Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 5

Photo : Gb

স্যানিটারি ন্যাপকিন
মলয় রায়চৌধুরী

ভালোবাসা ওই মেয়েটির মতো, যার
স্কুলে যাওয়া বন্ধ হয়ে গেল ; মাসে
সাড়ে তিন দিন কাপড়ে শুকনো ঘাস
বেঁধে, পরে থাকতে হবে ; বর্ষায়
ঘাস তো সবুজ, তখন কাপড়ে ছাই
মুড়ে, রক্ত শুষে রাখবার তরকিবে
চুপচাপ বইহীন একা বসে থাকা ।


Sanitary Napkin
Malay Roychoudhury | Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta

Love is like that girl, who
had to drop out of school;
Three-and-a-half days each month,
Must wear dry grass tied in cloth;
In monsoon, the grass is green,
So, ash wrapped in cloth,
to soak up the blood,
seated quietly, alone, book-less.







Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 4

Source: http://www.freeimages.com/

আমার ঠাকুমাকে যেন বলবেন না
মলয় রায়চৌধুরী


উনি আমায় পছন্দ করতে বারণ করেছিলেন
আপনি কেন পছন্দ করছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও শুঁয়াপোকাঠাশা ঈশানমেঘে চিৎসাঁতার দিই
উনি পঞ্চাশ বছর আমার কাছে কবিতা চাননি
আপনি কেন চাইছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও জলের দশ-পা গভীরে দাঁড়িও বরফের লাঠি চালাই
উনি আমার সাবজুডিস মামলায় সম্পাদকীয় লিখেছিলেন
আপনি সম্পাদক হয়ে কেন লেখা চাইছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও স্মোকড পেংগুইনের চর্বির পরোটা খেতে ভালোবাসি
উনি আমার কবিতার বইয়ের প্রকাশক হয়েও স্বীকার করেননি
আপনি কেন স্বীকার করছেন, নীরা ?
আমি আজও দুপুর গেরস্হের হাঁ-মুখে সেঁদিয়ে ফ্যামিলিপ্যাক হাই তুলি
উনি আমার নাম উচ্চারণ করতে চাইতেন না
আপনি কেন তরুণদের কাছে করছেন, নীরা ?
আমি রক্তঘোলা জলে টাইগার শার্কদের সঙ্গে বলিউডে নাচে গান গাই
উনি বলেছিলেন ওর মধ্যে সত্যিকারের লেখকের কোনো ব্যাপার নেই
আপনি কেন মনে করছেন আছে, নীরা ?
আমি ইমলিতলায় জানতুম কাঠকয়লা ছাড়া ইঁদুর পোড়ায় স্বাদ হয় না
উনি বলেছিলেন ওর কোনো ক্রিয়েটিভ দিক নেই
আপনি কেন মনে করছেন আছে, নীরা ?
আমি অন্তত পাঁচ হাজার কোটি টাকার ব্যাঙ্কনোট পুড়িয়ে মড়ার গন্ধ পেয়েছি
উনি বলেছিলেন ওর দ্বারা কোনোদিন কবিতা লেখা হবে না
আপনি কেন মনে করছেন হয়েছে, নীরা ?
আমি অ্যামস্টারডমের খালপাড়ে দাঁড়িয়ে হাঁকরা বুড়োদের লিরিক শুনেছি
উনি সেসময়ে দুঃখ থেকে রাগ আর রাগ থেকে বিতৃষ্ণায় উঠেছেন
আপনি এত উদার কেন, নীরা ?
আমার ঠাকুমাকে যেন প্লিজ বলবেন না ।

 
Please Don’t Tell My Grandmother
Malay Roychoudhury | Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta


He asked you not to like me,
So why did you, Neera?
Even now, I perform breaststrokes in caterpillar-stuffed north eastern clouds
He didn’t ask me for any poems for 50 years,
So why are you asking now, Neera?
Even now, standing in 10-foot-deep water, I wield icy rods
He wrote an editorial on my sub-judice case,
Turning an editor, why are you asking for my writing, Neera?
Even now, I love flatbreads stuffed with smoked penguin fat
He did not confess to being my anthology’s publisher
Why did you confess, Neera?
Even now, I have family-pack yawns in the face of families,
He didn’t like pronouncing my name
So why are you telling it to youths, Neera?
Even now, in bloody waters, I join the Bollywood chorus of tiger sharks
He had said I have nothing of a true writer
So why do you think I do, Neera?
At Imlitala, I knew rat roasts don’t taste too good without charcoal smoke
He said I have nothing creative in me
So why do you think I do, Neera?
Having burnt bank notes worth Rs 5,000 crore, I smelt death
He said I’ll never write poetry
So why do you think I have, Neera?
On the banks of Amsterdam’s canals I have heard doddering old men sing limericks
He transcended from sorrow to anger and anger to hate
Why are you so generous Neera?
Please don’t tell my grandmother.















Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 3

Homage to Picasso by Hungryalist Painter Anil Karanjai
Source: Facebook Page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

