Derision

Letters I could not deliver, I could not write.
A dog that starts barking whenever I begin,
The ball-boy who has not received a single ball today
Pierces into the microphone.
Letters I could not write, I could not deliver.
An unexamined touch of an unknown hand in the dark,
That endeared back-road where ants take on strumpets
Falls like moonlight on my copulating words.
There could still be tears in the dark---
De-populated, Like
Letters I never wrote, never delivered.

BINOY MAJUMDAR TRANSLATION 2

As If Some Voices

Binoy Majumdar

As if, some voices are speaking, perhaps.
Watching intently all the things I do,
They are reproducing all of it ceaselessly.
After writing upto this point, I hear them saying
That I hear and see properly, I have understood by myself.

In such a way I am dealing with poetry.
All those strange young men have gone away, I feel.
It is afternoon and a cup of tea is badly needed.
Let me go and fetch it, telling Buchi about the tea
After returning from Buchi’s house, I am writing
Once again on the page of this exercise book.
This poem has become quite a physical phenomena.
As Buchi is not in her house, I have told her elder daughter
To make me some tea. Let me then go to Ranjit’s shop at least.

BINOY MAJUMDAR TRANSLATION-1

Having Done With My Poetry

Binoy Majumdar

Having done with my poetry, as soon as I write my name
Some voices, unrecognized, start buzzing—look! He is still so accurate
When it comes to his own name!
It means they are looking at me from quarters close
In times, I am writing my poetry.
Even under such circumstances
I continue writing my poetry.
How can I know what happens in case of other poets?
As per the given word, now I will go out. So on let me be gone.

TWO OLD POEMS...

THE RAIN-CLAD UNIFORM
A FEW A FEW DROPS…….
CANKERS GALORE
.. MORTALITY.
THE DROWZY CORRIDOR
CROPS ANEW ANEW…….
THE DARK CHORD
..OBLIVION.



DO NOT SIT ON THAT CHAIR
.. IT IS LANGUAGE.
DO NOT DRINK FROM THAT CUP
..IT IS REASON.
PICK UP THE RECEIVER
..‘ENGAGED’ TREASON.

The Twitch

Nilabhra had closed his eyes for a moment. A grip loosening on nonsense. And then there were the things on the floor in heaps and piles…waiting to be withdrawn, waiting for another re-cycling, one more at least. Who knows, the almost putrefied wonder book of his childhood with its yellowish damp pages might be resurrected as a picture drawing pad in the hands of his yet unborn daughter! Why daughter? Why not a son? The typical tryst with the other sex? Well, all that lay far ahead in future. If at all. There might also be nothing. He might not get married at all! Now, that would be an impotent thought! Could Nilabhra leave his mother? Could he bid adieu to that body which had been given its primal wound at his birth? Was it him? Who is he, now? No one knows! Not even Nilabhra! The only thing that he knew was a ghastly and yet attractively opened up series of wounds, which had punctuated her body since then. Debjani, his mother, had always been a Falling woman, not having anything to do with the past participle form of the verb however! As if, she alone was chosen to literalise the infinite recurrences patterning the human condition! What recurrences at that! Churches could have made a martyr out of her. But, they had slipped the knowledge that there existed someone like her, cut open to immortality by each fall and each dislocation. Bit by bit. Moment in moment.

A rusty, old-little tricycle in the middle of what used to be their bed-room, just a year back. This was the house where he learned his first vocables…syllables plucked out of thin air in course of his rides from one room to the other. Nilabhra had become too big and bulky for it, now. The three wheels were both the beginning & the end. The middle comprised of a brief failed attempt to cope with two! Nilabhra always lacked balance! A few crashes here and there & that was the end of that. He had seen fear in a handful of dust! Now, the legs! Now, the walking, which had taken him to this old house of theirs.

