the criminal trial of the alleged murderer dragged on, Mrs. Tadpole was asked the inevitable question of how it had all started. The interview took place in Mrs. Tadpole’s well-appointed parlour, a room replete with Victorian bric-a-brac.  With characteristic hospitality, she poured out a strong brew of  BC Bold to accompany the delicate sandwiches (ham, egg, and cucumber) and homemade oatmeal cookies that were her signature “high tea,” known to local islanders as a four o’clock tradition at the old manse where Mrs. Tadpole rented a small suite.

“Now, Mrs. Catchpole, I understand you were part of the original party that travelled to Moany Bay,” the interviewer began.

“Tadpole,” Mrs. Tadpole corrected.  A veteran instructor of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, she was used to misspellings and mispronunciations. Marpole, Rumpole, Toadpole: she had heard and seen it all, and could make the necessary correction without even flinching anymore.  She cast her mind back almost three months to a mid-summer weekend off British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

She began with an allusion to classic culture: “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”

Sadly, the features’ editor of the Island Gleaner failed to catch the reference to Gilligan’s Island, one of the best sit-coms of the 1960s.  Mrs. Tadpole had been a toddler when the series was first aired, but its popularity throughout her childhood made it a touchstone for, really, almost everything in life, according to her observations.  She knew that some people accorded such a status to the iconic, original Star Trek, but what did Captain Kirk have that “the Skipper” did not?  Not much, thought Mrs. Tadpole.

The premise of Gilligan’s Island was classic: a small number of people, randomly-assorted, stranded on an island together with no real prospect of deliverance.  After all, wasn’t that just the paradigm of human existence?  You didn’t need to be an English proffessor (though Mrs. Tadpole was one, of course) to figure that out. 

That fateful weekend, when the seeds of the gherkin incident was sown, had been rife with undertones of Gilligan’s Isle.

Breathing deeply of the fresh Pacific breeze, the passengers sat out on the deck of the vessel as it hugged the rugged BC coastline. The rushing water behind the Skirmish flumed out into a fan of spray, while the murky depths offshore spat out seals and sealions–even the occasional humpback whale–with random irregularity.  Black bears hid among the rocks and evergreens in the uninhabited areas; cabins dotted the beaches in the populated areas of cottage country.  On the way up the coast, the party of friends and family had composed their own version of the theme song, with each member of the group assigned to a role from the original cast.  Mrs. Tadpole was the Professor, of course.  Never mind that the community college where Mrs. Tadpole worked had opted not to accord academic titles to their teachers, or that the original Professor in the TV series was a man.  (As Mrs. Tadpole had been known to say to her first-year college students, we live in a post-gender, post-glass-ceiling world. And if we don’t, we should).

Aboard the Bayliner, Skirmish, Parry Lines was the Skipper, and his hapless, gravy-drinking son was typecast as the irrepressible Gilligan, full of mischief and ridiculous ideas. Mrs. Tadpole could only hope that her adorable niece, Mary Anne (same name as her Gilligan’s Island counterpart!), was immune to his sauce-swilling charms.

The Millionaire role was assumed by the reclusive entrepreneur Deadhead, Mickey Garcia (if that were in fact his real name), accompanied by his charming wife, Penelope, a voluptuous brunette. Together they had built an empire founded on tribute bands and biopics.  The rumour mill had it that there was trouble in paradise, but no one outside his immediate family had seen Mickey for years, so it was difficult to substantiate the gossip.

The cast was fleshed out (so to speak) with a bona fide movie star, the internet sensation who began as one of the central figures in a YouTube series called Project Man Child (“For the price of a cup of coffee… you can buy this underemployed househusband a cup of coffee!”) and had gone on to a viral barrage of TikToks under the sobriquet of “The Naked Gardener”.  Mrs. Tadpole was relieved (as no doubt were the others) to note that all the passengers aboard the Skirmish, including this one, appeared to be fully clothed. 

At least, all whom she could see wore conventional travelling attire:  Mr Garcia, recovering from surgery and groggy with heavy opiates, was shrouded in a blanket and wearing dark glasses. He slumped a little to the side, and his heavy breathing attested to a well-earned reputation for napping as a pretense in order to ignore his surroundings.

As Mrs Tadpole later told the Gleaner interviewer, the real concern of the trip quickly emerged: not the rapprochement of Mary Anne and Parallel Jr., but the burgeoning, even violent antagonism between Parry Sr. and Penelope Garcia, whom the latter insisted on calling “Cherry” with a suggestive leer while her husband languished in his bunk.  “Is he grateful? Or just dead?” quipped Lines. One night, Penelope went so far as to brandish a knife in Lines’ general direction and had to be restrained by Mrs Tadpole and Mary Anne in tandem.

Although Madame Garcia was the only one to meet his taunts with open animosity, no one was spared the self-proclaimed wit of Parallel Lines.

He had the nerve to call Mrs Tadpole’s beloved niece, whose sunny disposition was outshone only by the sweet, fair face that perched above her perfect figure, “Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary” –nothing could have been further from the truth!  Of course, Mary Anne merely smiled and shrugged it off, as if no insult could penetrate her cheerful exterior … but others were less armour-clad.

The bully referred mercilessly to the Naked Gardener as “Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef” (whom he slightly resembled) a slur that obviously got under the man’s skin (“I couldn’t boil an egg to save my life!” he protested angrily.  “That’s not my brand at all! He’d better watch his back…”).

Even Mrs. Tadpole (surprisingly resilient after having been bullied through her shy youth as resembling a chubby little toad) came in for her share of abuse, rechristened as “Mrs Toad” after making her one of specialties, toad-in-the-hole, for her shipmates. (Once she discovered that the galley of the Bayliner was stocked with a potato ricer and La Ratte potatoes, there was no holding her back.  A ring of caramelized onions surrounded each serving dish, with two nut-brown sausage-ends sticking out of the centre, for all the world like a couple of froggy eyes.) “No one calls me Toad,” she intoned ominously.

Cruelly and unaccountably, Parallel Lines saved his worst tirade for his own son.  Recalling that terrible moment of youthful folly, that mind-gripping shame that only time could heal, the father saluted the son like a champion hog-caller summoning his prize sow. “Sooooo-Eeeeee! Want some gravy with that?” Alternatively, he would break into song to the tune of ‘Hey, Jude’:

"Au jus,
Just make it fat,
Take some gravy
And make it wetter..."

It was pitiful to see the boy’s response, especially in front of Mary Anne. His pale face was suffused with a ruddy glow beneath his chestnut fringe, and hot, angry tears rose in his sensitive, hazel eyes.

“I’ll kill him,” PJ muttered under his breath.