কমেডি হল ট্র্যাজেডির পরগাছা
মলয় রায়চৌধুরী


কী নাম ছিল যেন সেই সম্পাদকের ? 'জনতা' পত্রিকার? ১৯৬১ সালে
লিখেছিলেন, 'টিকবে না, টিকবে না', প্রথম পাতায়!
উনি? হ্যাঁ, বোধহয় মোগাম্বো ওনার নাম ।
তারপরে ১৯৬২, ১৯৬৩, ১৯৬৪, ১৯৬৫, ১৯৬৬
কে যেন সেই বেঁটেখাটো লোকটা, লিখেছিল দৈনিকে
'ওঃ, ও আর কতো দিন, টিকবে না, টিকবে না', সাহিত্য বিভাগে
কী যেন কি ছিল নাম, আরে সেই যে, সপ্ল্যানেডে, বুকস্টলে
মনে পড়ছে না ? কোথায় গেলেন উনি, সেই যে!
গাবদাগতর এক লিটল ম্যাগাজিনে লিখলেন—
উনি ? হ্যাঁ, বোধহয় ডক্টর ডাঙ ওনার নাম ।
তারপরে ১৯৬৭, ১৯৬৮, ১৯৬৯, ১৯৭০, ১৯৭১, ১৯৭২
মনে আসছে না ? চোখে চশমা, হন হন পাশ কাটিয়ে—
উনি ? হ্যাঁ, বোধহয় গব্বর সিং ওনার নাম ।
কেন যা পারো না রাখতে মনে করে ওনাদের পিতৃদত্ত নাম ;
পঞ্চাশ বছরেই ভুলে গেলে ? গেলেন কোথায় ওঁরা !
আরে সেই যে সেই ঢোলা প্যান্ট চাককাটা বুশশার্ট ?
লিখলেন অতো করে, 'টিকবে না, টিকবে না' !
তারপরে ১৯৭৩, ১৯৭৪, ১৯৭৫, ১৯৭৬, ১৯৭৭, ১৯৭৮, ১৯৭৯
১৯৮০, ১৯৮১, ১৯৮২, ১৯৮৩, ১৯৮৪, ১৯৮৫
১৯৮৬, ১৯৮৭, ১৯৮৮, ১৯৮৯, ১৯৯০, ১৯৯১, ১৯৯২
১৯৯৩, ১৯৯৪, ১৯৯৫, ১৯৯৬, ১৯৯৭, ১৯৯৮, ১৯৯৯
২০০০, ২০০১, ২০০২, ২০০৩, ২০০৪, ২০০৫, ২০০৬, ২০০৭
২০০৮, ২০০৯, ২০১০, ২০১১, ২০১২, ২০১৩, ২০১৪
কী ? মনে পড়ছে না এখনও ! অদ্ভুত লোক তো তুমি !
অতোগুলো লেখক সম্পাদক কবি পই পই করে
লিখে গেল, 'টিকবে না, টিকবে না, বেশিদিন টিকবে না
শিগগিরই ভুলে যাবে লোকে ।' অথচ তাদেরই নাম
মনে আনতে এতো হিমসিম ? তবে তাই হোক ।
মোগাম্বো ডক্টর ডাঙ আর গব্বর সিংহ নামে
বাঙালির ইতিহাসে ওনাদের তুলে রেখে দিই ।



Comedy is Tragedy’s Parasite
Malay Roychoudhury |Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta


What was the name of that editor of Janata? 1961:
On the front page, he wrote: “Won’t last, won’t last!”
Him? Maybe he is called Mogambo.
Then 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966
Who was that short man, wrote in the daily literary supplement
“That? How long will that last? Won’t last.”
What was his name? That man, at the Esplanade book stall
Can’t remember? Where did he go, that man?
In a famous little magazine he wrote—
Him? Maybe he is called Dr Dang
Then 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972
Can’t recall? Thick glasses, a swift stride—
Him? Maybe he is called Gabbar Singh
Why can’t you remember the names their fathers gave them?
Forgotten in just 50 years? Where did they go?
And that fellow who wore loose trousers and a bush shirt
And wrote so many times: “Won’t last, won’t last.”
Then 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979,
1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985,
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992,
1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
What? Can’t remember yet? What a strange fellow you are!
So many writers, editors, poets repeatedly
Wrote: “Won’t last, won’t last, won’t last too long
People will forget soon.” And yet you struggle
To recall their names? Then let it be!
Let Mogambo, Dr Dang and Gabbar Singh
Be their names in the history of Bengalis.

Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 2

ইনসমনিয়া

মলয় রায়চৌধুরী

লেখা পায় । লিখি ।।

খিদে পায় । খাই ।।

প্রেম পায় । করি ।।

জ্বালা পায় । জ্বলি ।।

নেশা পায় । গিলি ।।

হাসি পায় । হাসি ।।

ছোঁয়া পায় । ছুঁই ।।

দেখা পায় । দেখি ।।

রান্না পায় । রাঁধি ।।

দান পায় । থুই ।।

পড়া পায় । পড়ি ।।

শোয়া পায় । শুই ।।

হিসি পায় । মুতি ।।

হাই পায় । তুলি ।।

ঘৃণা পায় । করি ।।

হাগা পায় । হাগি ।।

হাঁচি পায় । হাঁচি ।।

ব্যথা পায় । কাঁদি ।।

পাদ পায় । পাদি ।।

নাচ পায় । নাচি ।।

গান পায় । গাই ।।

শ্বাস পায় । হই ।।

ঘুম পায় না ।

স্বপ্ন হয় না ।।

Insomnia

Malay Roychoudhury |Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta

Feel like writing; write

Feel hungry; eat

Feel love; do

Feel inflamed; burn

Feel addicted; drink

Feel funny; laugh

Feel like touching; touch

Feel like looking; look

Feel like cooking; cook

Feel like giving; donate

Feel like reading; read

Feel like laying; lay

Feel like pissing; piss

Feel like yawning; yawn

Feel hate; hate

Feel like shitting; shit

Feel like sneezing; sneeze

Feel hurt; cry

Feel like farting; fart

Feel like dancing; dance

Feel like singing; sing

Feel like breathing; am

No sleep

No dreams

Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

Stark Electric Week| Poems of Malay Roychoudhury translated by Uttaran Das Gupta | Part 1

Rebellion is in the air again. From the streets of Cairo to the boulevards of Boston, and closer home in Bangladesh, young men and women are willing to pay with their lives to stop the onward march of Moloch, representing all kinds of regressive forces that do not want the status quo to be challenged, who insist on giving us laughter in lieu of happiness, and whose sole aim is to strangle and starve to death all that is holy, and flows and lives. 

