Translation of Seven Modern Assamese Poems

The modern age of Assamese literature began during the late 1930s. Assamese modern poetry shows a departure from the conventional structures of Romanticism in both content and form. It has discarded rhyme in order to attain greater freedom of expression. Harekrishna Deka, well-known Assamese poet, says that in modern poetry, it was “image, and not rhyme, that became the privileged vehicle.” However, Deka also points out how romantic strains are still visible in modern poetry, like a sense of mystery, wonder, transcendental idealism and an inward looking vision towards the inner self.

I have chosen poems by three Assamese modern poets to translate into English – Hiren Bhattacharya’s “Moor Ei Xabdaboor”, “Kabitar Karone : Ekak Prarthana”, “Lanchita Xuurjya” and “Manuh-Mati-Tej-Ghamar Pathar”; Mahendra Bora’s “Landscape” and “Jatismar” and Dr. Nirmalprabha Bordoloi’s “Toomaloi”.

Born in 1932, Hiren Bhattacharya’s poetic talent found the fullest expression in the 60s and the 70s. He exercised a considerable influence on new poets. Some of his collections of poetry are Rooudra Kamana, Moor Dekh Aru Moor Premar Kobitar, Xoisar Pathar Manuh, Xugandhi Pokhila.

There is a touch of progressive social consciousness in his poetry. But he also writes about love, youth, patriotism and natural beauty. According to Kabin Phukan, his poetry is a proof of his expertise and discipline in the use of words, and is a reflection of ease and natural rhythm. Phukan says that the content of Bhattacharya’s poems is similar to that in Romantic poetry but his treatment is in a non-romantic form. His poems are usually short and precise, condensing a range of feelings. Bhattacharya’s patriotic poems reflect a rebellions attitude towards political injustice. He has also written poems about poetry and its nature, role and content.

Mahendra Bora, born in 1929, started his poetic career in the 40s. Some of his books of poems are Jatismar (1961), Rupar Tilingar Mat (1981), Neela Dhaturar Phul (1987). Natun Kobita (1958), an anthology of poems edited by him, was instrumental in bringing Modern Poetry to the limelight. In Bora’s poems, romantic poetic feelings have taken modern shape. His poems talk about memory, dreams, love, nature and friendship. Many of his poems express some philosophic thought. Poems are lyrical with a greater reliance on adjectives rather than verbs. They are usually descriptive but indirect, and not particularly dramatic in expression. Kabin Phukan notes how in the poem “Jatismar”, his vision of his past lives is sensory and not philosophical.

Dr. Nirmalprabha Bordoloi (1933-2004) was a well-known modern poet and lyricist. She writes about the different aspects of love, the varied appearances of beautiful and creative nature, Assamese festivals like Bihu. Moreover her poetry also delineates a quest for life, historical consciousness, the experience of foreign travel and compassion for the weak and the poor. The subject of her songs has a beautiful resemblance to that of her poetry. Some of her collections of poetry are Bar Phoringar Rang (1957), Xomipexu (1977), Dinar Pisat Din (1977), Xabdar Ipare Xabdar Xipare (1992), Amitabh Xabda. She was written poems about the suffering of women in a patriarchal society, about social, political and cultural life of Assam in the 1960s, about the sorrow of modern mechanical life and about the power of words. The focus of her poetry collection Antaranga (1978) is “love” and its sensual attraction. Xudirgha Din Aru Ritu (1982) expresses the anxieties and sorrows of the poet’s personal life, the grief of getting something and losing it and the determination to answer courageously the call of time.

As. Dr. Renu Bhuyan Saikia points out, Bordoloi does not deal with complex issues in her poems; instead, she puts life and meaning to a simple subject through the use of simple words. Bordoloi has one acclaim in the world of song literature also. Three collections of her lyrics have been published. Saikia remarks how her songs based on love are incomparable.

Hiren Bhattacharya’s “Moor Ei Xabdaboor”, “Kobitar Karane : Ekak Prarthana” and “Lanchita Xuurjya”, deal with the nature of poetry and the poet’s words. Lyricism and brevity mark “Moor Ei Xabdaboor” and “Lanchita Xuurjya”, which I have tried to capture in my translation. Here, Bhattacharya’s tries to portray the humility of a poet and in “Laanchita Xuurjya”, the poet’s limitation. I think breaking a sentence and arranging it in two or three lines give the sense of brevity. The first stanza of “Kobitar Karane : Ekak Prarthana”, has been left untranslated by the translator Pradip Acharya, thus leaving the poem incomplete. That is why I chose to translate it. The first stanza depicts the poet’s pathetic state and hence, the prayer for strength and courage.

