Tuesday, 25 August 2015
Monday, 23 April 2007
Twilight in Delhi : Decay of a city and a family
It was in the 1930s that the literary phenomenon called ‘Indian fiction in English’ gained visibility with the entry of writers like Raja Rao, R.K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand, Ahmed Ali’s novel, Twilight in Delhi, published in 1940, belongs to this early phase of Indo-English writing.
Ahmed Ali (1912-1994) was born in Delhi, and educated at Aligarh and Lucknow. Having taught as a lecturer in English at Lucknow and Calcutta Universities, he had later migrated to Pakistan after Partition. He was a member of the All India Progressive Writers’ Association and had contributed an article, “A Progressive View of Art” to its first official publication, Towards Progressive Literature. According to him, art has its roots in and derives its material from life. Art leads to “mental and emotional activity, stimulation of a progressive type, which leads us along the lines of the highest consciousness” (Raizada, 3). For him, the word “progressive” means trying to enrich our social life and implies the banishment of mysticism.
Ahmed Ali’s first publication is Angare or Sparks which is a collection of experimental stories in Urdu, and done in collaboration with other young Urdu writers. However, this book was publicly burnt in many places because of its bold treatment of the sordid, dark side of Indian life.
Many of the preoccupations of Ahmed Ali in Twilight in Delhi find place in a limited scope in his short story “Our Lane” which was first written in Urdu and then translated by the author himself to English. Though his first novel Twilight in Delhi is written in the realistic technique, Ahmed Ali turns to an exploration of the human psyche in his second novel Ocean of Night (1964) while his third novel Rats and Diplomats (1985) tries to ridicule life in diplomatic circles abroad. Besides novels and short stories, he has also brought out translations, poetry and criticism.
As for this novel’s career, it was at first rejected by a firm of American Publishers, for whom the author had written it, on the ground that it was far removed from American life. However, the Hogarth Press, on the intervention of E.M. Forster, later published it. It was hailed by critics on first coming out but remained out of print till 1967 due to political disturbances in India and abroad. However, in Pakistan, as the author points out in the introduction to the Oxford University Press Publication of 1991, on rare occasions when he has been interviewed over the television, all references to Twilight in Delhi have been edited as it was based in Delhi, the ‘forbidden’ city across the border.
Twilight in Delhi gives a broad and realistic view of Muslim life set in Delhi. With the collapse of the Mughal Empire, the old feudal order in the Muslim society had disintegrated and the Muslim bourgeois and aristocrats were no longer prominent after 1858. This novel gives a glimpse of the discontent that was brewing among the Muslims during the second decade of the twentieth century. As the title of the novel suggests, the city of Delhi is now no longer in its pinnacle of glory and Mir Nihal’s premonitions infuse the reader with the ominous sense that very soon, Delhi would plunge into the darkness of night. In fact, when the novel ends, it is both literally and figuratively dark.
The novel devotes many pages to what colonialism has done to the city of Delhi, giving both a panoramic and close view. The author turns the city into a living entity that has been “mourned and sung, raped and conquered, yet whole and alive, lies indifferent in the arms of sleep” (Ali, 3). Lamenting the death of its culture, he cries out, “yet gone is its glory and departed are those from whom it got the breath of life” (Ali, 4). Giving a picture of total abjection, the author says, “Like a beaten dog it has curled its tail between its legs, and lies lifeless in the night as an acknowledgement of defeat” (Ali, 5). There is a poetic account of the anger that is felt by the residents of Delhi at not only what the British are doing to its landscape, but at the imminent demise of a culture and a way of life with the construction of a new Delhi outside the old city. “She would become the city of the dead, inhabited by people who would have no love for her nor any associations with her history and ancient splendour” (Ali, 144). In the summer of 1918, with the demolishment of the protective city walls, Delhi reels not only under a terrible heat but loses thousands of its denizens to the First World War and the influenza epidemic.
The novel’s lyricism in its depiction of the decay in the city of Delhi and its inhabitants is enhanced by the sprinkling of poetic passages from different Urdu poets. All of them are infused with thematic significance, reflecting the mood of the characters and heightening the intensity of the dominant emotion. The epigraphs beginning each of the parts of the novel mirror the condition of the city itself. At one point the novelist says, “This world is a house of many mirrors. Wherever you turn you see your own images in the glass. They multiply and become innumerable until you begin to feel frightened of your own self” (Ali, 85). Perhaps in these words, we can find justification for his use of a child’s cry, a beggar’s song or a qawwali to bring to light the emotional state of a particular character.
But it is Bahadur Shah who is a continuing and haunting presence in the novel. The last of the Mughal kings, who had to suffer the most humiliating treatment at the hands of the British forces, Bahadur Shah’s pain-filled poetry resonates throughout. Sometimes, it is the beggar called Bahadur Shah who sings his poems, “I’m the light of no one’s eye, / The rest of no one’s heart am I” (Ali, 97). Or, sometimes, it is the king’s granddaughter, Gul Bano, now reduced to a beggar, singing his verses in a plaintive voice, “Delhi was once a paradise, / Such peace had abided here” (Ali, 102). It is as if the downfall of the poet king is a pointer to the macrocosm of the city’s downfall, its present state of ruin and degeneration.
The novel vividly delineates the clash of two cultures; between tradition and modernity. The events are set in a time when Western modes of living and thinking were entering Indian homes and minds. Mir Nihal, the embodiment of the old customs, is pained at this “hybrid culture” which is a “hodgepodge of Indian and Western ways which he failed to understand” (Ali, 175). He is grieved that the “wealth of poetry” is gone and there is “in place of emotion and sentiments a vulgar sentimentality” (Ali, 176). The author’s own nostalgia for the old phase of life is seen in the representation of the character of Mir Nihal. The reader is given a glimpse of his existential dilemmas, his musings on the impermanence of the world, or the callous indifference of death, or how life goes on despite death and one’s personal grief. But Mir Nihal himself is not free from human frailties – there is a hint that he has fathered a child by the maid Dilchain, an incident, which affects the mental stability of his wife. The narrator mocks at Mir Nihal’s insistence on family honour by showing him, immediately after his outburst, to be thrown some fuel dust carried by a donkey and Ghaffoor’s parrot breaking into a peal of laughter (49).
The novel shows how the older generation feels outraged at some of the younger people’s acceptance of Western habits. Mir Nihal does not like his son Asghar’s adoption of English clothes and manners. Bilqeece becomes the target of insulting remarks when she wears English shoes. Small incidents like these reflect the resentment that is brewing in the hearts of many people at the colonial intrusion into their everyday lives.
Asghar is the new modern man who not only chooses his own bride but also later opts for a nuclear family. But his portrait is not without criticism. The novelist explores his inner feelings, the pain he suffers on account of his love for Bilqeece. His poetic sensibility is highlighted in the phantasmagoric dreams he sees and the poems of love and longing that he recites in order to express his dilemma. But somehow, the reader fails to sympathize with him. The surge of self-pity in his utterances is disconcerting. Showing psychological insight, the author remarks that Asghar was “not so much in love with her as with his own self, his own dreams and illusions, which she had created in his mind…” (Ali, 133). The taint of his modernity is reflected in his being trapped in a patriarchal mind-set. This is seen in his shabby treatment of Bilqeece after his passion for her cools and later, his efforts to marry Zohra by claiming that his child needs a mother when he himself has fallen in love with her.