A decade like this occurred before in history half-a-century ago and it tied the Indian and American literary traditions even more strongly than before. It is known that Transcendentalism was influenced by Hindu scriptures like the Gita. Allen Ginsberg, a leader of the Beat movement which created a space for an alternative political and social order in America, also looked to India for inspiration, like his Transcendentalist literary father Walt Whitman. 

His travels in India brought him in touch with a group of artistes driven by similar ideals of reconstructing society through their art, which eschewed any bourgeoisie inhibitions, attacked the Establishment and took pride in its vulnerability.   

Like Ginsberg, the leader of the Hungryalists Malay Roy Choudhuri also underwent an obscenity trial for his poem Stark Electric Jesus, an event that was noticed around the world. We had reprinted the poem earlier and you may look it up here. 

We believe that the Hungryalists and the Beats did not fail in their aims. It was the society at large which did. We think that there is much in their poetry that can help keep the spirit of rebellion alive all over the world, for the task is far from done yet. 

Towards this end, we have a small contribution to make. Starting today, we will be publishing a poem per day for the next five days by Malay Roy Choudhury, translated by Uttaran Das Gupta,  a journalist and poet from Calcutta who now lives in New Delhi. The poems cover varied themes, tackling notions of the self and nationhood among others. Some of the more personal poems provide a striking account of the ignominy suffered by the Hungryalist poets at the hands of an insensitive state and callous society and sadly, even fellow writers and editors who far from expressing solidarity seem to have reveled in their misfortunes. 

A Painting by Hungryalist Painter Anil Karanjai
Source: Facebook Page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

আমার স্বদেশ

মলয় রায়চৌধুরী

আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে আদিবাড়ি উত্তরপাড়া আমার দেশ নয়
জানি গঙ্গায় অপরিচিতদের চোখ খুবলানো লাশ ভেসে আসে
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে পিসিমার আহিরিটোলা আমার দেশ নয়
জানি পাশেই সোনাগাছি পাড়ায় প্রতিদিন তুলে আনা কিশোরীদের বেঁধে রাখা হয়
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে মামার বাড়ি পাণিহাটি আমার দেশ নয়
জানি কোন পাড়ায় দিন দুপুরে কাদের খুন করা হয়েছে
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে শৈশবের কোন্নোগর আমার দেশ নয়
জানি কারা কাদের দিয়ে কাকে গলা কেটে মারতে পাঠায়
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে যৌবনের কলকাতা আমার দেশ নয়
জানি কারা কাদের বোমা মারে বাসে-ট্রামে আগুন লাগায়
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে পশ্চিমবঙ্গ আমার দেশ নয়
এদেশের লকআপে পিটুনি খেয়ে থেঁতলে মরার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের চা-বাগানে না খেতে পেয়ে দড়িদঙ্কা হবার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের চটকলে গলায় দড়ি দিয়ে ঝোলার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের দলগুণ্ডাদের পোঁতা মাটির তলায় হাড় হবার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের ধনীদের ফাঁদে ফেঁসে সর্বস্বান্ত হবার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের শাসকদের বাঁধা লিউকোপ্লাস্ট মুখে বোবা থাকার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের নেতাদের ফোঁপরা বক্তৃতা আর গালমন্দ শোনার অধিকার আমার আছে
এদেশের অবরোধকারীদের আটকানো পথে হার্টফেল করার অধিকার আমার আছে
আমার পক্ষে বলা সম্ভব নয় যে বাংলাভাষা আমার স্বদেশ নয়


Homeland

Malay Roychoudhury |Translation: Uttaran Das Gupta

Can’t say my Uttarpara ancestral home isn’t my homeland,
I know unidentified bodies, their eyes plucked out, float by in the Ganga.
Can’t say my aunt’s Ahiritola isn’t my homeland,
I know abducted girls are bound and gagged in Sonagachi nearby.
Can’t say my uncle’s at Panihati isn’t my homeland,
I know who was killed, and where, in broad daylight.
Can’t say my adolescent Konnagar isn’t my homeland,
I know who was sent to cut whose throat.
Can’t say my youth’s Calcutta isn’t my homeland,
I know who threw bombs, set fire on buses, trams.
Can’t say West Bengal isn’t my homeland,
I’ve the right to be tortured to death in its lock-ups,
I’ve the right to starve and have rickets in its tea gardens,
I’ve the right to hang myself at its handloom mills,
I’ve the right to become bones buried by its party lumpen,
I’ve the right to have my mouth taped, silenced,
I’ve the right to hear the leaders sprout gibberish, abuse,
I’ve the right to a heart attack on its streets blocked by protestors,
Can’t say Bengali isn’t my homeland.























Read all poems from the Stark Electric Week Series.

2 poems | Arjun Chaudhuri

1.
No one called her brave when ...
my mother donned the white.
The red in her parting pinked,
her iron bangle taken off then,
her gold earrings left locked.
My aunts were worried about
whether she would eat fish
on the fifteenth day after all.
My grandmothers knew what
would follow after, the leaving trial.
It was a fortnight of rituals that started.
It was a fortnight of changes that came.
But no one called my mother brave
when she kept changing, from white to white.
My father died early in the morning.
The cremation, the wiping of red,
the food, the crows, and the funeral bed
took up all of that day, and evening.
No one noticed when my mother ceased
to walk among the coloured after that.
Even now when June comes with summer
and summer brings showers with it
and red occasions of pride come singly or many in hand,
I notice how my mother keeps her white
separate from all other roles she has.
I wonder how much strength it is
that bears the blame, the burden of a death.
No one, even now, calls my mother brave
for having donned the white that day.