He had come in to close the windows kept open by his father in the morning. The house had breathed through them all day. Now, the end had come. There were heavy and roaring clouds covering the sky all over. So, Nilabhra too, had to come. His was the job of strangulation, of suffocation unto demise of breath. He had not entered this house, since having left it, almost ten months before. The formidable fetus! It had been repaired & coloured meanwhile. The old scratches of his nail, the oily impressions made by his oil-cloaked hair, the spirit of the dead Chorai which had come in one day about five years ago—all had been axed, removed from the palette itself. Nilabhra closed his eyes and the old creaking sound of the door, being locked out in darkness almost one year ago, returned to him with a vengeance. He had stayed away from this house, being apprehensive of the ejection that its half-forgotten objects will bring him. He had opened the lock after a long time. But, that pungent smell, which used to welcome him & his family after each longish trip once, was hardly there. The windows were the culprits. They gaped at Nilabhra. Trip! Oh! What a word! How obsolete now, in the immovability of the body, in which Nilabhra had initiated his very first movements. As he had feared, the house had hardly forgotten Nilabhra! Repairing had rectified its injuries. It had gained a new sharpness of sorts.

A pair of surgical gloves. Full of water. Kept under Debjani’s left toe. All for relief. This, her fifth fracture and eighth operation! Nilabhra had been filling them up afresh, each morning. He felt like a poet while doing it…making hands…water-hands of an aquatic Frankenstein. He had just washed her back before coming into this house. A scarred, singed skin which had grown rough and hard. It was much like the rain-hit streets of Kolkata…potholes darkening. In the old days, she used to frighten Nilabhra whenever he was unruly by making faces. Faces with peculiar contortions, which evoked his awe. Now, her face had become arrested in that expression permanently. As if those lines were screaming to him ‘I will not get well this time!’ It had become almost a habit for Nilabhra to start off his days with that. The body, which once used to be Nilabhra’s wonder-ridden playground, had been turned into a nightmare of beheaded familiarity. Peopled by fearful wounds, which sometimes made him wonder if his gaze had been the criminal! Was all this because of him? Like a sighting of the full moon, which made it wane!

Nilabhra, quite unawares, had flopped down on the empty corner of the floor, just behind the heap of things. Outside, it had become more overcast. It could all be seen from the one window that was still open. The mango tree with a promise of embrace, weaving into the house through it. This room had witnessed so many glimpses…lights coming in at the dawns…all too many…the tender touch of the curious mango tree, endeared in time…dismembered with time. Could he not see it again, that early morning sunlight in this room…all that glory…awakening. Now, the window only imposed a feeling of the dark. How new was the yellow distemper of the walls! They were sky blue earlier. Nilabhra recalled. Then the eyes opened. If he could change Debjani’s skin! Was India not anymore the land of magic, snake-charming? What about a new Kholosh or even a new body for that matter? The old turning new…becoming new. Closing eyes. Weather breaking in upon Nilabhra. Thunder. Lightning. The riddling drizzle becoming heavier, penetrating the back of his shirt from the side of the window--- the final space for a breath. He went further into the heap. It was a snug feeling of reclaiming the old dear objects—the childhood bathtub, the old play-mirror not without a crack, quite a few toy-cars, a broken mouth organ & so on. His head stooped. The legs folded into contraction…hands covered round his own back, almost like a self-embrace. Suddenly, there was a sound, breaking the oozing silence of his position…it was Nilabhra’s mobile phone. It was Debjani calling. Her mobile had been kept with her. Information’s sake. Bed-ridden beside her pillow…just like her. Nilabhra was sweating all over! He looked at its screen…a queer expression of recession on his face.

The bed. Two fans. One on the ceiling, the other a stand-alone. A couple of eyes in the middle, extending to form a body, nearing ruins. Fixators. Wounds. Screws inside. Debjani. This new house, which they had moved into, was her favourite. She looked at the mobile screen. Nilabhra had disconnected the line. She put the phone back in its place & picked up the book again. Nilabhra had been telling her to read some book or the other, for quite some time. But she had always said that she could not concentrate. Nilabhra had tried to read aloud some stories to her. Stories … they were like a slip-bridge opening upon life. Debjani had lifted it; Nilabhra was trying to get it down again…back into connectivity. The last couple of reading sessions, however, had started to make an impact. Debjani could feel the words enter her with little murmurs. She had finally taken the plunge today…an attempt of letting the stories reenter her afresh. It was The Collected Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. She was reading a story, which was called The fall of The House of Usher. That is what she wanted to tell Nilabhra. Perhaps that would give him a rare smile in this pervasive gloom. But, there was no response. Because he did not wish to turn again. No wish of turning back again…