And now the tranquil Mary Anne, who couldn’t have cared less about any vitriol directed her way, was at last roused to fury in defense of her maligned and helpless friend.  “I’ll do it for you!” she offered.  “By G—!”

Two Hours B.G. (Before Gherkin)

Suffice it to say, no one was all that distressed when Parallel Lines failed to return to the Skirmish after an afternoon in the seaside village of Egmont (pronounced with an “egg” and not an “edge”).

Penelope had steered Mickey off in a collapsable wheelchair they had stowed on the boat; “the millionaire and his wife” were off for lunch al fresco, heading for a picnic table in an accessible, though private, spot.  Roast beef sandwiches and condiments, along with champagne and a couple of plastic flutes, had been assembled into a decorative yet sturdy straw basket which the amazon-like Penelope slung easily over one arm as she manouevred the wheelchair down the forest path.

The movie star had gone in search of Egmont’s famous cream cheese cinnamon buns, hoping to be recognised at the Forest Cafe by someone who would do a double take and exclaim, “Hey!  Wait!  Aren’t you that man child?”

Mrs Tadpole and her niece decided to go for a refreshing swim in the brisk waters of the bay, washing off the grime of shipboard life before stopping at the Village Green Room for a bowl of veggie curry soup and some fresh, hot rolls.

As for PJ, he declared himself too upset to leave the Skirmish, and was hoping to curl up with a graphic novel, a diet soda, and a bag of Doritos, to forget all his cares for a few hours while the rest of the party looked around Egmont Village.

But where was Parallel? It was time to cast off. If they didn’t leave soon, they wouldn’t make it to the Coastal Lodge before dark.  And–not to mention–P. Lines was the skipper!

“I’m perfectly capable of getting us there,” insisted PJ, fortified by his power nap.  “I’ll bet you anything, dad’s holed up at the Drifter Pub, and he’ll crash at the hotel there. I’m sure he’s as tired of us as we are of him.  Let’s just go.  We’ll all have cooled off by tomorrow morning, and I’ll swing back and get him then, bring him up to the Lodge for the rest of the weekend.”

The plan sounded good, and all agreed to it willingly.  Off they set for the rustic cabin someone had dubbed the Coastal Lodge in hopes (quite justified, as it turned out) of charging a tidy sum in AirBnB rates.  Never mind that it featured a remote outhouse and a camp kitchen; the setting was beyond beautiful, and the (now) congenial group looked forward to beach and forest walks, blazing bonfires, and midnight swims.  Mrs Tadpole insisted on taking charge of the outdoor kitchen: she had brought the ingredients for her famous moussaka and looked forward to the challenge of cooking it in a casserole dish on the barbecue.  PJ and Maryanne diced feta, tomatoes, onions and cucumbers for a Greek salad, while the movie star tried in vain to get a cell signal and the millionaires played cribbage by the big bay window in the cabin. 

Parallel Lines could cool his heels at the Drifter until morning, thought PJ and crew.

G.T. (Gherkin Time)

“So,” said Mrs. Tadpole to her interviewer, “Can you guess who did it?”

“Uh,” said the Features editor.  “Nope.”

“I’ll give you a hint: don’t ask who was the perpetrator. Ask who was the victim!”

“Well, that would be Mr. Lines, would it not?”

“Would it?  What if the wheelchair-bound invalid, Mr. Garcia, was really Parallel Lines in disguise?”

“But–”

“He was wrapped in a blanket, wearing dark glasses and a mask, slumped in his chair.  And there was a switcheroo.”

“A what?”

“A switch.  In the forest.”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered. Why haven’t you said anything?”

“Blackmail.”

“You’re blackmailing the unlikely lovers? Parry Lines and Madame G?”

“No, they’ve been blackmailing me.  But it’s time to come out. My trans-formation is at hand!”

“Mrs Tadpole!  What a story for the Gleaner–and for the world!  May I be the first to congratulate you?”

“You may.”        


Deborah Blenkhorn is a poet, essayist, and storyteller living in Canada’s Pacific Northwest.  Her work fuses memoir and imagination, and has been featured in over 40 literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Brazil, India, and Indonesia.

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Categories
Poetry

Endlessly Lost by Rex Tan

Rex Tan
endlessly lost

again, I’m at a loss 

lost in the rain 

lost in the chain of burnt cigarettes 

lost in the lines of empty verses

lost in the torn pages of calendars

lost at the day’s end


only to remember — there’s still tomorrow

Rex Tan is a journalist by trade and a poet at heart. As a Malaysian, he is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Malay yet calls none his first language.

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Categories
Review

To Lhasa, with Love

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Old Lhasa: A Biography

Author: M.A. Aldrich

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Book

“Contrary to common perceptions, Lhasa is not forbidden to outsiders” – M.A.Aldrich

Old Lhasa: A Biography, (a revised edition published in 2025 for the South Asian market of a book originally published in 2023), is a voluminous 615-page book that combines historical research, travel writing, religion, and culture to offer a comprehensive account of Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet. The author, M. A. Aldrich, is a lawyer who has lived and worked in Asia since the 1990s and had earlier published books on cities like Peking and Ulaanbaatar. Written on the basis of his multiple trips to Lhasa and its surroundings (the last one as late as September 2024), he is happy to discover that Old Lhasa has stood the test of time and still accurately captures the sight, sounds, and feelings of the city and foreigners can wander about freely without a minder so long as their papers are in order. As this book slowly emerged, it grew into both a portrait of the history and culture of that city as well as a serviceable guidebook for readers who are able to go to Tibet when political and regulatory circumstances permit.

Aldrich paints an intricate portrait of Lhasa, a storied city and its history, by giving us the evolution of how the Tibetan script came to be, with inspiration from ancient India and at the same time livens up the narrative with humorous anecdotes, interesting legends and charming fables that makes this book blend many genres into one. Divided into 49 chapters and enriched with several maps and black and white photographs, the chronological narration rightfully begins with the first chapter titled ‘Prelude to Lhasa’ where we are told that with Lhasa as the geographical focal point of their faith, Tibetans believe the dharma[1] has always been connected to their country. He begins the journey in the seventh century during the final moments of the life of Buddha, mentions specific Buddhist virtues such as compassion, wisdom, and benevolent power, among other essential qualities for the path to awakening. For Tibetan followers of the dharma, the history of Tibet is the history of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, which is simultaneously woven into the story of Lhasa.

In the 1920s, when Tibet enjoyed its greatest freedom from outside interference in the modern era, Lhasa had a population of only around twenty-five thousand. It was divided into two districts: one that is now the Old Town, with its seventh-century Jokhang Temple (or, more simply, the “Jokhang,” meaning the “House of the Lord”) at its centre; and the other being Shol Village, which is at the foot of Marpo Ri (Red Mountain). These administrative districts were divided by a north-south boundary that ran through the Turquoise Bridge, another structure dating to the seventh century. The Old Town was not much larger than two- or three-square kilometers, while Shol was even tinier. The residents of Lhasa at that time took immense pride in the religious heritage of their city. Nearly every luminary in Tibetan history had come to Lhasa because of the importance of the Jokhang as the focal point from which Tibetan civilization evolved and expanded. No other city could rival it.