2.
When we moved house,
we took ourselves away
and left much behind. ...

My father was blind
to my anger at the leaving.
My mother knew, though,
but she did not say much,
except to keep the peace.

When we moved house,
we took a lot away with us,
but left too much behind.

The last of the trunks to out
was the oldest tin trunk, the one

on whose lid I had often
replayed The Flying Trunk,

with lizards on the attic floor
dressed in afternoon light
like maps of fleeting kingdoms
speeding beneath my flight.

My father called it useless.
My mother agreed with him.
The books could not be graceful
on the newly living walls.

They left it there, in the attic.
When we moved house,
we took a lot away with us
but left a lot behind.


*Excerpts from Arjun Chaudhuri's latest volume of poetry, Love Stories Of A Decade to be published soon.

1 poem | Charles Bane Jr

All The Men Went

All the men went
to the mines and
my grandfather carried
a canary in a small cage.
When the bird expired he
chose to stay as the others
rushed to air.
At his funeral Mass in
the church he never
entered, a choir sang
Danny Boy that was his
drinking song. No one
understood his choice
to lay beside his pick
and sleep; but I had
spent a night in his home
when I was small and called
down for his company.
He lay beside me
and explained how
the light that reflects
through a prism is a true
division of a miracle and
this was joyous to him to
know and he described
the tracks of carts carrying coal
and the flashing lamps of fellow
gods and he recounted, touching
my hair, the Iliad and Apollo of the sky
on a knee, firing arrows in single
beams.
He was without vice: but when the
elevator ascended from the shaft
in daylight savings time, grand-
mother told me he disappeared to
land for sale and tasted the rich black
soil of Illinois with a spoon. I think,
and write, of ultra violet and infra red
light that vibrates in every kind of
molecule, even cloud drops, in
a music for grandfather and choice
mythology.

Lost Poets Series| Hungryalist poets translated by Arunava Sinha| Part 2

We present to you English translations of poems by two more lesser known Hungry Generation poets for the first time. All the poems have been translated by the acclaimed translator, Arunava Sinha.

'Kusma's Door'* by Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai
Source: Facebook page (with permission from his wife Juliet Reynolds)

Selim Mustafa

1. Hiroshima

Coils of smoke on ruined earth

Over the smoke millions of years 

Of enchanted nights

This night is Hiroshima

This night is Nagasaki

The moonlight comes up the stairs

Climbs down the stairs

The antenna shivers

Sorrow too has its staircase, its history 

This night is Guernica

This night is Bibhutibhushan.

2. India 1 & 2

1.

Who laughs?

Hyenas

Who dances?

Ghosts

Who watches?

Jackals

Who weeps?

Humans.

2

Not here? Says who? I exist

Do you think I, like all of you,

Survive in the human jungle,

Underground or in goodness?

No, it’s in your prison that I live.

Falguni Roy

1. I have no conflict with people

No, I have no conflict with people any more

I can easily take my creditor to the hospital if he’s in an accident

I can unhesitatingly ask my old lover’s husband for a cigarette

With the ease of growing a beard I can in this life

See a universal sexual peace in Ramakrishna’s devotion to Kali

When I lose a single slipper I buy a new pair

No, I have no conflict with people any more

My uncomfortable gaze shifts from my sister’s breasts

On the ritual day of sisterly love I wander around whorehouses

When I die I will see the corridor of second births

Till the moment before my birth I didn’t know I would be born

I am a man without redemption engaged in destiny

I am a man without destiny engaged in terrorism

I have seen a dog sobbing within me constantly

For his bitch, a monk become an eager debauch

To deflower a woman monk’s self-imposed virginity

And even heavenly love is pulverised by this debauchery

Eventually I’m in favour of seeking the joy of life instead of

Rhythm in poetry, that’s why I have no conflict with life

No conflict with people.

2. A redundant poem

I am a newly arrived stranger on earth’s ancient body

Now as the doctor slices the poet’s vein to collect blood

I remember wanting to sell my own blood

To drink and write poetry

Have I gone to the dogs? Many mysteries are still under cover

I am still afraid to die, which means I love life

So I walk beneath the overcast sky

With the Red Book in one hand and Jibanananda’s poetry

In the other – I dislike those who wear sunglasses 

When it’s Cloudy, I dislike those who think of god 

When slammed by the world, I adore those who kick away

Idols of the gods and ask what is what, with great enthusiasm

I take Marx Lenin Sartre Joyce Kafka to the Coffee House

To destroy cigarettes and then walked by myself through a crowd

Of people, desolate, actually I’m getting nothing from books

Hoping to get something from my lover I run to her to find her

In bed with my elder brother, an officer, I am unemployed

I talked of love with the whores, my brother the officer bought

My lover a sari with his bonus and became her lover, the money

He spent would have paid for my meals for a month, which means

It costs the same to cover my future wife’s body and to feed me

Can you imagine this existence of ours

Still I love the naked child’s chuckles, the renewal of the

Ancient earth, in front of my hungry eyes the beautiful woman’s

Framework of bones passes through time towards the pyre, I sell

Fat philosophy books to buy bread and alcohol just for sustenance

I even manage to write, believe me, to write a redundant poem.

*This life-size painting (1985) belongs to the National Gallery of Modern Art. It depicts the abandoned home of the dacoit queen Kusma Nain on the UP-MP border. Anil had travelled there with the journalist Kalyan Mukherjee on the trail of Kusma who had fled after taking revenge on her upper caste rapists.

Read all poems from the Lost Poets Series.