Thus, the novel delineates both a traditional and a modern way of life in the persons of Mir Nihal and Asghar respectively, but it also points out the flaws in both ideologies.
Twilight in Delhi is not an explicitly political novel – it deals with the impact of colonialism on people’s social lives. It does not have any of the main characters engaged in any direct action against the British forces. Mirza, the milk seller’s son is shot-dead when he goes to non-co-operate but Mirza is a peripheral character and his son does not even appear in the novel. British rule does not have a specifically harmful impact on the particular Muslim family that the novel deals with. But it gives a glimpse of the emotional anguish that some of the characters experience because of colonial rule. For instance, Mir Nihal’s state of mind on the day of the coronation of King George V – “There were those men of 1857, and here were the men of 1911, chicken hearted and happy in their disgrace. This thought filled him with pain, and he sat there, as it were, on the rack, weeping dry tears of blood, seeing the death of his world and of his birthplace” (Ali, 107).
Mir Nihal’s loss of his youth and health mirrors the predicament of Delhi itself. Bedridden with paralysis, he lives in a “constant twilight of velleities and regrets, watching the young die one by one and gain their liberty from the sorrows of the world” (Ali, 175). The devouring of his pigeons by the cat not only puts an end to his favourite hobby but can also be taken as a symbol for the intrusion of colonial forces into the heart of India. But though Mir Nihal is sensitive to all this, his daily life is unaffected either by British rules and policies or by nationalist struggles for freedom.
Asghar is also totally indifferent to the widespread freedom movements of 1919. “He was unconcerned whether the country lived or died” (Ali, 181). It is ironic that he considers love to be the only permanent thing, when he falls in love with his wife’s sister just after six months of her death. On the other hand, the novel shows people like Saeed Hasan, Mir Nihal’s son-in-law who is affected by “foreign modernity” (185) but unperturbed by foreign rule. “Life went on peacefully for aught he cared, and that was all he was interested in, like most Indian fatalists” (Ali, 185). Being comparatively well off, the male members of the family can afford to hold long discussions regarding the harmful effects of foreign rule without being directly affected by it. When the influenza epidemic struck and people had difficulty in affording a winding-sheet for a dead relative, Asghar could build a proper grave for his wife.
Coming to the question of the “Indianness’ of the novel, we find that Ahmed Ali tries to infuse his work with indigenous concerns by deploying a particular theme, style, imagery and setting.
His style is realism. Harish Raizada quotes Ahmed Ali, “Our literature so far has been of an individualist type, sentimental, unrealistic, irrational, mystical. Conditions demand an uncompromising realism, looking the problems in the face, a literature brutal even in its ruggedness without embellishments and unnecessary insistence on form and technique” (6). In accordance with these views, everything is treated to realistic detail. Describing the by lanes of Delhi, the author comments “Dogs go about sniffing the gutters in search of offal; and cats slink out of narrow by lanes, from under the planks jutting out of shops, and lick the earthen cups out of which men had drunk milk and thrown away” (Ali, 3). Though the novel gives a sweeping view of members of different social strata and accordingly has a huge number of characters with markedly different personalities, it gives us a glimpse of the everyday doings and concerns of the Nihals. Then there is the realistic depiction of the elaborate rituals involved in marriage ceremonies, funerals and religious festivals of Id, kite flying, pigeon flying and the pervasive belief in superstition.
We are given a close view of the Indian joint family where women are shut up in their zenanas while men are free to keep mistresses. Referring to the realm of the zenana, the author says eloquently, “The world lived and died, things happened, events took place, but all this did not disturb the equanimity of the zenana, which had its world too where the pale and fragile beauties of the hothouse lived secluded from all outside harm, the storms that blow in the world of men” (Ali, 29). Ahmed Ali gives an apt picture of the Indian woman who is subjected to so many restrictions that “the idea of love does not take root in the heart’ (Ali, 134). Bilqeece is such an Indian woman who is ‘unromantic’ (134) but a ‘perfect housewife’ (133) and the novelist gives a poignant picture of her later passive suffering. He also gives a psychological insight into Mehro’s temper whenever her fiancé’s name is mentioned. This novel does not portray any female resistance to the patriarchal biases prevalent in the home and the family.
The specifically hot Indian summer with which each part of the novel begins, the beauty and sadness of the Indian spring and rainy season, the date palm and the henna tree which stand in the courtyard as witnesses to the family’s joys and sorrows, the song of the domnis and the riot of colours in the marriage ceremonies, the smell of kababs near Jama Masjid – all these make the novel quintessentially Indian.
But the question arises as to whether the novel tries to impute homogeneity to Indian tradition and culture. Mourning the passing away of a great art and culture, the author makes Mir Nihal consider only posts like Mir, Ghalib and Insha as the “great poets of Hindustan” (Ali, 176). The Mughal Empire and monuments built by Mughals are regarded as the mark of glory and splendour of the city of Delhi, though there is a minor reference to the Kauravas and the Pandavas. By doing this, the author imparts singularity to India’s rich and plural cultural heritage. Vinayak Krishna Gokak in his book The Concept of Indian Literature remarks that an integral cultural awareness is an indispensable feature of Indianness. I would not say that the novel here falls short of Indianness but it does infuse homogeneity by glorifying only a portion of the entire Indian heritage and calling it the whole.
Commenting on the themes handled by the older generation of Indo-English novelists, Meenakshi Mukherjee in her essay “The Anxiety of Indianness” says that they were predictably pan-Indian, defining Indian concerns as against local or regional issues. Mukherjee does not refer to Ahmed Ali, but his novel, though marked by spatial specifity and attempt an exploration of Muslim society, also deals with similar time-worn clichés of east-west confrontation, the clash between tradition and modernity, the disintegration of the Indian joint family, etc. As Mukherjee says, this can be seen as an attempt to construct a national identity, through “erasure of differences within the border and accentuating the difference with what lies outside” (174).
K. Satchidanandan in Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions has pointed out that Indian writers are first and foremost Indian, no matter what language they write in, because of their works’ rootedness in their social, historical and cultural contexts. But this basic unity has in no way eroded the fascinating diversity of our literatures. Twilight in Delhi is very different from the other literary texts already done in this course both in theme and form – a pointer to the heterogeneity of Indian literature. But an Indian setting and theme marks it, reflecting Vinayak Krishna Gokak’s comment that Indian literature is a thread of continuity against a background of continuous change. In conclusion, it can be pointed out that Indian novels in English and works in Indian languages are, as Mukherjee says, “disparate literary products of a complex plural culture” (168) and they should not be congealed into rigid and opposed positions.
