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JULY 01, 2012

SEVEN SISTERS

NELit review

FIFTH WALL
UDDIPANA GOSWAMI
Literary Editor

Fragrant Butterflies
Pradip Acharya critiques the genius of Hiren Bhattacharjya that his masterpiece, Sugandhi Pakhila, brings to the fore

DUST OFF

B
Saluting a living legend

HE first time I read Hiren Bhattacharyyas poetry, I felt as if they were mine, that they belonged to me like the poet had just clothed them in his own words, but the feelings and emotions behind them were mine. When I first discovered them, they were my own personal treasure. I was loath to share them with anybody else, and so would read them on my own and revel in them and never talk about them. And I would translate them into English, clothe them in my own words, try to see how I would have written them if my poet had not beaten me to them (He wrote them in Axamiya, I said to myself. I would anyway have written them in English). It was much later when I started talking about his poetry to other people that I realised many others felt the same way, many others had made his poems their own, many others had used them shamelessly for their own ends to express their love for their beloved or their motherland, to herald a new revolution, or simply to be. And yet, nobody could take them away from him. His ownership remained, though everybody shared his poetry. Because Hiren Bhattacharyya is that kind of a poet he speaks of your feelings and mine. But he does it in a way that only he can with soul-stirring lyricism and an economy of words that was often as breathtaking as it was unexpected. This issue of NELit review celebrates the poet who lived among the people and wrote their poetry. During his lifetime, he has been a living legend, and very few people can lay claim to being one. He will continue to live in every emotion of every feeling person, because he gave them his own words. T

ORN in Jorhat, Assam, Hiren Bhattacharjya had his schooling wherever his father, a government servant, happened to be posted, almost all over Assam. One of the most prominent Assamese poets, he belongs to the generation of anti-romantic modern poets of the post-Independence period. His poems are marked by a deep sense of humanism, patriotism and commitment to revolutionary philosophy. However, they, in the main, deal with love, and are deep in the exploration of emotions. He is also a master of good prose. His selected poems have been translated into English by Pradip Acharya Ancient Gongs (1985). Sugandhi Pakhila (Fragrant Butterflies), an anthology of his selected poems, tries to map the range of his concerns. This selection establishes Hiren Bhattacharjya as a poet of lyric affirmation and assurance. This lyricism is his considered response to life and reality and is all the more vital for its intense moments of doubts and despair: This listless life is blind In unabashed hope The broken heart is shrouded In unknown fears. (Sugandhi Pakhila) And he remains the supreme poet of youth and youthful enthusiasm. Love for friends, his beloved and country merge and become one from sympathy. What he sees around him often depresses him and it is not surprising to find him despairing occasionally as in a cluster of poems about sorrow. But as he embraces this sorrow as part of the human scene, his commitment remains vitally intact. While he tries to reach out in poems like Shooting an Arrow, there is a tendency to withdraw into himself in the later poems like In the Quiet of Blood: It was here that you had reined in the speedy horse of your youth. Like the wind in spring dust from his hooves kissed this my lively sky and the bordering green grass.