8 Haiku| Rochelle Potkar

Source: freeimages.com

graffiti walls –
no memories of
a plain blue sky

handwoven sky
the thread-knots
on her tunic

train window–
a raindrop stretches 
into eternity

beetle drone . . .
the gleaming dome 
of Dad's coffin

traffic snarl -
I remember the song
of estuaries 

fading moon . . .

the head count ritual

of stolen children

^

the way pink orchids

blossom into periwinkles

heresy…

*

autumn whirlwind –

a child grabs at her

candy floss

~

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

^First published in Haibun Today, Volume 8, Number 4, December 2014

* First published in bottle rockets, 2015

~Honorable mention in the haiku contest 2014, Tata Literature Live

Lost Poets Series| Hungryalist poets translated by Arunava Sinha| Part 1

We are happy to announce that we will be publishing English translations of poems by lesser known Hungry Generation poets  for the first time over the next few weeks. All the poems have been translated by the acclaimed translator, Arunava Sinha.

A painting by Hungryalist painter Anil Karanjai
Source: http://hungryalistgeneration.blogspot.in

Subo Acharya  

1. The sounds of a dog with no duties

Thrice I’ve exchanged glances with a dog with no duties
Noting at the base of every lamppost on the street
A distinctive self-contradiction I advance it can also
Be called retreating there’s no fear of being ambushed
All movements are unrestrained and using the alphabet
Words like ‘love’ and ‘death’ are utilised for sport
Every day on the beach just this instant I have put
A hand prone to criminal acts in my empty pocket
With the other I chuck the featureless chin
Of the world, saying, ‘dance little lady dance’ –

2. Sanjukta and the seventeen horsemen

I don’t know what you were doing then

A wrinkling of the nose curling of the lips then phooey?

Dismounting one by one, the seventeen galloping horsemen 

Bowed their heads and turned to stone

The horses cantered haphazardly

Towards the lake

I don’t know what you were doing after that

You wound up a top and let it spin

Gathering diurnal and annual momentum it revolved around you

Sinking to their necks in the mud the horses

Stretched their necks to neigh in unison

And the helmets of the seventeen soldiers began

To fling themselves at your feet

And then

When you could not find a single unbloomed bud

In your belly, breasts or anywhere on your body

Tying themselves into a knot, your nerve-endings

Took you swiftly beyond joy and illness, to a place

Where you kept giving birth, one by one,

To seventeen horsemen, and climbing upon a dome

Touching the sky, you dried your hair with the sun on your back

And when the sunlight died you narrowed your eyes

Shielding them with your hand you began to search

For the seventeen cowards from your womb. 

Shaileswar Ghosh

1. I am hungry

As soon as I put my hand on a woman’s body she turned to gold

I’m a penniless labourer I live in Port Commission Quarter No. 5

The touch of my breath split the Communist Party into two

My arms lengthened, legs shortened, organ remained unchanged

I have seen my mother in bed with a god.

My father lost all he had gambling – an insane Van Gogh

Had seen flames in the rice fields and in Tahiti’s islands

Gauguin’s dog spread syphilis – from my mouth I have pulled out

The kind of sea whose tides don’t swell, resist all attraction

Watching a boxing match on television I ran to my male friend.

I move around with you eat and drink with you sleep with you

I steal your money I buy one woman after another

When I enter a church its spire collapses, I am hungry

All the doors and windows of libraries close at my sight.

I was given hashish as payment for roasting the rotis

On the streets I hear nothing but my own footsteps

My words light up India’s nuclear furnaces instantly

When I’m really upset I exchange blows with my friends

A friend stole ten rupees I didn’t return a hundred I’d borrowed

I don’t give a damn, for I have tasted heavenly flesh

Poetry rises like the Ochterlony Monument, destroying my mind

I tell the truth when I hallucinate – I see an angel

They’re dismantled when struck by a rocket – when I’m hungry

They drag me away where my intestines fill with people’s love

One of my mates is a bastard, another a traitor, one a murderer

They escaped to our gathering without passports – another one

Broke into railway wagons to loot all the aluminium ovens

I take my girlfriend into the bathroom – I am blind in one eye

I have never seen a Rolls Royce – I like smoking by myself

And when necessary I push myself all the way to Dumdum Airport.

2. I plucked a single flower

I plucked a single flower it was enough to break my world

Every day I find my clothes ill-fitting on my body

I killed a bird whose song was meant to wake the world

I will be released after destroying every faith.

Memories of sleeping with her father figure makes a monk woman seek more darkness

The grass knows the lightning that strikes its breast is a play of power 

At last I know that severing the stalk is the creator’s finest act.

When there’s celebration on the ground we’re made to fear shipwrecks from a height

Our life is to watch, mesmerised, the male character playing the eunuch

An ascetic had to lay down his life because his heart had overflown with love

All the flowers that blossom from my deed are witches used to worship you.

I open my eyes to see the swan writhing in pain from the embedded arrow

When I nurse it back to life the hunter wants half of what I’ve saved

Peace descends only at those moments when gold and iron cost the same.

When I pluck the flower I’m a terrorist - I have offered my senses to the world

On the last train I heard the professional whore’s enchanting singing with the thieves

All weapons are off on pilgrimage now – murderers have located their personal sorrows

The gods we have come to adore change their positions every day

Satan coils himself around a young girl like a serpent to drink from her breasts

The form in which I saw my mother from the womb burns bright in my memory

Life demands to know from life, are all forms of violence your children?

I plucked a single flower it was enough to break my world

A single tear falls on my face from space – I only gaze upwards

All the streams flowing from my body have gathered in a river

Many kicks await you still if the scars from the shackles remain

The moment terror was born, the world split into two, proponents and opponents

When the deluge begins every exponent of life seeks safe sanctuary.

Thrust your son into the wedding bedroom, father, stand guard with your stick

Over the iron bedroom, tonight he will be born and die soon after

The shortcut to heaven passes through hell.

I plucked a single flower it was enough to break my world

A droplet of light lay down its life to reveal the image of my darkness

Read all poems from the Lost Poets Series.