Lhasa grew organically outward in concentric circles. Around 1160, a monk built the Nangkhor, a pilgrim’s circuit (korlam) directly adjacent to the inner sanctum of the Jokhang, so that devotees could practice the religious ritual of circumambulation. It is from this kernel that the boundaries of Old Lhasa came into existence. By the 14th century, Lhasa was enclosed within the Barkhor, a kilometre-long korlam circling the temple and a monastery among other buildings. By the 1650s, Lhasa’s outer limits had been expanded to the Lingkhor, a ten-kilometre pilgrimage route. And so, the boundaries of the city remained until recently.

Lhasa’s significance also drew heavily upon the nearby presence of government buildings and monastic sects of learning. The Potala Palace, with its superb representation of Tibetan architecture, is a massive and dazzlingly beautiful fortress-like monastery that had been the residence of the Dalai Lama and the seat of the Tibetan government since 1648. Three monasteries outside the city were centres of the so-called Yellow Hat or Gelukpa School of Tibetan Buddhism, preserving a venerable tradition of scholasticism and monastic training that had been imported to Tibet from the universities at Nalanda, Odantapuri and Vikramshila in Northern India. Daily life in early 20th century Lhasa was mostly grounded in religion for both the laity as well as the clergy. The Lhasa calendar year revolved around a sequence of religious festivals that tracked the flow of one month into another in a never-ending cycle of faith and devotion. Though religion permeated society, Lhasa was not an “other-worldly” place. In 1951, when the People’s Liberation Army marched into Lhasa behind portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Liu Shaoqi, the days of the city with its self-administered culture were numbered. During the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, the Chinese Communist Party reacted to the civil unrest as if Tibet should be taught a lesson. The Party continues to do so despite brief intermittent periods of slightly relaxed policies. Though Chinese modernity has been imported wholesale into Lhasa, the author opines that Old Lhasa is still there in its people who maintain their centuries-old faith and customs. One just needs to know where and how to look.

In the Prologue, Aldrich had confessed that this is not a “serious book” about Lhasa as the term is understood within the narrow confines of modern academia, since its objective is only to share what he had learned about Lhasa with simpaticos. His audience is the general reader or armchair traveller with a basic understanding of the tenets of Buddhism and the broad outlines of Asian history. He does not go into great depth on religious theory, and he hopes his views might also be of interest to Tibetans who have come of age in the diaspora and are curious about what a non-Tibetan thinks of this fabled city. He attempts to avoid the excessive solemnity and despair that attends much writing about Tibet. It is not that he is ignorant of ongoing atrocities and the appallingly cruel policies of the Party, but he has no doubt Tibet will have a renaissance. He opines Tibetans will overcome the current dark cycle just as they have overcome other bleak phases in their history.

In conclusion, it can be said that even after reading it thoroughly and enjoying it, this book as the author rightly states, “will nudge readers to learn more about Tibet and Tibetan culture.” Also, as Dr. Lobsong Sangay, former head of the Tibetan Government in Exile, rightfully mentions in the ‘Foreword’

, “Though the story of Tibet is an ongoing tale of tragedy, it also is a tale of the human spirit and the resilience of the Tibetan people. …this book is a window for seeking genuine access that will help you make meaningful discoveries of your own, whether you are physically travelling through the streets of Lhasa or traveling through the pages of this book far away from Lhasa.”

[1] faith

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Categories
Bhaskar's Corner

‘Language… is a mirror of our moral imagination’

By Bhaskar Parichha

Prof. Sarbeswar Das (1925–2009): A scholar of depth, a teacher of light. Photo Provided by Bhaskar Parichha

In the intellectual history of modern Odisha, Professor Sarbeswar Das stands as one of those rare figures who seamlessly bridged scholarship, ethics, and social commitment. A luminous teacher, an erudite writer, and a quiet Gandhian, his life and work embodied the moral seriousness and intellectual curiosity that marked a generation shaped by the freedom struggle and the promise of a newly independent India.

Born in Sriramchandrapur village in the Puri district of Odisha in 1925, Sarbeswar Das grew up in a milieu where simplicity, discipline, and community values were deeply ingrained. His brilliance shone early—he topped the matriculation examination across Odisha and Bihar, a distinction that foreshadowed a lifetime of academic excellence.

His educational journey took him first to Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, the cradle of higher education in Odisha, where he absorbed the liberal spirit and rigorous intellectual training that the institution was known for. He later studied at Allahabad University, one of India’s foremost centers of learning, before proceeding to the University of Minnesota, for advanced studies in English literature.

His exposure to American academia at a time when few Indian scholars ventured abroad profoundly shaped his intellectual orientation. The years in Minnesota opened to him a new world of thought—modern literary criticism, American fiction, and the philosophy of democratic humanism—all of which left a deep imprint on his teaching and writing in later years.

On returning to India, Das joined the teaching profession, which he would pursue with remarkable dedication and grace for several decades. He served as a professor of English in some of Odisha’s most respected institutions—Christ College (Cuttack), SCS College (Puri), Khallikote College (Berhampur), and Ravenshaw College (Cuttack).

As a teacher, he was known not only for his formidable command of English but also for his clarity of expression, quiet humour, and empathetic engagement with students. He could bring Shakespeare and Emerson alive in the classroom, weaving them into the moral fabric of everyday Indian life. His pioneering initiative was the introduction of American Literature as a formal subject of study in Indian universities, long before it became fashionable to do so.

In an age when English studies in Odisha were largely confined to the British canon, he expanded its horizons by introducing writers like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, and Mark Twain to Indian classrooms.

Das believed that literature must connect with lived experience. He often told his students: “Language is not just a means of expression; it is a mirror of our moral imagination.” This conviction shaped generations of students who went on to become writers, teachers, and civil servants. Among them was the late Ramakanta Rath, later one of Odisha’s most celebrated poets, who fondly remembered Prof. Das as a teacher who inspired intellectual courage and aesthetic sensitivity.

Alongside his teaching, Prof. Das was a prolific writer and scholar. He authored around twenty-five books spanning essays, literary criticism, translations, and reflections on education and society. His writings in English and Odia reveal a mind steeped in both classical and modern traditions. Fluent in English, Odia, and Sanskrit, he was at ease quoting from the Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet in the same breath.