In “Manuh-Mati-Tej-Ghamar Pathar”, the soil is invested with the qualities of a man of flesh and blood. But there is also the sense of man who needs to be made active and useful. While Acharya has put a comma between man and land, I have retained the hyphen of the original to reflect the inseparability of man and soil. This poem has been extremely difficult to translate. It uses a lot of agricultural images and I have had to leave some words untranslated, namely the different varieties of paddy. I feel that Acharya’s use of the words “wheat” and “millet” for them effaces the rootedness of the poem in the Assamese agricultural landscape. There is a kind of vigorous motion and energy in the poem, which is difficult to recapture in the English version.
Mahendra Bora’s poems use adjectives liberally and it is difficult to make out which adjective qualifies which noun. For instance, in “The Landscape”, Mahendra Bora translates the second line as “the earth is sucking out all the nectars, / and the boundless desire of the stars in the sky.” While I have translated it as “The earth was sucking the sky’s entire ambrosia, / the stars’ immense desires”. But another rendition can also be “the immortal star’s immense desires” – the word ‘immortal’ being used for ‘ambrosia’. The poem “Jatismar” also has numerous such examples and this was one problem I faced continuously while translating Bora’s poems.

There is a kind of flexibility in the original poems. I feel that Bora’s translation have attempted explanation at several times. For example, the line, “and it was mixed and pasted / with the sullen barkings of some gipsy dogs” in “The Landscape”. But the original does not try to explain with what the barking-sound was mixed. I have tried to retain the ambiguity. Mahendra Bora’s translation of “Jatismar” freely adds and omits from the original. I have tried to stick to the original as far as possible though in adding punctuation marks and breaking one line into two or three, my English version becomes much more simpler in relation to the layers of meaning that enrich the original poem.

A lyrical quality marks Dr. Nirmalprava Bordoloi’s poem “Toomaloi”. In the second stanza, “lao-jika Xak aru manimuni dubarir” has been translated in the published version as “the green of vegetation”, which I feel is too general. I have written “gourds and greens, herbs and grasses” with a note at the end. “Tamul” is areca nuts and not “betel leaves” as the published translation writes. Moreover, it also changes the order of the words. However, I retain the word “riha”, instead of the published translation’s ‘scarf’ to keep intact its cultural specificity.


Hiren Bhattacharya

These Words of Mine
(in the hands of the young poet)

Touching the garden of dreams,
these words of mine
have the beauty of life's flow,
the intimate heat of time,
I have no inventions of my own,
as if a farmer resides within me,
I place the words in my tongue
to see which has what taste,
fondling them in my palm,
I measure their warmth,
I know that word is
the child of man's great creation
possessing the lustre of blood.
An ordinary poet am I,
in these words of mine
that have passed from shoulder to shoulder,
is man's cruel experience,
history's ruthless scratch.

*****

For Poetry: the sole prayer

A clash with harshness
and the poet's voice returns,
an echo without an opponent.
Trembles at the tip of the pen
the promised poetry, the poet's existence.
With misfortune in every nerve,
the hungry poet's meagre throat shelters
a verse in sorrow, an artist's freedom.....

Let me finish this poem, as I would,
the speech of blood,
struggles to death, at
the naked body's undesirability.
In my hand, a strange flag of the future.

Give me courage,
to destroy the indifference of familiar words
to break with a hammer, or
the skilful power of a rare sword,
to cut into smithereens
this anaemic moribund fruitless reality!

*****

Insulted Sun

Sunlight diminishes
and the sun wanes.
In the dark of the
frightened night's horizon,
burns Orion's,
inevitable sword.

I am a poet,
limited is my capability.
The ungrateful brass whistle
of the crossroad's
haunted watchman
distorts my poem's meaning.

Sunlight diminishes
and the colourful sun wanes.

*****

The Field of Man, Soil, Blood and Sweat

Till this fallow man-soil.
With the smooth steel of the ploughshare
rend the hot field
bathed in the naked sunshine.
Tread on the muddy soil
of body-Dihing1 and
plant the paddy straw.
Pour water liberally on the barren soil.
Let the dry cracked soil
of the Sout2 month
fill with new water.