From our situatedness in a time when upper and middle class Indian society has internalized so many Western habits and ways of life, Twilight in Delhi can be seen as looking into a time when the situation was very different, and as trying to articulate a people’s helplessness in the face of what colonialism was doing to their culture and to their beloved and once glorious city.
Works Cited
Ali, Ahmed. Twilight in Delhi. 1940. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Gokak, Vinayak Krishna. The Concept of Indian Literature. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1979.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Raizada, Harish. “Ahmed Ali”. Indian English Novelists: An Anthology of Critical Essays. Ed.
Madhusudan Prasad. New Delhi, Bangalore, Jullundur: Sterling Publishers’ Private Ltd., 1982. 1-22.
Satchidanandan, K. Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions. Delhi : Pencraft International, 1999.
After discussion in the Seminar
The word “progressive’, for the Progressive Writers’ Association of which Ahmed Ali was a member, meant Marxist. However, Twilight in Delhi deals with a feudal kind of orthodoxy. The novel has a fairly common plot line of a protagonist who is already old but is getting older and becomes bedridden with paralysis. The author delves into his emotions, his deep anguish at what is happening to ‘Muslim’ Delhi. It is all the more painful for him because the encroachment of Western habits and ways of life on Indian living is taking place within his own home. Twilight in Delhi is not a nostalgic novel but an elegiac one, mourning the loss of a culture which is, however, exclusively Muslim – eulogising poets like Mir, Ghalib and Insha as the “great poets of Hindustan” (Ali, 176) and the Mughal Era as a period of glory and prosperity.
The novel has a strong political undercurrent, which ultimately becomes the focal point. We have at the centre of the novel a historical and political event of tremendous significance – the coronation ceremony of King George V in 1911. It was the first visit of an English king to India after the formation of the Empire and the author gives an elaborate picture of Mir Nihal’s state of mind at the native rajahs and nawabs’ “slavishness and their treacherous acceptance of the foreign yoke” (105). Recalling the revolt of 1857, Mir Nihal remembers how the Mussalmans then were so much different from the Musslamans of 1911, how they had fought so bravely against Sir Thomas Metcalfe and his army. Mir Nihal’s personal reflections point to the general belief among the Muslims that the revolt of 1857 was a Muslim revolt. This belief arose partly because Bahadur Shah was still the nominal head then, when in reality; the Emperor had very unwillingly joined the rebels. Thus, when Mir Nihal sees the Muslims now kowtowing to the English rulers, that there is such a large procession now to see not a Mughal Emperor but an English king, he feels absolute humiliation.
The demolishment of the city walls becomes laden with symbolic significance – it becomes the violation of the very sanctity and integrity of the city. The author points out that seven Delhis have fallen – all built by Mughal rulers, and Mir Nihal is pained that an eighth Delhi is under construction, which will be the capital of not the Mughals but the British.
The novel’s sectarianism is further seen in the fact that all the characters are Muslim, when actually in Chandni Chowk in 1911; the percentage of Hindus was more than that of Muslims. Only one character is a Hindu – Dr. Mitra who is made the butt of ridicule. The narrator mocks at his Bengali accent, and his habit of prescribing expensive medicines and charging fees for every visit together with the tonga fare. It is worth noting that he also fails to save Habibuddin though he has earlier cured Bilqeece.
Thus, Twilight in Delhi is not just about domestic events but is marked by a strong political content. Though it presents a selective view of history; it makes a rich resource for social and historical information about the city of Delhi in the second decade of the twentieth century.
Ahmed Ali (1912-1994) was born in Delhi, and educated at Aligarh and Lucknow. Having taught as a lecturer in English at Lucknow and Calcutta Universities, he had later migrated to Pakistan after Partition. He was a member of the All India Progressive Writers’ Association and had contributed an article, “A Progressive View of Art” to its first official publication, Towards Progressive Literature. According to him, art has its roots in and derives its material from life. Art leads to “mental and emotional activity, stimulation of a progressive type, which leads us along the lines of the highest consciousness” (Raizada, 3). For him, the word “progressive” means trying to enrich our social life and implies the banishment of mysticism.
Ahmed Ali’s first publication is Angare or Sparks which is a collection of experimental stories in Urdu, and done in collaboration with other young Urdu writers. However, this book was publicly burnt in many places because of its bold treatment of the sordid, dark side of Indian life.
Many of the preoccupations of Ahmed Ali in Twilight in Delhi find place in a limited scope in his short story “Our Lane” which was first written in Urdu and then translated by the author himself to English. Though his first novel Twilight in Delhi is written in the realistic technique, Ahmed Ali turns to an exploration of the human psyche in his second novel Ocean of Night (1964) while his third novel Rats and Diplomats (1985) tries to ridicule life in diplomatic circles abroad. Besides novels and short stories, he has also brought out translations, poetry and criticism.
As for this novel’s career, it was at first rejected by a firm of American Publishers, for whom the author had written it, on the ground that it was far removed from American life. However, the Hogarth Press, on the intervention of E.M. Forster, later published it. It was hailed by critics on first coming out but remained out of print till 1967 due to political disturbances in India and abroad. However, in Pakistan, as the author points out in the introduction to the Oxford University Press Publication of 1991, on rare occasions when he has been interviewed over the television, all references to Twilight in Delhi have been edited as it was based in Delhi, the ‘forbidden’ city across the border.
Twilight in Delhi gives a broad and realistic view of Muslim life set in Delhi. With the collapse of the Mughal Empire, the old feudal order in the Muslim society had disintegrated and the Muslim bourgeois and aristocrats were no longer prominent after 1858. This novel gives a glimpse of the discontent that was brewing among the Muslims during the second decade of the twentieth century. As the title of the novel suggests, the city of Delhi is now no longer in its pinnacle of glory and Mir Nihal’s premonitions infuse the reader with the ominous sense that very soon, Delhi would plunge into the darkness of night. In fact, when the novel ends, it is both literally and figuratively dark.
The novel devotes many pages to what colonialism has done to the city of Delhi, giving both a panoramic and close view. The author turns the city into a living entity that has been “mourned and sung, raped and conquered, yet whole and alive, lies indifferent in the arms of sleep” (Ali, 3). Lamenting the death of its culture, he cries out, “yet gone is its glory and departed are those from whom it got the breath of life” (Ali, 4). Giving a picture of total abjection, the author says, “Like a beaten dog it has curled its tail between its legs, and lies lifeless in the night as an acknowledgement of defeat” (Ali, 5). There is a poetic account of the anger that is felt by the residents of Delhi at not only what the British are doing to its landscape, but at the imminent demise of a culture and a way of life with the construction of a new Delhi outside the old city. “She would become the city of the dead, inhabited by people who would have no love for her nor any associations with her history and ancient splendour” (Ali, 144). In the summer of 1918, with the demolishment of the protective city walls, Delhi reels not only under a terrible heat but loses thousands of its denizens to the First World War and the influenza epidemic.