SUGANDHI PAKHILA
Hiren Bhattacharyya Banalata, 2011 `80, 155 pages Hardcover/Poetry
with a deep sorrow. Sorrows arrogate space that he would willingly have devoted to love. But his involvement with sorrow is also vital and bodied. The trees gathered their shadows about them, the day went elbowing past, only darkness remained trampling my yard, vague as sorrow, dim, pale, and without enterprises. (Nijanat Dinbor; In the Quiet of the Blood) This sorrow, elusive and intractable in some of his love poems, finally yields to a celebration of life. In this night of vigil I am dreaming of the harvest smiling golden in your soft lips. As if the sun is coursing down The sleep of a thousand stars (Raudra Kamona; Longing for Sunshine) Hiren Bhattacharjya has been a dominant presence in the Assamese poetry scene for over three decades now. His Suganshi Pakhila is into its seventh impression. He is, without a doubt, the first to use the short poem to such effect. His originality lies in adding another connotative dimension to the Haiku or Hokku form. He exploits the racy elements in the language but changes the frames of reference entirely. With his hitherto unthought of associations, he dislocates words into meanings and shocks us into a more sensuous and emotional awareness. Yet he stays rooted in his native reality. Whether in his affectionate concern for the toiling masses, or in depicting a charming rural scene, his moorings are in the Assamese reality whether of folk ballads in the oral tradition with their internal rhymes, or in the speech and idiom of his friends and fellowmen. His charged words and lyric assurance would remind one of the English poet Dylan Thomas who had come at the opportune moment to retrieve and to sing of eternal human passions from the ruins in the wake of the wars. In Bhatttacharjya, these passions become an intellectual commitment, for there is a definite social aspect to his poetry which perhaps is due to his lifelong association with the Left movement. Every man has, in the quiet of his blood, A bright image of rich earth This is his solidarity with the underdog which he more expressly deals with in another simple and striking poem: I have unloaded the bulging pack of grains at the grandees courtyard. Let me go home now. Meggies ma is in the family way, it will be great if its a boy this time. You know well, a farmers son has very steady hands. My hands are very shaky these days. not to talk of loading a gun, I cant even draw a bow. It will be something If she has a boy at this time. They say, a farmers son has very steady hands. (Lakhimi; The Good Lady) Hiren Bhattacharjya can be as lucid and direct as that. In the final analysis, in the poems of Sugandhi Pakhila, we find the elusive and the palpably real coalesce to form a singular and striking voice, intense but low-keyed, which continues to beckon to readers of all hues and persuasions. Also noticeable in his poems has been the growth, in a crescendo, of self-doubt and anxiety in spite of the commitment. T
First published in: George, KM. 1997. Masterpieces of Indian Literature (Vol I). NewDelhi: National Book Trust. pp 79-83

Photos: Subhamoy Bhattacharjee

After that, so much summer heat passed by and so many storms of spring. Even now, sometimes I wake up in my dreams. Somewhere in Africa or in Telengana that horse is running wild. And your whiplashes startle the impotence of the quiet night. (Sara Sandhan; Shooting an Arrow) He seeks no final answers in his po-

etry; nor does he hold out a prophetic vision but celebrates the mundane. But even while evoking the work-aday world, his poems can become a compulsive experience. Immortality in my rent world whose sad fingers crochet the earths purest poem. (Jonaki-mon; Fireflies) It was as a complete poet, that Hiren Bhattacharjya emerged on the poetry scene in Assam. He does not seem to

RRRRRRT G

Hiruda: humour and sensibility

a reputed doctor and get a chest photograph (X-ray) done. But you did not take it seriously at all. Your cough is getting terribly worse. Dont try to avoid it. That day he was able to reply after the cough had subsided. He said, Mr Saikia you told me that three times that day. I remember it well. And I have taken it seriously. Ill surely get a chest photograph done. But Im looking for a few like-minded people so that the photograph can be taken as a group; that will be less expensive. Dr Saikia went his way, confused, thinking of this strange person, unable to decide whether to laugh or cry at his response. Another such incident took place in the presence of Homen Borgohain, the noted litterateur. Both of them were attending a meeting. Hiruda was suffering from chronic gastroenteritis. But he preferred all the fried stuff like sanasur, singra (samosa), etc. At the meeting, the organisers had offered them tea with singra. Hiruda ate the crust of the singra and wrapping the filling in a piece of newspaper, took it away with him. A long time later, reminding him of the incident, Borgohain one day asked him on a TV programme why he had taken the singra filling covered in a piece of paper that day. Like a simpleton, Hiruda replied, Each in his own place. What have vegetables to do with tea? I took the fried top as lusi (fried savoury) with tea and the fried vegetables that I took wrapped in a piece of newspaper were eaten with rice later. The famous Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyaya commented that Hiruda was the most exceptional man he had ever met. According to him, Hiruda is a poet to the core. Another reputed poet, Rabindra Sarkar, reminisces how he once went to Hiruda along with poet Abani Chakravarty, who has been missing now, to ask for a poem to be published in the poetry journal they had started in the 70s. He told them that he had no ready-made poem. A little later, he pulled a piece of paper and wrote down just two lines: Moi xudhisilo mandiroloi jowaa baat keni Taai aagbarhaai diley sakulorey xemekaa haat dukhoni (I asked her which way led to the temple She put forward her hands damp with tears) T
Bipul Sarma is a poet and writer based in Dhemaji Jatindra Choudhury teaches English at North Gauhati College, Guwahati