Fetch water, ransack river-stream-lake.
Let the soil dry up,
sow the rice seedlings,
the paddy bed's peculiar muddy soil
what seed will you sow in which plot.
Scrambles Ahu3-Xali4,
Rushes forth Bao5-Aamna6.

Till this field of man-soil-blood-sweat ......

*****

Mahendra Bora

Landscape

A dull evening
like the dry sound arising
while breaking peanut rinds.
The earth was sucking
the sky's entire ambrosia,
the stars' immense desires.
And yet, in every house of the world
in every cave of man's soul
there filled
an anxiety, pale
like the pale vapours
from a dead sparrow's body.

The slow harsh throbbing
of the cart loaded with dry straw
coming from the far-away village.
And after it, a group of wild dogs
a strange cacaphony
emerging from their fear-laden throats.
Rotting under their feet,
the peepul leaves'
spring-ending indifferent song
and the plaintive cry
of the unborn child
awakening from the new grass's
golden foetus.

Here, the solitary desert's stream
of Birth and Death
is locked in a silent, mutual embrace.
In the window of the sky,
hangs the mist-covered full moon
like the well-formed nipples and conch-shaped breasts
of a suffering young woman.
A silent prayer from an ascetic dusk --
let the colourless trauma of the evening end.

*****

Remembering My Past Lives

Once I was a flower
a jasmine flower in the garden of spring.
Tiny drops of tune falling
and suffusing the path
with its fragrance.
Golden rain stepping down
as the twisted thread of clouds.
I was the snowy illusion
of powdered glasses
seen through that window.

Once was I a mossy dream
playing with the bluish white water
in the bottom of the sea.
My body's smooth cold heat
had once found shelter
in an oyster's shell.
Those are the many confusing memories
of forgotten stories
of many lives.
I was the dense soft slippery grass
in the heart of the sea.
I was the blue cover
for fishes playing hide and seek.
One day I came swimming
carrying the weight of pearls
chasing the dreams of the shore.
Truly, I was a little shocked,
seeing the dance of the dragon-fly's wings
trembling in the grass of the bank.
I was ashamed that I was but
a naked snail experiencing
a harsh awakening.

O, should I tell those stories of the past
covered with my blushes but
anointed with sweet warmth?
From a worm, a mollusc,
an earthworm, a mole-cricket
I climbed the ladder,
and swam through the lives of
a honey-bee, a grasshopper
and a cricket.
Playing matchmaker in every flower,
I was a butterfly.
And dazzling the eye of a child
I was a firefly
imprisoned in a glass bottle.

Many a time, I bathed
and basked in the new sun.
Many a time, I changed attire
by entering the room of infinite darkness.
If the warmth of my orange-coloured dream becomes tepid,
again, I go back
again, I become mist.
But once again, I can return
wearing new dreams in my eyes.
In time that cannot be measured
by the sea's sand, I return again and again.
Warming the bluish yolk of an egg
with life's warmth
again came I, wearing the moonlit wings
of a wag-tail and then a house-maina.
I flew, perhaps I could touch
the vermillion spot in the sky's forehead.
I found warmth in the country of the moon
sleeping in its golden bed.
O wait-I remember very well,
a rabbit in the lap of the moon
had came down to nibble at the grass.

Those stories of a thousand births are like
clouds of hazy appearance
I picked up many tales
walking many times
in the endless roads.
Once upon a time,
the sun moved in its own orbit,
the earth was then still.
It was not so long ago,
the earth throbbed with the intoxicant of motion.
I saw those two earths twice
with two pairs of eyes.
I offered man the cup of blood
wearing iron nails in my legs.
Stealing a burning charcoal from the fire in heaven,
my mad soul's blessing of blood offered
an ambrosial taste of unhesitating conviction.
Even then, I am only the result
of a divine treaty of life-cycle.

I know my past life
residing in the far horizon.
I recognize the torn clothes I shed
in every coast.
But in my fingers, there is no magic glass ring,
wherein trembles the ever-expanding horizon
of the future of my life.
I only know that I am deathless
I melt and end
but again I take shape.

Again and again I don
the attire of a living body.
Again I become snow,
again clouds,
again dew.
I am but a handful of mist,
a handful of pure shadow,
roaming around in the streets of existence.
Running my loom in the air,
I am the household god,
my shuttle unrolling threads of gold.