The novel’s lyricism in its depiction of the decay in the city of Delhi and its inhabitants is enhanced by the sprinkling of poetic passages from different Urdu poets. All of them are infused with thematic significance, reflecting the mood of the characters and heightening the intensity of the dominant emotion. The epigraphs beginning each of the parts of the novel mirror the condition of the city itself. At one point the novelist says, “This world is a house of many mirrors. Wherever you turn you see your own images in the glass. They multiply and become innumerable until you begin to feel frightened of your own self” (Ali, 85). Perhaps in these words, we can find justification for his use of a child’s cry, a beggar’s song or a qawwali to bring to light the emotional state of a particular character.
But it is Bahadur Shah who is a continuing and haunting presence in the novel. The last of the Mughal kings, who had to suffer the most humiliating treatment at the hands of the British forces, Bahadur Shah’s pain-filled poetry resonates throughout. Sometimes, it is the beggar called Bahadur Shah who sings his poems, “I’m the light of no one’s eye, / The rest of no one’s heart am I” (Ali, 97). Or, sometimes, it is the king’s granddaughter, Gul Bano, now reduced to a beggar, singing his verses in a plaintive voice, “Delhi was once a paradise, / Such peace had abided here” (Ali, 102). It is as if the downfall of the poet king is a pointer to the macrocosm of the city’s downfall, its present state of ruin and degeneration.
The novel vividly delineates the clash of two cultures; between tradition and modernity. The events are set in a time when Western modes of living and thinking were entering Indian homes and minds. Mir Nihal, the embodiment of the old customs, is pained at this “hybrid culture” which is a “hodgepodge of Indian and Western ways which he failed to understand” (Ali, 175). He is grieved that the “wealth of poetry” is gone and there is “in place of emotion and sentiments a vulgar sentimentality” (Ali, 176). The author’s own nostalgia for the old phase of life is seen in the representation of the character of Mir Nihal. The reader is given a glimpse of his existential dilemmas, his musings on the impermanence of the world, or the callous indifference of death, or how life goes on despite death and one’s personal grief. But Mir Nihal himself is not free from human frailties – there is a hint that he has fathered a child by the maid Dilchain, an incident, which affects the mental stability of his wife. The narrator mocks at Mir Nihal’s insistence on family honour by showing him, immediately after his outburst, to be thrown some fuel dust carried by a donkey and Ghaffoor’s parrot breaking into a peal of laughter (49).
The novel shows how the older generation feels outraged at some of the younger people’s acceptance of Western habits. Mir Nihal does not like his son Asghar’s adoption of English clothes and manners. Bilqeece becomes the target of insulting remarks when she wears English shoes. Small incidents like these reflect the resentment that is brewing in the hearts of many people at the colonial intrusion into their everyday lives.
Asghar is the new modern man who not only chooses his own bride but also later opts for a nuclear family. But his portrait is not without criticism. The novelist explores his inner feelings, the pain he suffers on account of his love for Bilqeece. His poetic sensibility is highlighted in the phantasmagoric dreams he sees and the poems of love and longing that he recites in order to express his dilemma. But somehow, the reader fails to sympathize with him. The surge of self-pity in his utterances is disconcerting. Showing psychological insight, the author remarks that Asghar was “not so much in love with her as with his own self, his own dreams and illusions, which she had created in his mind…” (Ali, 133). The taint of his modernity is reflected in his being trapped in a patriarchal mind-set. This is seen in his shabby treatment of Bilqeece after his passion for her cools and later, his efforts to marry Zohra by claiming that his child needs a mother when he himself has fallen in love with her.
Thus, the novel delineates both a traditional and a modern way of life in the persons of Mir Nihal and Asghar respectively, but it also points out the flaws in both ideologies.
Twilight in Delhi is not an explicitly political novel – it deals with the impact of colonialism on people’s social lives. It does not have any of the main characters engaged in any direct action against the British forces. Mirza, the milk seller’s son is shot-dead when he goes to non-co-operate but Mirza is a peripheral character and his son does not even appear in the novel. British rule does not have a specifically harmful impact on the particular Muslim family that the novel deals with. But it gives a glimpse of the emotional anguish that some of the characters experience because of colonial rule. For instance, Mir Nihal’s state of mind on the day of the coronation of King George V – “There were those men of 1857, and here were the men of 1911, chicken hearted and happy in their disgrace. This thought filled him with pain, and he sat there, as it were, on the rack, weeping dry tears of blood, seeing the death of his world and of his birthplace” (Ali, 107).
Mir Nihal’s loss of his youth and health mirrors the predicament of Delhi itself. Bedridden with paralysis, he lives in a “constant twilight of velleities and regrets, watching the young die one by one and gain their liberty from the sorrows of the world” (Ali, 175). The devouring of his pigeons by the cat not only puts an end to his favourite hobby but can also be taken as a symbol for the intrusion of colonial forces into the heart of India. But though Mir Nihal is sensitive to all this, his daily life is unaffected either by British rules and policies or by nationalist struggles for freedom.
Asghar is also totally indifferent to the widespread freedom movements of 1919. “He was unconcerned whether the country lived or died” (Ali, 181). It is ironic that he considers love to be the only permanent thing, when he falls in love with his wife’s sister just after six months of her death. On the other hand, the novel shows people like Saeed Hasan, Mir Nihal’s son-in-law who is affected by “foreign modernity” (185) but unperturbed by foreign rule. “Life went on peacefully for aught he cared, and that was all he was interested in, like most Indian fatalists” (Ali, 185). Being comparatively well off, the male members of the family can afford to hold long discussions regarding the harmful effects of foreign rule without being directly affected by it. When the influenza epidemic struck and people had difficulty in affording a winding-sheet for a dead relative, Asghar could build a proper grave for his wife.
Coming to the question of the “Indianness’ of the novel, we find that Ahmed Ali tries to infuse his work with indigenous concerns by deploying a particular theme, style, imagery and setting.
His style is realism. Harish Raizada quotes Ahmed Ali, “Our literature so far has been of an individualist type, sentimental, unrealistic, irrational, mystical. Conditions demand an uncompromising realism, looking the problems in the face, a literature brutal even in its ruggedness without embellishments and unnecessary insistence on form and technique” (6). In accordance with these views, everything is treated to realistic detail. Describing the by lanes of Delhi, the author comments “Dogs go about sniffing the gutters in search of offal; and cats slink out of narrow by lanes, from under the planks jutting out of shops, and lick the earthen cups out of which men had drunk milk and thrown away” (Ali, 3). Though the novel gives a sweeping view of members of different social strata and accordingly has a huge number of characters with markedly different personalities, it gives us a glimpse of the everyday doings and concerns of the Nihals. Then there is the realistic depiction of the elaborate rituals involved in marriage ceremonies, funerals and religious festivals of Id, kite flying, pigeon flying and the pervasive belief in superstition.