HIREN Bhattacharjya is the first to use the short poem to such effect. His originality lies in adding another connotative dimension to the Haiku or Hokku form He dislocates words into meanings and shocks us into a more sensuous and emotional awareness. Yet he stays rooted in his native reality
have had a period of apprenticeship. His first poem Longing for Sunshine has the same command over idiom that we encounter in later poems like In the Quiet of Blood. He would rather talk to his friends in his poems or share with them a dream saved all through life. Like W.B. Yeats he could have said Friendship is all the house I keep. He would not suffer fools though. All through his poetry there is a relentless search for the best, the perfect. No substitutes would do for him: No honey? Then make do with I have no faith in that much subscribed to alternative, when every wall reeks of conspiracy, For me, the mere knowledge of mutual well-being is sufficient. (Paraspar; The Alternative) This is an arrogant search and entails an unabashed romanticism. We encounter this almost everywhere in this selection but couched in a vitally metaphoric language, where each word has a coherent emotional hinterland, keeping the sentiments from lapsing into sentimentality, Words are my mighty, honest sword, controlled and deft in everyday hostilities. I have nothing else With words is my inseparable company, with which I cut into fragments and lift up my country, my time. An impossible future made of bonny dreams. (Swadesh Swatcal; My Country and My Time) Love, or the abrasions of love, friendship or day-to-day hostilities are all sensitively responded to and monitored. He is vitally aware of the significance as well as the limitations of his role as a poet and shows scant regard for unthinking criticism. Burning in the darkness at the rim of the stricken night the starry inevitability of Orions guarding dirk. I am a poet, of finite means. The ungrateful brass whistle of the haunted guard at the crossroads challenges my poetry. (Lanchhita Surjya; The Slighted Sun) The sensitive monitoring is informed

BIPUL SARMA
(TRANS: JATINDRA CHOUDHURY)

This poet has nothing else Just a lone shirt Whose stitches are frayed Fortified with love and youthfulness, his poems have no self-ego; they have self- absorption. All trivialities are ignored in his poetry which takes the reader to a broader, wider world. He is gifted with a third eye and the nuances of his poetry carry the suggestion of building a society for the future. Heavy bundles of crops I have put in the courtyard of my lord Let me go home now My daughters mother is expecting Better if she begets a boy this time You all know a peasants son Hardly misses the target before his hand Having spent all his life in the midst of poetry, Hiruda has become a living legend today. He laughs at his own life. Many of the numerous anecdotes from his life have no veracity. A few are true

HE detached person moves about without any barrier in his multicoloured world. His certificate records his name as Hiren Bhattacharyya, but hundreds of thousands of his fans know him as Hiruda. He throws his enthusiastic glance at the faraway horizon of gloominess where the world of his dream flows down. His restless mind cannot stop moving. Hiruda is an amazing person who can transform death into art. When the fields of crops, the pregnant earth and the green woods keep rolling in his poetry, one finds it difficult to believe that Hirudas pen can thunder with the words: Matters of motherland Require no command Or when every lover repeats: You know it

and he enjoys the truth in them. Hiruda who took a ride on a roadroller, Hiruda who opened a tea stall, Hiruda who manages to walk unwet through the intermittently falling rains so many anecdotes, full of fun! No contemporary writer can match Hirudas sense of humour. Here I quote from memory a particular description from Jivan Brittanta, the life story of Dr Bhabendra Nath Saikia, another stalwart of Assamese society: One day I saw Hiren Bhattacharyya in a fit of uncontrollable cough near the Panbazar police point. I went to him to say hello. He glanced at me. Dr Saikia said, Mr Bhattacharyya, your cough is getting worse. Why dont you consult a reputed doctor and get a chestphotograph (X-ray) done? Quite some time later, Bhattacharya was relieved of his cough but could not say anything. Dr Saikia went his way. They met again after a few days at the same spot. Dr Saikia said, Mr Bhattacharyya, the other day I advised you to consult