His essays in English reflected on the role of language in education, the cultural responsibility of intellectuals, and the need for moral clarity in modern life. He consistently argued for a vernacular humanism—a belief that English education must not estrange Indian students from their cultural roots but rather help them view their own traditions through a broader, universal lens.

As a principal, he brought administrative efficiency and human warmth to his role. His tenure is remembered for reforms that encouraged academic discipline, faculty collaboration, and student participation. He believed that education was not merely about acquiring degrees but about shaping ethical citizens.

Prof. Das’s intellectual life was inseparable from his moral and civic commitments. As a young man, he participated in the Quit India Movement, aligning himself with the Gandhian values of simplicity, non-violence, and service throughout his life.

Late in life, Prof. Das turned inward to recount his journey in his autobiography, Mo Kahani (My Story), which has since acquired the stature of a modern Odia classic. Spanning eight decades of personal and social history, it offers not only a memoir of a life well-lived but also a vivid ethnography of Odisha across the twentieth century.

In Mo Kahani, he paints rich, affectionate portraits of his family—his parents and sisters, Suruji and Hara Nani—and evokes the rhythms of village life, with its festivals, hierarchies, and hardships. His account of the great famine of 1919, passed down through family memory, is a haunting narrative of suffering and resilience.

The autobiography captures the moral universe of rural Odisha—its compassion, faith, and silent endurance—while chronicling the social changes wrought by modernity, education, and political awakening.

The book transcends personal recollection to become a social document of rare authenticity, preserving the voices and values of an era in transition. Scholars have hailed it as a valuable resource for understanding Odia social and cultural history, as well as a significant contribution to Indian autobiographical writing.

Prof. Sarbeswar Das passed away in 2009 at the age of 84, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual depth and human kindness. Those who knew him remember his calm demeanour, his Gandhian simplicity, and his unwavering belief in the power of education as a moral force. His students and colleagues regarded him not merely as a teacher but as a guide who exemplified integrity and humility in every aspect of life.

His contributions to English literary education in Odisha were transformative. By introducing American literature, promoting cross-cultural study, and insisting on a pedagogy grounded in ethical reflection, he helped modernise the study of English in the state and inspired a generation to approach literature as a bridge between worlds.

Even today, his writings—both critical and autobiographical—continue to speak to the challenges of our times: the search for meaning in education, the reconciliation of global and local cultures, and the enduring need for moral clarity in a rapidly changing world.

In the final measure, Prof. Sarbeswar Das remains not only a scholar and educator but also a moral historian of his age—one who chronicled the soul of Odisha with the sensitivity of a poet and the precision of a teacher. His Mo Kahani endures as his final lesson: that learning is not a mere accumulation of knowledge, but a lifelong practice of understanding, empathy, and truth.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Rohini K.Mukherjee’s Odia Poems

Five poems by Rohini K.Mukherjee have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das

Rohini K.Mukherjee
AT THE MYSTICAL SANCHI 

An unknown voice beckons 
At the early hours of the morning.
Moved by a new surprise
Buddha relapses into meditation.
A crystal dawn, cold as marble,
Is traced 
On his hands and feet
And his eyes and forehead.
Some instant, invisible signal prompts him
To turn on his side and sleep.

After Buddha’s Nirvana,
Calm settles in the valley, slowly.
Thousands of 
Branches and branchlets
Radiate blissful divine light.
The trees too, in a lavish growth,
Spread out everywhere --
From the earth below to the sky above --
And meditate! 


THE EXECUTIONER 

No one could predict 
The next scene. 
But in the one enacted now
The executioner has 
A prominent presence.

The executioner stalks the moon,
 His face hidden in the veil of clouds,
Knife in hand, a gleam of smile 
On a phony face, 
A sharp, keen gaze under the glasses,
Exuding the smell of 
An expensive perfume.

The indistinct footfalls may
Prompt one to flick a look back
 But there would be no one behind
Only clouds clad in midnight blue
Sailing in the sky.
From somewhere far floats in the music  
Of a mountain stream.
 Slowly, sorrow dissipates and a 
 Path opens up for the spring,
 A wonderland of fairies.
In his unguarded moments, 
The knife in the executioner’s grip 
Glitters in the furtive moonlight.   
Any moment that poison-coated knife
Could find the moon’s throat, 
The moon knows that well.
But it forgives,
Because it also knows well
That the executioner cannot 
Hide for long
And will be trapped in 
The moonlit garden of tangled clouds.


THE DEATH OF A HAPPY MAN

One day, the eyes lost sleep
And all the locusts flew away,
  
Not one spectator had guessed 
That one day 
The man will sprawl out on  
On the sea beach sands
Washed away by the waves 
From distant lands. 

The eyes lost sleep one day.
The flock of locusts flew away.

But no one could guess 
The pains, the sobs 
That seared that forlorn soul.

Petals drifted in piles 
To make him a delicate shroud.
The smell of sandalwood came wafting  
In the sea-breeze from the north.
Seagulls flocked around the body,      
Unintimidated by the crowd in the beach,
Drowning the voice of 
The living men there 
With their loud squawks of dissent.  
Ooh! What a long wished-for 
Happy death
On a cool and blissful sea beach!

After the flock of locusts flew away 
Carrying all the dreams back 
On their wicked wings, 
The eyes lost sleep!


ANKLETS OF THE NIGHT 

There is still time for the nightfall.
But the air tinkles with the sound of 
The anklets of the night
 As if someone is retreating from
An ineffectual, moon-washed garden, 
 As if someone from the grave  
Watching the landscape, 
Or someone standing at the riverside
Hums the tune of a departed season,
Or someone hurrying aimlessly away
To escape the approaching dawn. 

It is not yet night,
But the night’s anklets ring.
You are probably returning
To your shelter of old times
In search of a new hope.
Just take a look behind to see 
The painting of a conflicting wind
Fluttering across the courtyard.

It is not yet night
But its anklets begin to jingle in the air.

How cool you appear in your 
Evening chanting of the mantras!
 How calm and steady you are
In the pure fragrance of the descending steps 
As you set out on the journey
Holding your heart on your palm 
Like a burning clay-lamp.
May be when you arrive there
The dawn around you would be sonorous
With the notations of Raga Bhairavi.

There is still time for the nightfall
But the night’s anklets tinkle in the air!


THEY DID NOT COME 

I waited for them, but
They did not come,
I waited all this time in vain, and 
Knowingly, let myself fall a victim 
To the first rays of the sun.
The sun’s whiplash spurred me on
To the jungle. 
It forced me to cut wood 
And tie them in bundles. 
The hunger of the sunset hour
Prodded me back to where 
I had started.
The smell of soaked rice, and the aroma of
Onions and oil 
 Drifted thick in the air of my house.

The sun came in, an intruder, 
Sat by me and watched.
Then it devoured all the food, 
Leaving nothing,
Not even a single dried-up onion-peel.