We are given a close view of the Indian joint family where women are shut up in their zenanas while men are free to keep mistresses. Referring to the realm of the zenana, the author says eloquently, “The world lived and died, things happened, events took place, but all this did not disturb the equanimity of the zenana, which had its world too where the pale and fragile beauties of the hothouse lived secluded from all outside harm, the storms that blow in the world of men” (Ali, 29). Ahmed Ali gives an apt picture of the Indian woman who is subjected to so many restrictions that “the idea of love does not take root in the heart’ (Ali, 134). Bilqeece is such an Indian woman who is ‘unromantic’ (134) but a ‘perfect housewife’ (133) and the novelist gives a poignant picture of her later passive suffering. He also gives a psychological insight into Mehro’s temper whenever her fiancé’s name is mentioned. This novel does not portray any female resistance to the patriarchal biases prevalent in the home and the family.
The specifically hot Indian summer with which each part of the novel begins, the beauty and sadness of the Indian spring and rainy season, the date palm and the henna tree which stand in the courtyard as witnesses to the family’s joys and sorrows, the song of the domnis and the riot of colours in the marriage ceremonies, the smell of kababs near Jama Masjid – all these make the novel quintessentially Indian.
But the question arises as to whether the novel tries to impute homogeneity to Indian tradition and culture. Mourning the passing away of a great art and culture, the author makes Mir Nihal consider only posts like Mir, Ghalib and Insha as the “great poets of Hindustan” (Ali, 176). The Mughal Empire and monuments built by Mughals are regarded as the mark of glory and splendour of the city of Delhi, though there is a minor reference to the Kauravas and the Pandavas. By doing this, the author imparts singularity to India’s rich and plural cultural heritage. Vinayak Krishna Gokak in his book The Concept of Indian Literature remarks that an integral cultural awareness is an indispensable feature of Indianness. I would not say that the novel here falls short of Indianness but it does infuse homogeneity by glorifying only a portion of the entire Indian heritage and calling it the whole.
Commenting on the themes handled by the older generation of Indo-English novelists, Meenakshi Mukherjee in her essay “The Anxiety of Indianness” says that they were predictably pan-Indian, defining Indian concerns as against local or regional issues. Mukherjee does not refer to Ahmed Ali, but his novel, though marked by spatial specifity and attempt an exploration of Muslim society, also deals with similar time-worn clichés of east-west confrontation, the clash between tradition and modernity, the disintegration of the Indian joint family, etc. As Mukherjee says, this can be seen as an attempt to construct a national identity, through “erasure of differences within the border and accentuating the difference with what lies outside” (174).
K. Satchidanandan in Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions has pointed out that Indian writers are first and foremost Indian, no matter what language they write in, because of their works’ rootedness in their social, historical and cultural contexts. But this basic unity has in no way eroded the fascinating diversity of our literatures. Twilight in Delhi is very different from the other literary texts already done in this course both in theme and form – a pointer to the heterogeneity of Indian literature. But an Indian setting and theme marks it, reflecting Vinayak Krishna Gokak’s comment that Indian literature is a thread of continuity against a background of continuous change. In conclusion, it can be pointed out that Indian novels in English and works in Indian languages are, as Mukherjee says, “disparate literary products of a complex plural culture” (168) and they should not be congealed into rigid and opposed positions.
From our situatedness in a time when upper and middle class Indian society has internalized so many Western habits and ways of life, Twilight in Delhi can be seen as looking into a time when the situation was very different, and as trying to articulate a people’s helplessness in the face of what colonialism was doing to their culture and to their beloved and once glorious city.
Works Cited
Ali, Ahmed. Twilight in Delhi. 1940. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Gokak, Vinayak Krishna. The Concept of Indian Literature. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1979.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Raizada, Harish. “Ahmed Ali”. Indian English Novelists: An Anthology of Critical Essays. Ed.
Madhusudan Prasad. New Delhi, Bangalore, Jullundur: Sterling Publishers’ Private Ltd., 1982. 1-22.
Satchidanandan, K. Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions. Delhi : Pencraft International, 1999.
After discussion in the Seminar
The word “progressive’, for the Progressive Writers’ Association of which Ahmed Ali was a member, meant Marxist. However, Twilight in Delhi deals with a feudal kind of orthodoxy. The novel has a fairly common plot line of a protagonist who is already old but is getting older and becomes bedridden with paralysis. The author delves into his emotions, his deep anguish at what is happening to ‘Muslim’ Delhi. It is all the more painful for him because the encroachment of Western habits and ways of life on Indian living is taking place within his own home. Twilight in Delhi is not a nostalgic novel but an elegiac one, mourning the loss of a culture which is, however, exclusively Muslim – eulogising poets like Mir, Ghalib and Insha as the “great poets of Hindustan” (Ali, 176) and the Mughal Era as a period of glory and prosperity.
The novel has a strong political undercurrent, which ultimately becomes the focal point. We have at the centre of the novel a historical and political event of tremendous significance – the coronation ceremony of King George V in 1911. It was the first visit of an English king to India after the formation of the Empire and the author gives an elaborate picture of Mir Nihal’s state of mind at the native rajahs and nawabs’ “slavishness and their treacherous acceptance of the foreign yoke” (105). Recalling the revolt of 1857, Mir Nihal remembers how the Mussalmans then were so much different from the Musslamans of 1911, how they had fought so bravely against Sir Thomas Metcalfe and his army. Mir Nihal’s personal reflections point to the general belief among the Muslims that the revolt of 1857 was a Muslim revolt. This belief arose partly because Bahadur Shah was still the nominal head then, when in reality; the Emperor had very unwillingly joined the rebels. Thus, when Mir Nihal sees the Muslims now kowtowing to the English rulers, that there is such a large procession now to see not a Mughal Emperor but an English king, he feels absolute humiliation.
The demolishment of the city walls becomes laden with symbolic significance – it becomes the violation of the very sanctity and integrity of the city. The author points out that seven Delhis have fallen – all built by Mughal rulers, and Mir Nihal is pained that an eighth Delhi is under construction, which will be the capital of not the Mughals but the British.
The novel’s sectarianism is further seen in the fact that all the characters are Muslim, when actually in Chandni Chowk in 1911; the percentage of Hindus was more than that of Muslims. Only one character is a Hindu – Dr. Mitra who is made the butt of ridicule. The narrator mocks at his Bengali accent, and his habit of prescribing expensive medicines and charging fees for every visit together with the tonga fare. It is worth noting that he also fails to save Habibuddin though he has earlier cured Bilqeece.
Thus, Twilight in Delhi is not just about domestic events but is marked by a strong political content. Though it presents a selective view of history; it makes a rich resource for social and historical information about the city of Delhi in the second decade of the twentieth century.
A Picture of Desolation : Women in Indira Goswami’s A Saga of South Kamrup
Indira Goswami’s novel A Saga of South Kamrup is set in the Amranga Sattra in the year 1948 though there is a glimpse of changes that have taken place here in 1981. The sattra is a Vaishnavite monastery in Assam and a centre of religious and cultural activity. Its head known as the Adhikar is both landlord and spiritual preceptor to his subjects. But this sattra is now in the last phase of its dominant social and religious authority with the poverty-striken and desperate peasants on the brink of revolt under the influence of communist agitation. Moreover, almost its entire population is besotted by opium addiction.