ALL THAT SCARE

( I )

Finally the sun came out and the room got its share of light. The night-lamp was still on. The sky had been overcast during the night but now it was fine. A few white clouds floated around in the unrelenting blue. The bad weather had disappeared. Aneek Chatterjee opened his eyes. It was eight. The alarm had not rung but the sunlight had done its job. It had pushed open his eyelids working through the inner dark. He looked at the night-lamp, pale and powerless in a patch of bright sunlight, as if begging to be switched off. He went to the switchboard and switched it off. The light inside died immediately. Aneek looked at it again, relieved?

Last night he had not been able to sleep properly. There were awkward sounds disturbing his sleep, sometimes inside, sometimes outside the room and sometimes as if in the middle of the two. Who knows? May be, he had been dreaming all of them! Whatever they were, they made his sleep rather broken, discontinuous. Quite a few times, he could hear a coin dropping somewhere in the room. There were whispers too, punctuated with other sounds, almost of a pornographic character. However, there was nothing to be seen anywhere. At least, Aneek didn’t manage to see anything.


--“Hello, is it Aneek Chatterjee at the far end?”
--“Yes. Who am I speaking to?”
--“Nobody.”
--“What?”
--“Yes. The‘what’. That is more important than the ‘who’.”
--“Is it so? Then, may I know what your ‘what’ is?”
--“Have you ever been to a fish-market?”
--“Fish market! Why?”
--“Not ‘why’. Say ‘which’?”
--“Which?”
--“Say, the Gariahat fish-market.”
--“No, not for a long time.”
--“Then go. Right now.”
-- “Why?”
--“Not ‘why’, ‘where’. That is the ‘where’ for my ‘what’.”
--“And what is the ‘what’ in that ‘where’?”
--“That is for you to find out. I can only say one thing—if you ignore it and do not go, it might just take lives. It is a deadly old thing.”
--“Enough is enough. Who are you?”
--“I told you, it does not matter. One last word—do not ignore what I have just said. Remember your position, your high office. You have a lot of responsibility towards the people. If a number of them die today, it might well be a result of your carelessness.”
--“What the…”
The telephone line was disconnected from the other end. What was left of the mysterious voice was just a tortuous and enraging engaged tone. Aneek looked at the receiver, angry and confused or both equally perhaps.

( II )


A peeling sound of thunder and Aneek’s sleep broke off. He looked at the clock. Four thirty in the morning. There was very little light outside. It was raining quite heavily. He sat up on his single bed and looked through the window. The sound of the rain was whisper-like secretive to Aneek. It told so many stories to the earth and all that was inaccessible to him. The little pores on the surface of the soil had swallowed all those words, all those impassioned stories. Aneek will never be able to grasp them. Sooner or later they will evaporate through those very pores promising yet another return. However, the rain made him feel good. He could clearly differentiate this morning from the one just before. He looked at the night-lamp in its last phase of power. Even if there was no sun there will soon be some light at least. The eastern horizon was brightening already. What a day it was, yesterday! He was still to understand its implications. He looked at the table, on the right. There lay the telephone, silent for the time being. It was the telephone call, which had started that bizarre game.

Aneek got up from the bed and moved towards the centre-table to open the second drawer on the left. There was a packet there. He had brought it home. He opened it and four packets of Moods condom came out, condoms with some dots for some extended pleasure. He pulled the chair and sat upon it, observing the packets carefully. The pictures on them were the same—a boy kissing the shoulders of a girl from the back while the girl is opening the left strap of her white bra. The background of the picture was a combination of the fire and the dark. Who could have done this? Not many had any knowledge beyond that of his single status. Aneek put three of them on the table and opened the fourth one. The contents came out—sticky and hollow. He held them in his hand, feeling through them one by one with his fingers. They were smooth and Aneek felt a curious comfort, running his fingers across them. He had never needed them. He had been left out. There was anguish in his eyes. It could still be seen despite the semi-dark interior of his room.