Because they did not come, 
For me the morning was 
Meaningless in its futility. 
I knew I was never one 
In the list of their ultimate interests
When their tenure of life here ended.

The footfall of the light
Trod easy on my skin.
Days rolled on this way 
In sun and light.
The sun was everywhere, all the time.
Whenever the door opened,
The sun stood there. 
When the meteor came shooting down,
When words rode over 
the waves of sleep to float in the air,
The treacherous sun always appeared.

And for me, there was 
No hope of their coming back.

But, one day as I leapt up in a hurry  
At the Sun’s summon,
I discovered the Sahara Desert
That I believed had 
Remained hidden in my
School Geography book, 
Lying face down all these days 
Under my own hooves!

Rohini Kanta Mukherjee has authored, edited and co-edited several volumes of poetry and short stories in Odia and English. Many of his poems have been translated and published in various Indian languages , broadcast over several stations of All India Radio and Doordarshan . Some of his poems and translations have appeared in Wasafiri, Indian Literature, The Little Magazine , Purvagraha, Samasa among others. He retired as Associate Professor of English, from B.J.B Autonomous College, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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Categories
The Lost Mantras

More Poems by Isa Kamari

Poetry and translation from Malay by Isa Kamari

DAWN

Hey, the morning breaks! 
Hey, the faithful sun! 
Hey, the disappearing dew! 
Hey, the layered air!
The breath desires, 
the soul asks: 
Who do you greet?
Have you pondered, sons of Adam? 
Death awaits, life prolongs. 
Have you realised, progenies of Eve? 
The earth is impregnated and layered by purpose.
The one that you welcome is the morning, 
The one that you coax is the sun, 
The one that you touch gently is the dew, 
The one that you breathe is the air.
The gift of death, 
life fulfilled, 
accompanies the inevitable: 
morning, sun, dew, and air.
A breath dissipates, a soul obliterates. 
Nothingness. Gone.
Hey!

THE FIELD

The green grass is a mother’s heart, 
the velvet of love for her children.
Although stepped upon by mischief and transgression, 
she distils dews of hope 
that her children would grow with the sun.
The earth is the preparation of a father: 
soil and compost for his children 
where character would be rooted. 
Barren or fertile, 
he digs into his responsibility and self-worth, 
as long as the rain nourishes his age.
Grass flowers are the children 
who only know the joy of the wind 
for as long as their dreams 
have not landed on earth 
and kissed the grass.

MOLTEN EARTH 

This moment, 
we’re walking in the rain, 
accompanied by a bluish rainbow 
and red birds with purple blood. 
If they’re heading towards the dais, 
we have yet to embrace the longing.
When the moon is in tears, 
it’s just ill-suited for us to sail 
on the orange henna sea.
In truth, 
we verily love the eagle 
that flies in the desolate morning. 
If not for ravens like you, 
our forest would be infested with rabbits. 
Give us white wings; 
we want to fly with blue birds 
that return to reciprocate love.
We want to taste milk. 
Is it for us only urine, 
the manifestation of love by dogs?
Sound your prayer call in our shacks 
so that our tears 
are not just to bear 
the pain and bitterness 
of a plate of rice.
If your pensiveness is just to reminisce 
the sufferings of night longing for day, 
our tears have flowed 
from the earth’s molten belly, 
which are stepped upon 
by saints like you and them 
who have cast curses 
upon us wretched souls.

POTPOURRI 

The screw pine thrives on damp soil, 
next to the swampy pond. 
It spreads its green in the wild; 
roots clench the earth we tread upon.
The jasmine grows on the lawn, 
marks the boundaries of property. 
Sturdy branches, leaves flourish; 
petals open, greet the clouds.
The sliced screw pine in a receptacle, 
the jasmine blossoms spread on the tray, 
perfume sprinkled to enhance the scent: 
the potpourri of bunga rampai welcomes guests.
The ceremony officiated by the qadi, 
the couple duly married, 
customs and culture celebrated in fragrance, 
religious laws honoured on the dais.
The shaving of the baby’s head, 
first steps on the soil, 
the coffin carried to the grave— 
the potpourri of bunga rampai 
adorns every domain, 
binding firmly entire life’s moments.
Bunga rampai — fresh flower potpourri used in Malay festivities and funerals. From Public Domain.

Isa Kamari has written 12 novels, 3 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 3 music albums, all in Malay. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Indonesian, Jawi, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Azerbaijan and Mandarin. Several of his essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award from Thailand (2006), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (2007), the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009) from the Singapore Malay Language Council, and the Mastera Literary Award (2018) from Brunei Darussalam.

He obtained a BArch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1989, an MPhil (Malay Letters) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD programme at the Academy of Islamic Studies, Univeristi Malaya. His area of research is on the problem of alienation and the practice of firasat (spiritual intuition) in selected Singapore Malay novels.

The Lost Mantras is a collection that blends spirituality, Malay cultural heritage, and universal human experience. First published as part of Menyap Cinta (Love Greetings, 2022, Nuha Books KL), these poems are like a bridge between mysticism and everyday life, where traditional images (betel, jasmine, kris[1], oil lamps, setanjak[2]) are woven with Qur’anic echoes, prayers, and existential questioning. The collection carries a Sufi resonance—always circling back to longing, humility, surrender, and beauty as signs of God. The poems are not only lyrical but also function as cultural memory: they preserve Malay traditions, communal practices, and village life, while situating them in a cosmic framework of faith, sin, and redemption. The use of Malay customs, rituals, and objects is powerful: it asserts that spirituality is not abstract but embedded in heritage. This makes the collection uniquely Southeast Asian despite its universal in appeal.

[1]A dagger

[2] Malay headgear

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Categories
The Lost Mantras

Poems by Isa Kamari

Poetry and translation from Malay by Isa Kamari

THE KING

I bow to you, King.
I bear the torment of your sadness 
in the embrace of my sleep.
May it transform into glad tidings 
for the days of your people.
This exploration is to find your throne, 
which has disappeared from our hearts. 
For my love to you, King.

JASMINES

Earth jasmines, sky jasmines,
a string of jasmines encircles the heart,
jasmines poured with water from the hills, 
jasmines sprinkled by a pinch of compost.
Seven rivers, seven clouds—
rain pelts onto forlorn petals.
Beauty is in the form, 
beauty to the eyes, 
beauty is the hand that tends to the soil, 
beauty is the fingers that caress the leaves, 
beauty is the cut on the arms of the gardener.
The scorching sun, 
the shade from the foliage,
bountiful is the soul of the tree that delivers, 
witness to a life devoted to hard work, 
with the laws of nature as the axis.
Strong roots clench the earth, 
shoots look up high to the sky. 
Stand firmly, the soul sings. 
Blossoms waft fragrant dreams.
Earth jasmines, sky jasmines, 
bloom in the early morning.
Say your prayers, 
introduce yourself.