The literal translation of the novel’s Assamese title is “The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker”, this being a symbol of the decaying sattra. The resplendent howdah made of splendid wood symbolizes the power and prestige of the Adhikar of the Sattra but the fact of its being moth-eaten now signifies its inward degradation. Moreover, the iron hooks of the howdah digging into the skin of the elephant reflects the cruelty that is hidden behind a façade of pomp and grandeur.
The world of the novel is a bleak one – the sights and smells of the rural landscape vividly delineated by the novelist reflect on atmosphere of extreme degradation. The pan leaf creepers intertwining the betel nut trees once lush and green now look like “dried up human intestines” (Goswami, 13) and the once fragrant smell of paddy is now replaced by the odour of opium.
But the most gruesome image of human misery is the picture of the three widows of the Gossain family – Giribala, the sister, and Durga and Saru Gossainee, the aunts of the novel’s male protagonist, Indranath. An inhuman and callous feudal and patriarchal system driven by avarice and religious orthodoxy deprives these widows of their share in property, their right to a decent livelihood, in fact, it does not allow them even the minutest atom of self-respect. Mortified by stringent ascetic practices and penances imposed upon them, these widows live by worshipping the clogs of their dead husbands and the only thing that they look forward to is death.
However, it is not just widows but women in general that are victims of tyrannous patriarchal norms and practices. Married women are totally under the control of their husbands who may be negligent, irresponsible or promiscuous. The marital ties presented in the novel portray forcefully Monique Wittig’s idea of women as being oppressed by the system of exploitation on which heterosexuality is economically based. One evil custom is that a Brahmin girl had to be married off before she reached puberty or else the village ostracized her family. The novelist shows the sadistic cruelty of some village women who roam about continually in search of traces of menstrual flow in growing Brahmin girls so that their families could be hounded out of society. Giribala herself is a victim of this evil custom as she had to be hurriedly married off to an elderly and dissolute son of a Gossain family who maintained an illicit relationship with a female opium – seller. Elimon, the daughter of the poor priest from Rajapukhuri has already reached her puberty but keeps it a secret as her father would then sell her off to the crafty opium – smuggler from Cooch Behar.
Women are presented merely as, in Luce Irigaray’s words, “an exchange value among men; in other words, a commodity” (Irigaray, 355). This is reflected in the old woman who examines Saru Gossainee, the new bride by measuring the length and feeling the texture of her hair, and making her walk to and fro to test her gracefulness.
The novel shows women themselves as being perpetrators of inhuman patriarchal ideologies and complicit with the oppressive caste hierarchy. From the moment Giribala sets foot in her father’s house, her widowed aunt constantly forbids her to do things which she as a girl took for granted. The village women assemble at her place not to welcome her but to satisfy their base curiosity and inquisitiveness and indulge in malicious gossip. One of the women advises Giribala’s mother to send her to her husband’s home soon as it is “like heaven for a woman. If she runs away from her husband’s house, she is like a naked woman loitering on the streets” (Goswami, 23).
Giribala’s mother is a most willing upholder of patriarchal rules. When Giribala tastes the forbidden meat curry, it is she who breaks into a terrible fury. When Giribala is bitten by the snake and the American Christian missionary is alone with her in the sacred sandal room sucking out the poisoned blood, what is foremost in the Gossainee’s mind is that her daughter is being touched by a low caste man – “What a fate that a Damodariya Gossainee has to tolerate a Christian inside her house! Will she have to go through the rituals for atonement for this sin?” (Goswami, 71). Caste and gender bias become the twin systems of oppression calculated to keep women perpetual victims. Giribala belongs to a high caste but her very life would have been put in danger because of the pervasive caste system. The lives of women thus exist at the interface of caste and class inequality as Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid point out in the introduction to their book, Recasting Women. The novel also reflects the various kinds of relationships that patriarchal practices have with class, caste, social movements and colonization which Sangari and Vaid also argue in their book.
The three Gossain widows in the novel try to eke out their existences in different ways in a patriarchal society. Durga has completely surrendered herself to the dominant system. Though she has willingly acquised in the severe penances that a Gossain widow has to undergo, the novelist highlights her inner state of mind which is one of deep anxiety. “Her mind has become a graveyard … All those customary rituals of widow-hood which she did a few years back without much effort, are now a source of fear for her” (Goswami, 9). She dreads to think of the hard rituals that she will have to follow during the approaching Amoti festival during which time the earth is supposed to be menstruating. The novelist also depicts the pervasive hand of superstition which is another instrument to make women a soft target. This is reflected in Durga being seen as inauspicious and bringing the shadow of death to her husband’s family and killing him. Indira Goswami could not show her character to rise above her situation. In fact, “these accusations and pointing fingers seeped into her mind and she really began to believe it herself” (Goswami 9). Abandoned by her husband’s family and neglected in her brother’s household, Durga is the traditional image of a Brahmin widow, and as Prof. D.K. Baruah says, neurotic and unconsciously perverse.
Saru Gossainee, the other childless widow, is somewhat bold because she is staying alone with only the jajmani Brahmin, Mahidhar to help her collect her rent and supervise her property. Her inner life is visible through her silent monologues and dreams. She is one who is aware of the restraint that an upper caste woman like her should maintain. Yet she is filled with a deep sexual longing for Mahidhar and his well built muscular body. She is often gnawed by anxiety, thinking about his wellbeing. The novelist has vividly portrayed her guilt ridden conscience “Watching this sleeping man, lying there almost half naked, behind the broken down mud wall? Should such thoughts flicker through the mind of a thirty year old widow?” (Goswami, 158). Even as a newly married woman, she would be sexually excited on seeing the graceful and sensuous movements of the body of the dancing Vishnu Ojha. “A warm sensation passed through her breasts. Her nipples hardened. The Ojha’s words became flowers and fell on her body. His eyes became swords and pierced her” (Goswami, 184).
The dream she has of Mahidhar accompanying her along the banks of the river Tarma to see the four-armed icon of Lord Krishna and the bush fire enveloping her clothes and body reflects her sexual longing and the eventual destruction of her desire. It is a picture of terrible irony that the very man on whom she placed absolute faith and for whom she felt a deep physical longing should suck her resources like a parasite. Her terror is vividly pictured “There lay her love entangled in the net like a snake! Everything is finished! It is not the same world anymore!” (Goswami, 214). She never appears anymore in the novel.
It is Giribala, the newly widowed young daughter of the present Adhikar who tries to rebel against the suffocating system. Her first signs of rebellion are seen in her screaming with rage at the group of women who have assembled at her house to indulge in base gossip. She shouts at them, “I will live on and have a better life than all of you…” (Goswami, 28). But she could not continue with her words. The image of “a severed branch of a tree” anticipates her fate.