( III )

What should I do? It must have been a joke or may be, there is some conspiracy to do me in. What is the time? It is eight-thirty. Even if I do not take the car, it will take me just about ten minutes to reach the market. It might well be a blank gunshot, but I must verify things to assure myself. What if the voice turns out to be true? What if it is a bomb? Kolkata is still no Delhi or Bangalore, but still…. If I ignore it and then it explodes, killing innocent people, I will never be able to forgive myself. Last week, there were serial bomb blasts in Delhi. May be, now it is Kolkata’s turn! After all, I am not a common man. I am a state-secretary, a high-profile boss of the ever-assuring administration. I do have a public responsibility. Moreover, if it is a really powerful bomb, even my life is at risk. How far is Golpark from Gariahat Market? I better go and check it out.
All these thoughts ran through my mind as I put down the receiver. I picked up my mobile and made a call to the bomb squad at the police headquarters and told them to reach the place as soon as possible. I put on my black corduroy trousers and an off-white Peter England shirt to make myself sartorially presentable for the public moment and rushed to the door. The lift was right there on my floor. Someone had come upstairs just now. I got into it and pressed zero. It started moving down after an initial hustle.

A large number of market-hungry people, a lot of din and bustle, the typical pungent smell—the fish market was quite a busy, disgusting spectacle. It had been a long time since I visited one. As expected, a fish-market was hardly in my scheme of things. As I went into it, some looked up at my face with surprise. Most of the locals knew me. They must have been taken aback to find me at the fish-market. I wondered how designations had turned some of the places into an oddity for me. But, where could I find that ‘what’? It seemed almost impossible. The bomb squad would be coming within fifteen-twenty minutes. Should I look for it on my own without telling anyone or should I tell everyone to evacuate the place and conduct the search or should I do nothing and wait for the squad to come along with the police? All these thoughts kept rushing here and there from one side of my head to the other. Confusion also led to anger in me. It was directed at the situation as well the forces that were behind it. I knew I had to do something. Things could well run out of time. I called two or three known faces and told them everything. They, in turn, told some others. We went towards the centre of the market and started addressing the crowd. What we said sent ripples of panic across the people as they started running in different directions. I told them to calm down. The squad would be round the corner and there was nothing to worry. Within a few minutes, the entire market place was almost empty barring some utterly perplexed fish-sellers. They were extremely angry. Not only had they become customerless all of a sudden, a lot of their fishes were trampled also by the people running around. Some of them cried out, “What did u tell them? Why did they run like that? Look, what have they done!” As they started accusing me with all the rage of the world, I had to tell them the gravity of the whole situation. They took some time to understand but then some of them joined us in our search for any suspicious object. The squad was yet to arrive.

After about five minute’s search, we could locate a bundle at the northern corner of the market. It was kept just beside the dustbin, which we had upturned in course of our search. None of the fish-sellers claimed it to be his. So, there it was, perhaps—the ‘what’ in the ‘where’! It was a medium sized bundle, rather untidy. May be, it was made to look ordinary. The cloth had been tied up with some rope and did not have any tear. I looked at the thing fixedly. I desperately wanted to open the veil myself. The game had started with me and therefore I was the best person to take it to its finale. What could be there inside that bundle? One part of my mind kept providing possibilities while the other kept refuting them. The more I looked at it, the more I got the feeling that there was a pair of eyes inside the bundle and they were looking back at me with a blinding gaze, as it were. The gaze almost made me spellbound. My feet got stuck into an anxious immobility, curbing my angry and curious intent to uncover the object of mystery. For that one moment it was as if there was nothing in the world barring that little whore and me. All the rest had gone out of existence and all my nervous energy had found its pivot in that bundle. I was lost in these thoughts when the bomb squad arrived. They took positions and examined the object with a bomb-detector from a distance. The result was negative. It was confirmed now that it did not contain a bomb. The most probable was the first to be eliminated. Then, what could it have? The fact that there was no bomb inside could have relieved me, but it did not. All sorts of thoughts started to crowd in and almost suffocate me. Could it be something personal? Something disgraceful? Was some long-hidden truth of my life just about to be blown in the wind? I became very edgy. A great spell of helpless anger reddened my cheeks. The officers of the bomb squad formed a ring around the object and started to move towards it. The disclosure was now absolutely on the cards. I closed my eyes in anxiety.
( IV )