BETEL LEAVES 

To be at the top 
is to function at the bottom, 
upholding responsibilities and trust, 
strengthening shared roots. 
The fragile branches are free to stretch, 
the green leaves spread wide. 
Wild betel, untouched betel, 
covers the soil, climbs the trellis.
To be at the peak 
in essence is to grow shoots, 
carrying fertile hopes and dreams, 
giving way and space to grow, 
to climb each posting energetically, 
to qualify for the position when seasons change. 
Lofty betels, heavenly betels, 
reach for the stars, greet the clouds.
To be in the ceremonial receptacle 
in essence is to uphold tradition, 
surrendering to the preservation of culture. 
Typically chewed with lime, slicing problems, 
mature-red in speech, 
tracing the lives of roots and shoots. 
Wild betel, untouched betel, lofty betel, 
heavenly betel, courtship betel, customary betel, 
weaving values and the essence of leadership 
entrenched in tradition.

HOME

Free souls wouldn’t be easily bored 
by mentoring and demands, 
for it’s the stable self 
that gives rise to liberation.
And that’s called freedom —
it isn't about release without aims, 
just like city folks, 
released from home or work, 
wander aimlessly at shopping malls, 
seek excitement from novelty and transience.
It isn't that Life doesn’t require variety, 
or it isn't that the soul doesn’t long for fun.
It’s just that we who claim to be free 
are easily entrapped in useless pettiness 
that we spread in the city 
without ever realising 
that we haven’t returned to the doors of our hearts, 
although we’ve stepped afoot 
onto the compound of the house.

Isa Kamari : A foremost Malay writer from Singapore: Photo provided by the poet.

Isa Kamari has written 12 novels, 3 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 3 music albums, all in Malay. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Indonesian, Jawi, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Azerbaijan and Mandarin. Several of his essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award from Thailand (2006), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (2007), the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009) from the Singapore Malay Language Council, and the Mastera Literary Award (2018) from Brunei Darussalam.

He obtained a BArch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1989, an MPhil (Malay Letters) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD programme at the Academy of Islamic Studies, Univeristi Malaya. His area of research is on the problem of alienation and the practice of firasat (spiritual intuition) in selected Singapore Malay novels.

The Lost Mantras is a collection that blends spirituality, Malay cultural heritage, and universal human experience. First published as part of Menyap Cinta (Love Greetings, 2022, Nuha Books KL), these poems are like a bridge between mysticism and everyday life, where traditional images (betel, jasmine, kris[1], oil lamps, setanjak[2]) are woven with Qur’anic echoes, prayers, and existential questioning. The collection carries a Sufi resonance—always circling back to longing, humility, surrender, and beauty as signs of God. The poems are not only lyrical but also function as cultural memory: they preserve Malay traditions, communal practices, and village life, while situating them in a cosmic framework of faith, sin, and redemption. The use of Malay customs, rituals, and objects is powerful: it asserts that spirituality is not abstract but embedded in heritage. This makes the collection uniquely Southeast Asian while still universal in appeal

[1] A dagger

[2] Malay headgear

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Categories
Excerpt

Forever Yours

                                                       

Tite: Forever Yours and Other Poems

Author: Swati Pal

Publisher: Hawakal Publishers

A deathly pall

Sometimes

The silence creeps up

And deafens me,

Tearing into me

Slicing through me

And mincing me to bits

.

And from every bit

Of me

A cry so dark

So desperate

So alien

Longs to burst out

That you would shudder

If you heard it.

It’s as if

In some nightmare

That once I saw

In which

My severed head

Was in my hands

But my shrieks

Could be heard

Far and wide.

.

When my eyes

Opened,

A deathly pall

Hung low over me,

Until it swallowed me whole

And we collapsed

As one

Forever.

.

To be a firefly

Oh, to be

A firefly

Dancing

In the dark,

Spreading hope

With its

Brilliant light

Even as

It is enveloped

In blinding night,

To flash

Before the eyes

And soar

Higher

Into the skies…

.

I lie awake

And pray

I become

That firefly.

.

Whilst I live,

I wish only

To spread cheer

To do good

And then

To melt

Into the ether

And be

Not remembered

Yet not forgotten,

Like the firefly…

About the Book: “The deafening silence of a loved one’s absence turns the poet into the eternal Ma enduring separation. Swati Pal’s poetry also straddles the particular to the universal theme of grief and loss and symbolically suggests compassionate ways of healing the pain … Swati Pal’s Forever Yours and Other Poems holds ajar that mysterious door to the panorama of a mother’s love, loss, grief and hope. Her poems will resonate beyond her individual story.” — Prof. Malashri Lal (Former Head, Dept of English, University of Delhi)

About the Author:  Swati Pal, Professor and Principal, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, is a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship scholar, a Charles Wallace scholar and the first Asian scholar to receive the John McGrath Theatre Studies Scholarship at Edinburgh University. Author of several books on theatre, creative and academic writing, her newspaper articles articulate her views on education. Her areas of research interest include performance studies and cultural history. She translates from Hindi to English and several of her translations have been published. She writes poetry and her poems appear in several anthologies; she also has two collections entitled In Absentia and Forever yours and a curated collection called Living On. She is the Vice Chair of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and has been the recipient of several national and international awards, both as a teacher as well as an administrator. 

Click here to read an interview with Swati Pal.

.

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Review

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

Author: Banu Mushtaq

Translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

After Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, the first novel to receive the International Man Booker Prize in 2022 for a work of fiction written in an Indian language and translated into English, history repeated itself once again when this year in 2025, Banu Mushtaq’s book of selected short stories Heart Lamp, written originally in Kannada and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, was recipient of the same coveted prize. It proved that translating from Indian bhasha languages to compete worldwide with other canonical literatures has gained maturity to impress the jury who finally evaluate the prize.

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, published originally in Kannada between 1990 and 2023, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. As a journalist and lawyer, most of the stories are women-centric and in all of them she tirelessly champions women’s rights and protests all forms of caste and religious oppression. As a believer in the highly influential literary movement in Kannada during the 1970s and ‘80s – the Bandaya Sahitya tradition – that started as an act of protest against the hegemony of upper caste and mostly male-led writing that was then being published and celebrated, Banu Mushtaq’s literary career therefore gave importance to dissent, rebellion, protest, resistance to authority, revolution and its adjacent areas at par with the movement that urged women, Dalits and other social and religious minorities to tell stories from their own lived experiences.