I myself weave new clothes for my new body.
I do not have an orbit of my own
yet an eternal pilgrim am I
An eternal resident of a white whole
is my identity.
I am the limestone derived from a snail,
I am the wings of a moth,
I am peace descending as a divine messenger.
In the pages of the clouds,
I compose poetry of the stars.
Once was I a flower
a jasmine flower in the garden of spring.

*****

Dr. Nirmalprava Bordoloi

To You

I know, I will
meet you again,
the blue of your eyes,
will be my sky of shelter.
The green of your body
will be my supreme consolation.
I have not got your fragrance,
have not seen.
Yet I know
this is what I am searching for,
your verdant aroma.

I know, the ever-silent you,
you will come,
bringing the dark greenery
of gourds7 and greens, herbs8 and grasses9,
of paddy shoots, areca nuts and mustard plants
Like the mind of a bird,
returning to its nest in the twilight
after the day's scorching heat.
You will come
in the purple desert place
where smoke and ashes have written
the name of "city"
with copper letters,
wrapping the riha10 around your bare body,
in an easy form,
so intimate to me.
The drops falling from your hair
will wet my dry lips.
With a clamour,
agony will fly off
as pale vapour.

The orange-hued fragrance
of the ripe paddy field
dropping rhythmically
from your body,
will overflow my eyes with emotion.

That autumn evening,
of sickle and supporting coil11,
of sun-burnt gold and confusing mists,
I have not slept for ages,
that day will I sleep
in your lap
so generous, so true
touched by the tepid warmth
of paddy straw and a stubbled field.

All around me, that day,
sow trust,
that is calm and still
like a village pond.
Ask that village path
so close to my heart
to rouse me up,
that path which is
so alive, so active
and keeps track of my life
as I come and go.

*****

Glossary

1. Dihing – a major tributary of the Brahmaputra, in Upper Assam.

2. Sout – the last month of the Hindu year, commencing from middle of March to middle of April.

3. Ahu – a species of high land broadcast rice sown in the spring and harvested in the beginning of the rainy season.

4. Xali – the principal variety of transplanted paddy.

5. Bao – a kind of broadcast paddy grown on flooded land.

6. Amna – a species of paddy reaped in the autumn.

7. Gourds – the original has lao-jika. Both are different kinds of gourd.

8. Herbs – the original has manimuni, which is: a kind of medicinal herb, the Asiatic penny-wort, Hydrocotyle Asiatica. Assamese people make curry with it, usually with fish.

9. Grasses – the original has dubori, which means: the creeping panic grass or couch grass; the bent-grass; Panicum Cynodon Dactylon. It is used in puja rituals.

10. Riha – a kind of scarf worn by an Assamese lady.

11. Supporting Coil – the original has bireeya, which means: a coil of straw, etc. used as a support for unsteady vessels.


Works Cited


Acharya, Pradip, trans. “The Field of Man, Blood, Sweat” and “The Lone Prayer for Poetry” By Hiren Bhattacharya.
Barua, Hem, ed. Modern Assamese Poetry. New Delhi : Kavita, n.d.

Bhattacharya, Hiren. Hiren Bhattacharjyar Basakbaniya Kobita : An Anthology of Hiren Bhattacharjya’s poems. Guwahati : Citraban Printers’, 2003.

Bordoloi, Nirmalprabha. Ban Phoringar Rang. Guwahati : Dhruvjyoti, 1967.

Born, Mahendra. Neela Dhaturar Phul. (Swanirbacita Kobita). Dibrugarh : Students’ Emporium, 1987.

Deka, Harekrishna. “Modernism in Assamese Poetry”. The Sentinel. 14 Jan. 2001. http://www.assam.org/assam/language/

Goswami, Dr. Upendranath, ed. Chandrakanta Abhidhan. 3d ed. Guwahati : Guwahati University, 2003.

Indian Poetry Today (Vol. 4), New Delhi : Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1981.

Phukan, Kabin. “Adhunik Axamiya Kobita : Prakriti Aru Patbhumi”. Axamiya Xahitya Buranji. Ed. Homen Borgohain. Guwahati : Anandaram Barua Bhaxa-Kala-Xanskriti Xanstha, 1993.

Saikia, Dr. Renu Bhuyan. “Dr. Nirmalprabha Bordoloir Kobita Aru Geet”. Amar Axam. 1 June 2005.