Aneek opened his eyes. It was almost five thirty. The rain had become light outside, the room, brighter. He looked at the night lamp. Its plight had begun. Aneek outstretched his hands and switched it off. It was a really dirty game. Who could have done it—some political enemy or some personal foe? He could still remember all those ringing laughters from the fish-sellers when the bundle had been unpacked. It was a moment of real humiliation for Aneek. The contents of the bundle had told a secret story, his story. The people might have laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation—the secretary of state along with the bomb squad in a petty fish market and that too only to find such a paltry thing! In their eyes, Aneek had been befooled. But he knew in his heart, the sadistic message contained in those packs of condom. They marked the limit for Aneek. It was a horrific reminder of his incapacity to participate in one of life’s most fundamental streams. It was a life in its own, all too forgotten, all too lost for him. He had been left out. He looked at the packets of condoms on the table. One of them had remained in his right hand. A deep-rooted anger burst out in Aneek and in that fit, he held the upper part of the condom between his upper and lower teeth. All of a sudden, the room became all white, turning Aneek into a speck in a white void. The light had come back all too quickly. The night lamp could only sigh in agony.

DEUCE

The story was located deep into the night when the streets were relaxing, stretching their bodies easefully from one end of the night to another. The story was stretching itself too! There were little yawns to begin with but then it decided to tell itself…be told. The streets had just started to think that the footfalls had mostly come to an end for the day when the story decided to shake them up, a wee bit. All of a sudden, there were footfalls and quite thumping ones at that! One could see a man running across the sidewalk, nervously looking at his back from time to time. He smashed against the light post and awakened a street urchin who had been sleeping right beside it. The story looked into his bewildered eyes, full of muck. The man saw the mouth of a subway, staring at him to his left. Someone had gone into it a moment ago. He had felt a shadow while bumping into the post. How could it be open at such a time? Did it have an opening at the other end or was it yet another trap? There was a maze in his mind. But soon he realized it was not the time for thinking. The subway promised a shelter, a hideout for him. He took out his lighter, which had a small torch at its back and started running down the dark stairs. The street was still amazed. Was someone chasing the man? A very faint sound could be heard in the distance. Someone was dragging something along. The street asked the story who that man was? The story was silent for a while, lost in some deep thought, as it were, and then it uttered the word ‘Sahay’. The street could not go into the subway and check things out. So, it was the story, which went in, but only after it had made a promise to the street that it will disclose everything on its return.