The author goes on to highlight several harmful social practices that are still prevalent in the Muslim community and even supported by law, which impede girls including women of all ages, from having freedom to make positive choices, thus hampering them from realizing their full potential. In story after story, the deeply patriarchal structure of Muslim society is depicted in such a manner that it is not only applicable to the Muslims living in villages and town in south India but can be applicable elsewhere too. She shows how child marriage is still in practice and mentions the suffering and trauma women experience because of legally sanctioned polygamy which causes social and financial insecurity and hardship for women and their offspring. The curse of teen talaq[1]and the practice of issuing multiple fatwas[2] which are deliberately aimed at constricting women are urgently in need of being addressed legally.

In the very first story, ‘Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal’, we find Iftikar’s too much effusive declarations of love for his wife Shaista vanish into thin air immediately after her death and he soon marries a young girl leaving all his children to be looked after by his eldest daughter. The ‘Fire Rain’ has mutawalli[3] Usman Saheb heading the community and making hundreds of decisions for others, but when her sister comes begging he refuses to give her the legitimate share of his ancestral house. Whereas the ‘Black Cobras’ has the mutawalli saheb refuse to help a woman whose husband has deserted her for giving birth to three daughters and provide any support for her youngest sick daughter who dies without any treatment. The story ends with a focus on female revolt when his own wife decides to go and have an operation to stop childbirth. In an interesting story ‘A Decision of the Heart’ the author narrates the plight of a man called Yusuf who is unable to balance the love between his wife and his mother and finally decides to arrange a nikah for his mother Mehaboob Bi.

One story that delves deep into Muslim customs that we generally are not aware of, is entitled ‘Red Lungi’. It tells us about a mass circumcision programme at the mosque for the poor where a young boy Arif undergoes the procedure and is cured in due course. His plight is then contrasted with Samad, the son of a rich man who remains weak and unfit despite the elaborate festivities for his circumcision and the gifts.

The titular story ‘Heart Lamp’ centres around Mehrun who is left to fend for herself as her husband falls for another woman. When she goes to her parents’ house for support, her brothers send her back. Leaving the responsibility of her children upon her eldest daughter Salma, she attempts to burn herself to death. The scene where her daughter begs her to stop and so finally, she aborts her suicide attempt, is extremely moving. The depiction of rural Karnataka comes out very clearly in ‘Soft Whispers’. The story narrates in detail the childhood antics of an eight-year-old girl visting her grandparent’s house in Mabenahalli village. Her young playmate, Abid, who would join her to play tricks, turns into the supervisor of a dargah[4]. When he comes to invite her to join the festival, he keeps his head lowered and does not even meet her eye.

Despite mentioning serious social issues pertaining to the average middle and lower-middle class Muslim families, Mushtaq’s stories are laced with a sense of wry humour and pathos. For instance, in ‘High-Heeled Shoes’, Niaz Khan envies his sister-in-law who comes from Saudi Arabia wearing gorgeous high-heeleded shoes and, in the end, manages to buy a pair for his pregnant wife Arifa which does not fit her at all. The difficulty in walking with those shoes on, and the interaction she has with her unborn child in her womb takes this story to a different level altogether. ‘A Taste of Heaven’ has Bi Dadi, who turns into stone after her ja-namaz [5]is soiled, gaining solace by drinking Pepsi and thinking it to be aab-e-kausar, the nectar from heaven, and starts living in a delusory world of her own in the company of her long-lost husband. In ‘The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri’, the young Maulvi Hazrat’s penchant for eating “gobi manchuri[6]” is the comic fulcrum on which the story turns. Again, Shazia’s desperate attempts in ‘The Shroud’ to locally procure a kafan[7] and sprinkle it with the holy zamzam water from Mecca after having callously forgotten to bring one for poor Yaseen Bua from her Hajj pilgrimage, makes her grief and being conscience-stricken rather ludicrous.  

In the 2025 International Booker Acceptance Speech Mushtaq said: “This book is my love letter to the idea that no story is ‘local’ – that a tale born under a banyan tree in my village can cast shadows as this stage tonight…. [It] was born from the belief that no story is ever ‘small’ – that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole.”

Her observation power is indeed very strong. Muslim women have been victims of deprivation and discrimination in various matters owing to a dearth in education and awareness. To bring a change in the family, a change in mentality is very crucial. The last story of this collection, ‘Be A Woman Once, Oh Lord!’ is a typical tale of male chauvinism, where deprived a dowry, a man throws out his sick wife and children to get married again.

A woman must construct her own identity besides being someone’s daughter, somebody’s wife or someone’s mother. Only education and self-dependence can establish a woman as a human being beyond her religious and family identities. But as her translator rightly points out, it would be a disservice to reduce Mushtaq’s work to her religious identity, for stories transcend the confines of a faith and its cultural traditions. So, she should not be seen as writing only about a certain kind of woman belonging to a certain community, that women everywhere face similar, if not the exact same problems, and those are the issues that she writes about.

Before concluding, a few words need to be written about the translator and the translation too. In the Translator’s Note, titled ‘Against Italics’, Deepa Bhashti reiterates that the “translation of a text is never merely an act of replacing words in one language with equivalent words in another: every language, with its idioms and speech conventions, brings with it a lot of cultural knowledge that often needs translating too.” She mentions that she was very deliberate in her choice to not use italics for the Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words that remain untranslated in English. She believes that italics serve to not only distract visually, but more importantly, they announce words as imported from another language, exoticizing them and keeping them alien to English. She also mentions that there are no footnotes used at all.  

In her separate International Booker Prize Acceptance Speech, Bhasthi also tells us how through the work they could bring out what would otherwise be unread, uncelebrated texts to a new and very different sets of readers. She stated how the story of the world was really a history of erasures. It was “characterized by the effacement of women’s triumphs and the furtive rubbing away from collective memory of how women and those on the many margins of this world live and love.” Therefore, the stories in this collection are recommended for reading not by reducing Mushtaq’s work to her religious identity, but by transcending the confines of a faith and its cultural traditions.

[1] It’s an Islamic practice in which a Muslim man could divorce his wife by uttering the word “talaq” (divorce) three times.

[2] An Islamic law

[3] Manager of a Muslim charity organization

[4] Tomb or shrine of a Muslim saint

[5] A Muslim prayer mat

[6] Manchurian cauliflower

[7] Shroud

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Hrushikesh Mallick’s Poems

Five poems by Hrushikesh Mallick have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das

AFTER THEY LEAVE     
        
After they leave,
The tree in the midst of a bare field
Stands forlorn.
Not a single bird, 
Nor the sound of chirping anywhere 
Not a leaf flutters in the breeze,
No one speaks a word
After they leave.

The world is a meaningless void
When they are not there.
Flowers bloom and wither aimlessly.
Festive seasons come and depart.
The privileged and the poor come and go 
Without making an impact.
Silence reigns everywhere and around 
When they are not there.