2 poems | Akhu Chingangbam

On Independence Day, we have two poems for you today by Akhu Chingangbam: India, I See Blood in Your Hands and Lullaby. They are also sung and performed by Akhu and his band, Imphal Talkies.

1. India, I see blood in your hands


India, have you ever crawled down enough to smell the soil of Kashmir?
India, have you ever heard of a lady named Sharmila?
India, can you explain to me what happened in the land of Gandhi, in Gujarat?
India, what are the charges against Dr Binayak Sen?

India, I see blood in your hands
India I see blood in your flag

India, are you waiting for the stone pelters to become suicide bombers?
India, Why are your farmers so fucking suicidal?
India, why the Poets in South are mourning for the Tamils killed in Sri Lanka?
India, why did you let Narendra Modi walk free preaching genocide?
India, what have you done to the villagers after salwa judum?

Is there a dream that we share from east to west?
Is there a song that echoes from north to south?


 Click to listen to the song in Soundcloud.



2. Lullaby

( First published in Northeast Review)

Blood soaked streets
That’s my ground
That’s where i play around
Sound of gunshots
That’s my song
That’s my lulla- lullaby

Your revolution has snatched away
My right to education

Te te tenouwa
Kangleipakki tenouwa
angang na mullaga
tenouwa na haraoiwi
oooooh ooooooohhhh
Uhdei saba nongmeini
mana pangba makhoini

Blood soaked body
That’s my daddy
You just shot him
You just killed him…………………
We dont need your guns and bombs
We just need songs of love

Your constitution has nothing for me
All you do is kill my innocence

Te te tenouwa
Kangleipakki tenouwa
angang na mullaga
tenouwa na haraoiwi
oooooh ooooooohhhh
Uhdei saba nongmeini
mana pangba makhoini

Fallen bodies like
Fallen leaves of October
But you don’t care
You bomb a town
That’s my town
That’s where i play around

Don’t fill our lives with throes of pain
Share a smile so we can bloom again.


Here is the official video of the song.

A Calcutta Story | Deborah Baker

In a moving tribute to Calcutta and Ginsberg, Deborah Baker writes about her early days in the city, having married one of the best writers of Indian English literature, who belonged to the place. The lack of a sense of belonging informs her early days while she accompanies her husband on his evening visits to the house of a Calcutta poet who knew Ginsberg. Here she writes about feeling a sense of affinity with Ginsberg whom she imagines to have undergone the same set of suspicions that she had faced and like him,she also ended up disarming her local interlocutors.This is followed up with a description of meeting Allen in New York city where she felt like an outsider once again.She tells us how even the young and irreverent who thought nothing of mocking other senior writers were respectful towards Ginsberg. Read the original English version of Baker's piece first published exclusively by The Sunflower Collective.

Allen Ginsberg in Calcutta circa 1960
Source: https://artcritique.files.wordpress.com/

In February 1990 I married my husband before a crowd of strangers on the rooftop of his parents house in Calcutta.  That first year I worked on a book in the back room of a borrowed apartment in Ballygunge while he worked on his book a few kilometers away in his childhood bedroom in Jodhpur Park. Every month or so we would go to the home of a popular and prolific Bengali writer named Tarapada Ray. He lived with his wife on the second floor of a big house near the Astor Hotel closer to the city center.

It seemed we always arrived at Tarapada babu’s in the midst of  loadshedding. We would creep up the large stairway that wound round the inner walls of the house in complete darkness, my husband carrying a bottle of Old Monk while I tried not to trip on my sari. Fluorescent tubes lit up the flat while ceiling fans rotated weakly, both powered by a contraption referred to as an inverter. Unlike a generator that makes a loud roar and can operate as long as it has petrol, the inverter is made from an assemblage of car batteries, wired to switch on when the current failed. If load shedding lasted long enough or returned often enough, the batteries would run down completely.  Every household had one. There was nothing more dispiriting during loadshedding than the sound of a ceiling fan over your bed stopping in the middle of the night.The mosquito net would heave a final sigh before settling on you like a collapsed lung. When the swish of the fan returned, an hour or two or more later, it felt like the wings of angels.

Tarapada babu cut a striking figure. His bloodshot eyes were banded in a darker pigment of skin lending him a distinct raccoon-like appearance. Most prominent was his belly. This preceded him by some distance, particularly when his dhoti’s knot rested atop it, giving his figure a senatorial fullness. He had a bullet head set upon prominent jowls and no discernable neck. Unexpectedly, he vibrated with energy and would periodically explode in barrel chested laughter. In his wild younger days the American poet Allen Ginsberg had christened him Torpedo.

Evenings at Tarapada babu’s were spent smoking Gold Flake cigarettes, and throwing back large tumblers of rum. Both fueled an uninterrupted flow of Bengali stories. From the evidence of my husband’s good humor, these stories were very funny. Tarapada’s wife spoke no English, and Tarapada wasn’t terribly keen on it. My husband would occasionally try to translate for me but it was like trying to describe an orchestra to a deaf person. When Tarapada spoke English, it came out in short, hoarse bursts of glottal noise, not unlike gunfire. The last words were nearly always unintelligible and I would have to ask him to repeat himself which naturally exasperated him. Similarly, if I risked a question I could never tell if Tarapada understood a word of what I was saying. His glare signaled blank incomprehension, if not actual hostility. I really couldn’t tell.  Mostly I just sat there counting my mosquito bites and making minute adjustments to the folds in my sari. At about 11 or 12 at night, Tarapada would send out for kathi rolls from the Astor Hotel. The cylindrical rolls, filled with spiced chicken and tiny green rings of hot peppers, arrived warm, with grease lightly flecking the waxy paper they were wrapped in. Their arrival signaled the close of Tarapada’s evening and the highlight of mine.  