The steps went down deep into that hollow until Sahay lost their count. It felt like moving down on an escalator. The stairs carried him away until he reached the pit. It was pitch dark and Sahay felt rather shadowless in its company. The torchlight helped him find a corner where he could lean against the wall and then all of a sudden, he turned around and pointed the torch at the wall, trying to find something on its surface, as it were. Nothing…it was a blank wall, much like a white sheet of paper, yet to be filled in by its writer. If it could still be white in that uncompromising dark! Sahay faced his back to the wall and switched it off. The story kept looking at him from a safe distance, imperceptible to him. Sahay kept staring into that dark where opened and closed eyes seemed all the same to one. Sahay went back in his mind. It had all started from that number. He could remember it so vividly! The train had been moving fast. It was a scorching afternoon and there were not many people in the compartment. Sahay had been standing near the gate. Something was written on the other side upon the inner-body of the train. His eyes fixed it with a stiff glance—“9836002729—Rupa, a call girl”. All places have been sold. Now who said this in present tense, all of a sudden? Had the story been following him even then? Someone must have mumbled something in his ears. Sahay took out his mobile phone from the pocket and copied the number and it was that very day on his way back home that he lost his mobile. Who could have stolen it? Perhaps the same person who had written the number on the train! However, it was only now that Sahay could say this…not then. The pungent smell of a plot had frozen the air around him that day onwards. He took a new mobile after that and it had to happen again! The same train in the same heat of a same afternoon and Sahay was up against the same spectacle—“9836002729—Rupa, a call girl”, but it was a little too familiar for comfort this time! The size of the letters had increased and now he felt them, glaring at him. However, there was something more to it and Sahay simply could not believe it! He took out his new mobile from the pocket and clarified whatever little doubt he had. He had saved his new number in his phone for he had been forgetting it frequently. He looked at the screen and then back again at the number—9836002729! He still tried to pass it off as a coincidence. May be someone had jokingly written a fictitious number which had become real in his case. Should he change the phone for that?

After a tiny respite that bitch had got back to business. Someone had thrust a handmade leaflet into his hands that day, while he had been running to catch the train. He could only look at it, after having boarded the train. It was an advertisement of a doctor of secret sexual diseases. Sahay had always been irritated by such stuff. As if he was the only one for them! But this time it had more embarrassment in store for him. The contact number written on it had been 9836002728 earlier but then somebody had overwritten on that 8 to make it 9. It was back to 9836002729—square one for Sahay. How could things be so contrived in the world of reality? Sahay could only wonder. The train had long left the platform where someone might have still been chuckling at his situation.

Sahay had to change his number. It had started to get on his nerves. But he stored that fateful thing in his new mobile alright, lest something more was to happen with it. And then it was this fearfully stagnant night when he had missed the last train that a call came from that number on his mobile. How could it be so? He had exchanged that phone and the man at the mobile-shop had assured him that he would give the phone to someone only after de-activating the old number. The loop around his neck had tightened. He had rejected the call and switched off the mobile only to realize that someone had come behind him on the empty street. Sahay started running and could hear footfalls at his back. He was being chased.

The rest, as they say, is hi(-)story…for the story…for the street. The story left Sahay and moved out of that dark tunnel. The street had been waiting for him eagerly. The story blurted out the story that was Sahay’s, but what story? How could it know the number-game? How could the story access the depths of his mind where words were fluttering like half-torn kites in a musty wind, writing and re-writing the number 9836002728 endlessly? Sahay, like most of us, had kept his most bizarre experience a top secret. The street could not understand head or tails of it and was left agape. All that was so absurd, he thought. Once again, that strange sound of someone dragging something along had become faintly audible in the distance. The eastern horizon had started to light up. The story said to the street, “I have to go now. I simply cannot tolerate daylight.” It hooted like an owl, weary of light. Ah, if one could look into its dead dark eyes where a fire was burning! It represented the eternal desire of man to tell stories, more and more stories…more and more hollow stories. The street bid him good-bye.

It was a story called ‘Deuce’ written by some obscure writer. It had been published in a literary magazine called ‘Presentation’. His friend Indraneel had given it to him. Interestingly enough the protagonist of the story was his namesake. Was that the reason why Indraneel had given the magazine to him? What else? Sahay was hardly a literary person! It was stiff due to its overtly intellectual evocations and that was what had made it so bizarre and absurd, Sahay said to himself. It was a scorching afternoon. . Sahay was near the gate and reading the story. The compartment was almost empty. The train was quite close to Howrah station. There were sounds of the brake and the train started slowing down. The same old car-shed stoppage! Sahay looked at the other side. The train had stopped. There was nothing on the other side. It was just a blank metallic surface with some scratches and patches here and there. It was pretty much like an anxious one-off page of some writer, where he could hardly manage anything more than a few pen-strokes here and there. It could only be headed for the dustbin. Sahay shifted his eyes back to the last page of the story. He could only chuckle at it. The train started to move again and he could hear a strange sound, coming from a distance. Someone was dragging something along…