Better Late Than Never: Kashinath Roy's <i>Jibanananda Dekhoon</i>
artwork by amina
Kashinath Roy began writing poetry in his teens, and in the sixties published regularly in periodicals like Kanthaswar (edited by Abdullah Abu Sayeed). After that he published little, though he kept on writing -- poems, short stories, at least one novella. Some of these appeared in the irregular little magazine Nirantar (edited by Naim Hasan), and more recently, Ekobingsha (edited by K. Ashraf Hossain). He was sixty when he published his first book, a verse play he had written in his teens. Now, at sixty-one, he has published a substantial collection of recent poems, Jibanananda Dekhoon ("Take a Look, Jibanananda"). It is available from Bhashachitra, and I hope the Boi Mela crowds will notice it. The poems are forthright, often bitterly satirical, eminently readable, and a most pertinent commentary on the state of our nation. The following is my rather hastily done translation of the second poem in the book, 'Hazrat Nuh-er Nauka'.Noah's Ark
My nightmaresquatting on the breast of sleep –
in the small hours
of last night I lay watching:
churning the three realms
the deluge rises foaming and frothing,
and my terror-stricken homeland –
my Bangladesh –
cowering beneath
the raised paw of complete ruin. Just then the great ark of Noah the prophet
comes caressing the despondent horizon
and lovingly docks at my head.
The mild instructions of ever-merciful Allah
resounded in my distraught consciousness.
In order to build a post-deluge community
I picked up
from Creation's motley throng
one by one, in couples, whatever thrives
in our homeland's discommoded soil:
peasants, workers, students, intellectuals
tycoons, merchants, grocers, ministers,
sentries, bureaucrats, officials,
newspapers and newsmen,
policies and policy-makers,
poets, artists, lovers;
with bated breath
I picked up a couple of country footpaths
and a couple of hamlets. Heaving a sigh of relief, as I was about
to break into a song of regeneration
addressed to the future motherland,
the distressed conscience of the nation
broke through the waves and begged me
to restrain myself
with gaze fixed on the crowded heart of Noah's ark.
Following that gaze my two eyes
abruptly staggered to a halt.
Both hands pressed to my head, I saw
a fatal illness curled around the breast
of my salvaged land, swinging merrily:
malnourished peasant, deunionized worker,
shortsighted students and intellectuals,
bogus industrialists, merchants, grocers,
thuggish minister, sentry, bureaucrat, official,
newspaper crushed under bad news,
newsman troubled by commercialism,
unprincipled policy-maker,
poet without prosody,
painter without form,
passionless lovers.
Even the carefree river is choked with sewage,
the footpaths bear chest wounds,
the hamlets are stricken with illness and sorrow. Suppressing a cry of intolerable anguish,
one by one, I threw the wretched cargo overboard
into the omnivorous currents of the deluge,
and attempting to control a sigh
like a python's hiss, my hand
falling on the chest gave me a shock:
other than variegated scars
and impotent rage
and the stifling pressure of faithlessness
it felt nothing.
Raising limp hands in prayer to Khuda almighty.
I begged forgiveness
and plunged into the turbulent waves . . . Bearing a void in its heart,
Hazrat Noah's hopeless ark
drifted towards an unknown destination.
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