Living in a pattern,
Like, in every moth-hour 
‘Chhatu bhai’ riding back  
From the village market, ringing the bicycle bell,
Or, farmers sitting on a platform in the evenings
And deciding which patch of the land
Would be plowed next morning,
Like, the moon coming up routinely 
At measured intervals,
And discussions centering around 
How ‘Gaya-bhai’
Escaped the wrath of the village-goddess
Last night by a sheer miracle.
Routine life continues  
Like rice cooking tender in the kitchen-hearth
While cow-dung cakes are put
To smoulder in the cowsheds.
The regular pattern of living
Is dull and cheerless
In their absence.
Who are they, then? Who indeed?
They are the fragrance of the paddy-buds 
In the farmlands by the hillside,
They are the Siju bushes that
Grow under the eaves in the backyard,
They are the sound of the clearing of throat
That inspires courage in a fearful heart
 On a dark pathway,
They are the drumbeats floating in
In gentle waves from the neighbouring village,
They are the pallbearers that twine ropes 
 To make a pyre;
And, after they leave life loses its meaning!

WHEN THERE IS NO GOD

Once you join your palms 
sitting on the bed
while going to sleep 
or, as you wake up, 
worries stop disturbing 
your calm.
You are assured of the presence
of someone called God
who might break your fall.
But these are the bleak days
of God’s absence,
these days the headless bodies 
saunter down the streets of the night
whispering to one another.
The dogs howl in a chorus.
The sounds of sermons or devotional songs
do not float in from the mandapa,
the air throbs instead with the siren  
of ambulances.    
As such belief is that 
the God that holds 
the trident and the mace
is omnipotent.
 Why does that God stand dull 
 and lifeless in the temple now?
Does an idol in any temple 
have the power now
even to chase away the stray dogs?
Is there a God in any shrine
who can hold open 
its closed doors and by some miracle 
turn auspicious 
all that is ominous? 
In these dark days when
God is not there,
if we take a fall,
we have to get up on our own.
We have to lean on our own mettle 
and our own merit
in the moments of death or survival.
In the absence of God, 
we have to commit ourselves 
to the service of the distressed,
to feed the hungry
and nurse the sick,
give shelter to the homeless.
It’s time we repented our indulgences 
without religious extravaganza.
It’s time we stopped 
pinning blind faith in 
the figures of stone.  

THE LONE GIRL 
 
The lone girl has nowhere to go,
She sits alone lamenting her loss;
Once upon a time she had 
 a country like we all have,
it was called Syria.
Its lofty national flag
soared to the clouds.
It had a national anthem that 
sparked the spirit of martyrdom 
in its people!

In the evenings, 
perched on the shoulders 
of her babajaan,
she watched the moon 
in the sky of her homeland;
heard stories from her mother
that set her eyes rolling in wonder;
that country, her homeland is now in ruins
a vast, barren expanse,
littered with severed limbs. 
Its air is sick with the smell of 
tons and tons of explosives
there lay piles of disfigured childhood
in pathetic abandon
to tell the tale of a country that was! 

No one had ever warned the girl
that her tomorrows will be spent
in makeshift shelters under the tents,
nor did she know that 
her palms would join to make begging bowl,
and there would be merchants 
to trade on 
the perfumed void in her.
No one predicted that she would grow up 
believing in hatred instead of love!
And when she would learn to ask 
the whereabouts of her parents
the whole civilized world will 
keep mute. 

EYES

Just as I believed that all poems 
which could have been written on ‘eyes’
are already written
your ‘eyes’ flashed before me
and what an amazing lot of trees
laden with fruits and flowers
 and birds, they held!
I wondered where did you flick
your deep, boundless glance
from the corridors of the hospital
like a handful of floral offerings.
The anguish that glance held
was like the lost look in the eyes of a kid 
who was rudely denied a father’s lap, 
 like a fresh bloom shying away 
from the eyes of a honeybee
or, a streak of lightning flashing
in the overcast noon-sky 
like a poor man’s last hope.
Your eyes are like the lines of a poem
that unfold a new meaning 
at every other reading.
Your eyes,
like a strange horizon captures 
the crimson of the dawn 
and the gleam of a red silk sari
in a perfect balance!
Your eyes could transform a waste land
to a paddy field in luxuriant green, 
at times they are moist with muffled sobs,  
or, like a spear smeared in blood, at others!
What is more beautiful --
the bright loquacity in your eyes
or the rain-washed sunshine,
the mysterious mutter in your eyes
or a village enveloped in a wispy darkness? 

THE HONEYBEE DOES NOT KNOW

The son writes poems.
His mother does not know.
‘You are rotting yourself through writing,’
She complains,
‘Did you write them?’ 
A girl-friend, looks at him in wonder,
‘Can you swear to that?’ she asks.
The boy writes poems 
The street where he lives does not know it, 
Nor does the village! 
His young face does not sport a beard, 
Nor have the creases appeared on his forehead.
There was not that distant look 
Like the faraway stars in the eyes,
How could then he be a poet?
Who would believe that?
A man who picks up a quarrel with the fisherwoman
Could recite the brajabuli,  
Or, the fellow weaving clothes at the loom
Can sing lines from Tapaswini
 
A poet is not supposed to have a home.
He sits under the trees
Amidst the anthills. 
A poet hacks off the branch he sits on.
He does not have that worldly intelligence.
A poet is not pragmatic.
He begins a line at the wrong point 
And ends it at a wrong one too.
A good poet forgets the right way of chanting 
The mantra that would protect him from dangers
While actually facing them. 

The mother does not know that 
Her son is a poet; nor does the father.
The owner of the hut where the poet takes shelter 
Does not know his tenant to be a poet.
The poet’s voice does not know 
It belongs to a poet.
The reflection has no idea it is the poet’s image.
The lizard exploring the shelves 
Does not know the ‘Award of Padmashree’ 
Carefully preserved there,
Was won by the poet.
The honeybee that circles the graves
Does not know that   
The lines engraved on the tomb
 Were the epitaph for the poet.

Glossary:
Mandapa is a pavilion.
Brajabuli is a dialect based on Maithali that was popularised for poetry by the medieval poet Vidyapati.
Tapaswini: A famous long poem by the 19th century Odia poet Gangadhar Meher.

.

Dr Hrushikesh Mallick is a reputed Odia poet and writer. He has 13 Poetry collections. His first book in 1987 heralded a new era in Odia poetry. He has received Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award (1988), Sarala Award (2016) and Central Sahitya Akademi Award (2021).He is also an eminent literary critic and fiction writer. He served as President of Odisha Sahitya Akademi (2021-2024). He has been a professor of Odia language and literature from 2012.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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