Young Indian students had only recently begun to apply for undergraduate admission to American colleges and universities in significant numbers. Where once upon a time an aspiring Bengali academic might choose to pursue advanced studies in the Soviet Union or even Oxford or Cambridge, if they chose an America university they would have to answer for it. In Calcutta there was still something vaguely disloyal about anyone who chose to go to America instead.

A year before the first Gulf war, I felt that the pro Soviet/anti Americanism of the Bengalis was more of a salutary practice than a firm conviction, not unlike choosing low fat milk over whole. To someone’s proposition that the CIA had orchestrated the rise of Solidarity and the more recent fall of the Berlin wall, I once replied “you can’t be serious.” This was a mistake. On occasion some inane remark of mine at what I imagined was a friendly dinner party would end up in the society pages accompanied by a snarky comment. This happened more than once. It took me awhile to catch on that I was a subject of suspicion.

During one of these evenings at Tarapada’s house, he suddenly turned and spoke directly to me. He told me that he had known the American poet Allen Ginsberg, that he and his fellow poets had met him in the famed College Street coffeehouse in North Calcutta. Again, the tail end of the thought was lost in an explosion of incomprehensible and fearful sounds finishing in a deadly quiet. I smiled and Tarapada glared.   

           

I had met Allen Ginsberg just once, several years before. He was smaller than I had imagined; his stature further undermined by the folds and cushions of an off white sectional sofa at an upper west side cocktail party. The once rabbinical beard was then trim and graying and there were suede patches on the elbows of his jacket befitting his new position as a professor at Brooklyn College.  He carried the weight of his legend lightly, with none of the affectations the young are so quick to discover and disparage. He had kind eyes--one slightly drooping from an illness we had all heard about--behind thick spectacles.

Nearly everyone at the party had a claim on him but any direct approach was made somewhat awkward by the arrangement of furniture. The party took place in one of those storied pre-war classic six apartments, with a book lined hallway running its length, the kitchen at one end and a living room and its sofa at the other. Just being in an owner occupied apartment back then gave me an outsider’s sense of belonging, a sense of having cracked New York City in some essential way.

I came with several friends, all in our mid twenties, freelancers and journeyman editors with inchoate aspirations. One, the son of a much married father who had edited a prominent literary magazine, was a beautiful and haunted young poet, with a voice so fast and low you were obliged to lean closer to hear him. As a sulky adolescent he had known writers and intellectuals I had admired for years and he took pleasure in disabusing me of their immortal stature. Yet, even for him, Allen Ginsberg commanded attention. He approached the couch with the same confidence, I recall thinking, a pretty young woman displays in the presence of an older but moneyed man.

Yet what I remember most about that evening was noting that Ginsberg only had eyes for a young man from India who had accompanied us. Unlike my other friends, the man was a relative newcomer to the city and a stranger to the literary lions in the room. Ginsberg’s eyes and voice found him trapped in the doorway and, patting the sofa, drew him in. Knowing from his name that he was a Bengali, he wanted to know which writers he knew in Calcutta.

Three years later, newly married to this young writer, and settled in a city I never once imagined I would even visit, I realized that it was comforting to be reminded by Tarapada that Allen Ginsberg had been here before me. That he had braved the worst suspicions of an entire cadre of skeptical, wary, and fierce Bengali poets and had disarmed them and learned from them. That he was able to prove he was not, as they first imagined, a CIA agent out to destabilize their young country. In the end they decided he was one of them: a poet in a city full of poets. Tarapada babu wouldn’t have said so, but I could tell that even after thirty years, he still considered Allen Ginsberg his friend.  It occurred to me that perhaps he was telling me of this friendship as a way of declaring a truce with me, a suspect American married to a Bengali writer. Perhaps, resigning himself to the fact that I wasn’t scared off, this was his way of being hospitable.

That, at least, was how I chose to see it. It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome, but it was the start of something. Years later, still married and outfitted with two children, seven years after the death of Allen Ginsberg, I was fired from my job as a book editor. Rather than look for another job I decided I wanted to write a book about the place of India in the American imagination. I began my research with the Transcendentalists, proceeding through Walt Whitman’s “A Passage to India” and Martin Luther King’s embrace of Gandhi’s thought, and Hollywood’s discovery of yoga. When it finally occurred to me that Allen Ginsberg 1962 and 1963 travels would be the perfect vehicle to explore this subject, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to think of it. Tarapada’s mention of Ginsberg on that long ago evening I now decided had granted me permission to write about Allen and the Bengali poets he had come to love.  It was only then, in the course of researching the book, that I heard all the stories of Allen’s stay in Calcutta.

Five days before he died Allen wrote a poem entitled “Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgia)” which included memories of his days in Calcutta and Benares and his travels in India with his lover, Peter Orlovsky.

Nor ever return to Kashi "oldest continuously habited city in the world"

bathe in Ganges & sit again at Manikarnika ghat with Peter,

visit Lord Jagganath again in Puri, never back to Birbhum take

notes tales of Khaki B Baba

Or enter to have Chai with older Sunil & Young coffeehouse poets,

Tie my head on a block in the Chinatown opium den, pass by Moslem

Hotel, its rooftop Tinsmith Street Choudui Chowh Nimtallah

Burning ground nor smoke ganja on the Hooghly.

He meant the poem as a goodbye but for the poets he left behind, like Tarapada, it was more than that. Calcutta is Kolkata now and there are fancy malls and a lot less loadshedding.  But Tarapada is gone and the city is emptier without him.  

1 poem | Charles Bane Jr

Thunder, Lightning

Thunder, lightning appear
on the sea and we slip to
Lesbos to be islanded and
enclosed.

Thunder, lightning. You roar
as I strike between your sandy
legs and we weep for the
banishment of emptiness
on the returning ship to
Athens streets.