Giribala does not feel any remorse while eating secretly the meat curry that is forbidden to a Brahmin widow. But just before eating it, her mind is full of thoughts of her husband eating pigeon curry cooked with papaya by the opium seller. It is as if she is committing an act of defiance against her dead husband, possessing only unpleasant memories of him. The room where Giribala lies and which is said to be dark and coffin-like and her inner thoughts reflect her sense of claustrophobia. “What can I do? Suicide? Ah, that Christian! Why doesn’t he say anything?” (Goswami, 127). Giribala’s sexual longing for Mark Sahib is reflected in her caressing the soft satin cloth of the ceremonial umbrella as if it were the smooth skin of Mark Sahib. “She rubbed the silk on her cheeks, her neck, her breasts… all over her body in a soft, languid movement of her hand… as if she desired to pull all the silk onto her, wrap herself in its softness…” (Goswami, 129).
Their visit to a ruined estate of a once prosperous Mahajan is indicative of Giribala’s breaking down of both caste and gender convention. Giribala speaks frankly of her fondess for Mark Sahib and her hatred for all the prayers that a widow has to offer to her dead husband’s wooden sandals. She confesses that she has no sense of sin. She admits, “I cannot just exist, just for the sake of remaining alive, like Aunt Durga and Saru Gossainee” (Goswami, 168).
Giribala is calm and composed when she goes to Mark’s dilapidated room in the wet and stormy might to escape being taken to her husband’s house. She cries out that she will “not go back to that graveyard.” (Goswami, 250) and implores Mark “Oh, my beloved Sahib, touch me and realize just for once… just once!…” (Goswami, 251). However, Mark though overwhelmed with sympathy and tenderness for her, could not go towards her and stood there “as if metamorphosed into an iron contraption” (Goswami, 252).
Though the author has portrayed Giribala as taking a bold step, yet she is shown as being racked by the pain of not being able to satisfy her husband even though she was regarded extremely beautiful. In between sobs, she says, “I couldn’t bind him to me with either my body or my mind.” (Goswami, 251). During the purification ceremony, she is shown as “detached” and “motionless” (Goswami, 253). However, after the ritual incantations are over, she refuses to come out of the burning hut and is soon engulfed by the raging fire.
Thus, Giribala realizing that the only other way of escape for her, i.e. through Mark Sahib, now being blocked chooses death over life as the sole means of liberation for her. The author, through the depiction of Giribala’s suicide, shows the tragic consequences that accompany an act of rebellion. Prof. D.K. Baruah points out that if flames symbolize sexual passion, the self immolation of Giribala is a symbolic fantasy of fulfillment of desire. However, he also says that if the novelist wanted to celebrate fulfillment of desire in the positive sense, she would have found other ending to her fiction (Baruah, 39). I would like to point out that death is the easy way out and the author has shied away from showing her female protagonist involved in a more radical subversion of patriarchal norms. Thus, her final act can be seen as more an act of surrender than one of defiance.
Giribala’s suicide can be seen as an act of voluntary sati or as Rajeswari Sunder Rajan points out while citing the anti-sati crusaders’ view, not a true choice but merely an option that is preferred to life as an ill-treated widow. She is no doubt exercising choice but ultimately, she is portrayed as a victim. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan remarks in Real and Imagined Women how the colonial imagination has seized upon an actual narrative scenario of a single white man saving a brown woman from a mob of brown men. But in Goswami’s novel, the white man Mark Sahib proves to be utterly helpless.
The novel cannot be called a feminist work. It has shown all the three widows being crushed by the grinding wheel of patriarchy. Even the two men who stand out as being more humane in an environment where cruel practices are widely prevalent in the name of caste and religion cannot ultimately rise above their situation in the traditional orthodoxy. Mark, bogged down by religious conservatism and moral scruples, fails Giribala in her moment of direst need. Indranath voices his desire for the union of Mark and Giribala only after the latter’s death. And despite his love for Elimon, he had no courage to break the custom that forbids the marriage between a Gossain son and an ordinary Brahmin girl.
The author’s description of women in the novel are marked by a sexist tone – her constant focus is on the body and clothes of the women. Saru Gossainee’s beauty and her dainty ankles and feet are remarked upon. She appears before Mahidhar “wearing only a short gatala over her bosom”, her body “reflecting a kind of mysterious light!” (Goswami, 192). Regarding Giribala, the author comments on the “finely weaved gatala, which covered her shapely, swelling breasts” (Goswami, 62), she being the object of Mark’s gaze. Later, “the wet, soggy markin chemise was stuck to the contours of her bosom. Her mekhala was drawn up to the knees” (Goswami, 249).
Moreover, Elimon is turned into a woman possessing mere physicality as she is seen constantly through Indranath’s eyes – sometimes it is her pair of legs resembling the “tender shoots of bijulee bamboos” (Goswami, 16) or her body which is “as fresh as the saturated, wet ground around the newly dug well” (Goswami, 30). Indranath’s mind even veers to “her undergarments probably stained with menstrual flow” (Goswami, 45). When Indranath tries to recollect where he had seen Elimon first, she merges in his memory with other girls who had “the skin colour of white mushrooms and breasts like tender white pumpkins” (Goswami, 17). Moreover, marriage with Indranath seems to be the only goal for Elimon, though her forthrightness is seen in her very first appearance when she herself strikes up a conversation with Indranath.
Besides, beautiful young women like Giribala and Saru Gossainee are always shown as having sweet fragrances emanating from their body while poor old women are shown to be giving off unpleasant smells. For instance, the old women who is Elimon’s maid is said to emanate a “sour odour” (Goswami, 44). Thus the novelist has portrayed women primarily as sexual beings. As Monique Wittig had said, “Although women are very visible as sexual beings, as social beings they are totally invisible” (Wittig, 8).
The author not only betrays sexist but also racist bias as when she compares Saru Gossainee’s fair complexion to “the white-skinned soldiers who had camped nearby during World War II” (Goswami, 63). There are other instances where fair skin is praised as a mark of beauty which resembles European skin.
Though the most important episodes in the novel are concerning the three widows, they have very little say in it. Giribala’s voice is distinctly heard only twice – in the site of the ruined estate and in the stormy night at Mark’s hut.
The author does not give any hint of female solidarity in the face of oppressive patriarchy though there is occasionally some manifestation of love as when Giribala runs crying after the moving palanquin of Durga. But the same Durga had scoffed at her when she offered her ornaments to help her go on the pilgrimage as she herself had no desire to immerse her husband’s ashes in the holy waters. Durga had said, “It would be a sin to take anything from a person whose tongue utters such words…!” (Goswami, 170). Overall, there is much hostility among the women. This is reflected in the Gossainee refusing to part with any money to enable Durga to go on the pilgrimage and Bhoomichampa who derives sadistic pleasure from the tragedy of Giribala.
There is no picture of happy women in her novel except the women playing Golokdham is Bolo’s house. But they are only heard and not seen. Goswami’s novel has not shown any common cause that women collectively can take up and individual protests are bound to end tragically. In fact, when Giribala’s mother, says that she will go to court to settle the land disputes, the other women cry with shock.