Shall I lay my legs on
yours as we impregnate
the other eternally,
and birth from our lips
as we destroy our single
being, a crying child?

Thunder, lightning. I flash
behind your steps, unable
to describe on papyrus
the instance you slipped
into my menstrual flow
to heal small cuts and make my
heart beat longer for you
or your baths in the
sea that stirred me to compose
in the dark. Thunder

and lightning. I do not hate
men but how can I be tender
when every animal seeks out its
kind? Shall a bird love
shells or make nests for
hawks designed for doves?

Thunder, lightning are hammer
and necklace and we will never
return to any avenues but
their skies.

1 poem | Mark Antony Rossi

Thanks For the Memories

I used to be right
until I met
a girl poet
plunging
rhyme,
reason,
religion
and
roll-on deodorant
out my bathroom window.
 
The dog got sick
The landlord got serious.
The neighbors got eyes.
I got quiet;
wrote the scene
in my fiction
a comedy
to remember her by.

1 Poem | Djelloul Marbrook

The woven world 

                 *

Unattainable inaccessible one

we cast you out from within

only to feed on you like hummingbirds.

                **

So he took a shit around noon;

where did he take it, why

are we always taking things?

               ***

Is acquisition scatological?

What’s a thing worth but how

it’s tagged? Tags are our obsession.

              ****

Fisheye, on your slab of ice,

is this about entertaining angels unawares,

or not?

             *****

Stroke my face with rosemary,

soak my feet in sage; I will become

a thread of the woven world, a non-compliant.

Stark Electric Jesus - Malay Roychoudhury ( Translated by the Author)

We present to you a landmark poem from the Hungry Generation by it's founder, Malay Roychoudhury. Choudhury faced an obscenity trial for this poem and underwent quite an ordeal, which made his friend Allen Ginsberg (who had faced a similar trial) contact his poet friends like Nissim Ezekiel and political ones like Pupul Jayakar, a friend of Indira Gandhi's, to help the young poet The poem has been reprinted with the author's permission.

Malay in Palamau (1963), Source: kaurab.com 

Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the back and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glasspanes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brains contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
Mother why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's arse
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring with me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
Draw and elevate Shubha into my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Calcutta seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But I do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn Usage of French leather while lying on Nandita's bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's fresh chinarose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain's cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I'll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of Shubha's bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents
Was Malay alias me possible fron an absolutely different sperm
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me like my dead brother without Shubha
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As the cathode rays are sucked up with warmth of a magnet's brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending into your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience
I'll disrupt and destroy
I'll split all inti pieces for the sake of arts
There isn't any other way out for poetry except suicide
Shubha
Let me enter into the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora
In to the absurdity of woeless effort
In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart
Why wasn't I lost in my mother's urethra
Why was I driven away in my father's urine after his self-coition
Why wasn't I mixed in the ovum-flux or in the phlegm
With her eyes shut supine beneath me
I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seize Shubha
Women could be treacherous even after unfolding a helpless appearance
Today it seems there is nothing treacherous as Women and Art
Now my ferocious heart is running towards an impossible death
Vertigo of water are coming up to my neck from the pierced earth
I will die
Oh what are these happenings within me
I am failing to fetch out my hand and my palm
From the dried sperms on my trousers spreading wings
300000 children gliding toward the district of Shubha's bosom
Millions of needles are now running from my blood into Poetry
Now the smuggling of my obstinate leg is trying to plunge
Into the death-killer sex-wig entangled in the hypnotic kingdom of words
In violent mirrors of each wall of the room I am observing
After letting loose a few naked Malay, his unestablished scramblings.

'America' Tribute Series: Part III - Aruni Kashyap

The third and the final poem in this series is by Aruni Kashyap. The America tribute series celebrates poems by various Indian poets that are either inspired or, are adapted from Ginsberg's America. We thank the author for granting us the permission to use this poem.

Dear India

- A Collage poem

(A tribute to Ginsberg’s America. First published in The Sunday Guardian, 2012)

Dear India, what kind of an idea are you? Do you
bend at all? Do you sway at all, trimming
your bluish shades? Why are you
proud of a 50 year old shame?

Dear India, please do not forget the sweaters women in Assam had knitted,
the ornaments they had donated and do not forget,
that James Bond has killed 150 men and
has slept with 44 women since
the first movie came out in 1962. That is
also an important matter.

Dear India, there were few boats that night,
when people were fleeing Tezpur, feeling
betrayed after they'd heard Nehru's speech.

Dear India, please wake up.
Have some strong Assam tea (Korongoni will do but
I love Golaghat Tea too - you can get it in small
250 gram packets if you don't want to spend a lot)
and stop glorifying 1962 as it is not the only story.

Dear India, have you read A Single Man?
Christopher Isherwood's novel
set in November 1962, about a gay man in LA? Have
you heard of the book? About the Cuban Missile Crisis?
You know, I am a great fan of Lata Mangeshkar. I think she is super cool.

Dear India,
In 1962, An American Airlines Boeing 707 crashed on takeoff
at New York International Airport after a rudder malfunction
caused an uncontrolled roll, resulted in the loss of control of the aircraft
and the loss of all life on board - there are other
stories, please read some at least, India.

Dear India : go fuck yourself with your atom bomb,
with your commonwealth games
with your T-3 airport.

Dear India,
you need an education.

Dear India, why do you make me
feel ashamed so often? As if seizing the virginities
of fourteen-year olds by Indian soldiers in 90s
wasn't enough. Dear India, please pack
your bags, and go to school. It is getting late, your Assam tea
will not remain hot forever. Dear India, you might
just miss the bus - have you done your homework? Madam
will make you kneel down in front of the class if it is incomplete. Please
do not stick your arms and legs out of the windows of the bus and better
finish your tiffin today: including the bananas.








Read other poems from the 'America' Tribute Series.