The novel captures the weakening of the feudal structures as the historical reality of the immediate post-independence period. The land grants of General Jenkins have diminished the land-holding power of the rich Adhikars of the Sattra. Meanwhile, the tenants incited by the communist agitation into rebellion are refusing to pay taxes and threatening to seize the lands if the Gossains themselves do not take the plough in their own hands. However, this changing historical scenario of the world outside does not find a parallel in the position of women in the novel. While one section of the oppressed class, the peasants are raising a collective voice against the feudal authority of the adhikars, the condition of the marginalized women is strangely static. Indira Goswami has not shown any collective voice of resistance coming from the women.
The last pages of the novel give an account of the changes that have come in the sattra in 1981 – the land ceiling act, the Gossains involved in the unprecedented act of fighting their cases in the courts of justice, the advent of electricity but lighting only a few houses. Prominence is given to the land issue – after so much bloodshed, the communists have failed to improve the condition of the peasants, and to distribute the land effectively among them. The novelist, after portraying the misery of women, does not give much narrative space to any changes in their condition. It is in two lines that she sums up the change – the first is that there is now marriage between girls from Gossain and Brahmin families and boys coming from the lower castes. The second is that girls and boys now study together in the new college that has sprung up at Mirza near the sattra.
Thus, the author in the novel A Saga of South Kamrup has portrayed vividly the institutionalized and cruel oppression of widows in the sattras but she does not offer any reformist solutions to their problems nor does she show any animosity towards their oppressors or those who sympathise with them but cannot resist against the system.
Works Cited
Baruah, Prof. D.K. “Mamoni Raisom Goswami : The Insistent Pattern.” Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) and Her Fictional World – The search for the sea. Comp. Kaikous Burjor Satarawala. Delhi : B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2002. 19-43.
Goswami, Indira. A Saga of South Kamrup. 1988. Trans. Indira Goswami. New Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 1993.
Irigaray, Luce. “This sex which is not one.” New French Feminisms ed. Elaine Marks & Isabelle de Courtivron. New York; 1981. 99-106.
Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder. Real and Imagined Women : Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism. London and New York : Routledge, 1993.
Sangari, Kumkum and Sudesh Vaid, eds. Recasting Women : Essays in Colonial History. New Delhi : kali for women, 1989.
Wittig, Monique. “The Category of Sex.” The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Monique Wittig. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. 1-8.
The literal translation of the novel’s Assamese title is “The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker”, this being a symbol of the decaying sattra. The resplendent howdah made of splendid wood symbolizes the power and prestige of the Adhikar of the Sattra but the fact of its being moth-eaten now signifies its inward degradation. Moreover, the iron hooks of the howdah digging into the skin of the elephant reflects the cruelty that is hidden behind a façade of pomp and grandeur.
The world of the novel is a bleak one – the sights and smells of the rural landscape vividly delineated by the novelist reflect on atmosphere of extreme degradation. The pan leaf creepers intertwining the betel nut trees once lush and green now look like “dried up human intestines” (Goswami, 13) and the once fragrant smell of paddy is now replaced by the odour of opium.
But the most gruesome image of human misery is the picture of the three widows of the Gossain family – Giribala, the sister, and Durga and Saru Gossainee, the aunts of the novel’s male protagonist, Indranath. An inhuman and callous feudal and patriarchal system driven by avarice and religious orthodoxy deprives these widows of their share in property, their right to a decent livelihood, in fact, it does not allow them even the minutest atom of self-respect. Mortified by stringent ascetic practices and penances imposed upon them, these widows live by worshipping the clogs of their dead husbands and the only thing that they look forward to is death.
However, it is not just widows but women in general that are victims of tyrannous patriarchal norms and practices. Married women are totally under the control of their husbands who may be negligent, irresponsible or promiscuous. The marital ties presented in the novel portray forcefully Monique Wittig’s idea of women as being oppressed by the system of exploitation on which heterosexuality is economically based. One evil custom is that a Brahmin girl had to be married off before she reached puberty or else the village ostracized her family. The novelist shows the sadistic cruelty of some village women who roam about continually in search of traces of menstrual flow in growing Brahmin girls so that their families could be hounded out of society. Giribala herself is a victim of this evil custom as she had to be hurriedly married off to an elderly and dissolute son of a Gossain family who maintained an illicit relationship with a female opium – seller. Elimon, the daughter of the poor priest from Rajapukhuri has already reached her puberty but keeps it a secret as her father would then sell her off to the crafty opium – smuggler from Cooch Behar.
Women are presented merely as, in Luce Irigaray’s words, “an exchange value among men; in other words, a commodity” (Irigaray, 355). This is reflected in the old woman who examines Saru Gossainee, the new bride by measuring the length and feeling the texture of her hair, and making her walk to and fro to test her gracefulness.
The novel shows women themselves as being perpetrators of inhuman patriarchal ideologies and complicit with the oppressive caste hierarchy. From the moment Giribala sets foot in her father’s house, her widowed aunt constantly forbids her to do things which she as a girl took for granted. The village women assemble at her place not to welcome her but to satisfy their base curiosity and inquisitiveness and indulge in malicious gossip. One of the women advises Giribala’s mother to send her to her husband’s home soon as it is “like heaven for a woman. If she runs away from her husband’s house, she is like a naked woman loitering on the streets” (Goswami, 23).
Giribala’s mother is a most willing upholder of patriarchal rules. When Giribala tastes the forbidden meat curry, it is she who breaks into a terrible fury. When Giribala is bitten by the snake and the American Christian missionary is alone with her in the sacred sandal room sucking out the poisoned blood, what is foremost in the Gossainee’s mind is that her daughter is being touched by a low caste man – “What a fate that a Damodariya Gossainee has to tolerate a Christian inside her house! Will she have to go through the rituals for atonement for this sin?” (Goswami, 71). Caste and gender bias become the twin systems of oppression calculated to keep women perpetual victims. Giribala belongs to a high caste but her very life would have been put in danger because of the pervasive caste system. The lives of women thus exist at the interface of caste and class inequality as Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid point out in the introduction to their book, Recasting Women. The novel also reflects the various kinds of relationships that patriarchal practices have with class, caste, social movements and colonization which Sangari and Vaid also argue in their book.
The three Gossain widows in the novel try to eke out their existences in different ways in a patriarchal society. Durga has completely surrendered herself to the dominant system. Though she has willingly acquised in the severe penances that a Gossain widow has to undergo, the novelist highlights her inner state of mind which is one of deep anxiety. “Her mind has become a graveyard … All those customary rituals of widow-hood which she did a few years back without much effort, are now a source of fear for her” (Goswami, 9). She dreads to think of the hard rituals that she will have to follow during the approaching Amoti festival during which time the earth is supposed to be menstruating. The novelist also depicts the pervasive hand of superstition which is another instrument to make women a soft target. This is reflected in Durga being seen as inauspicious and bringing the shadow of death to her husband’s family and killing him. Indira Goswami could not show her character to rise above her situation. In fact, “these accusations and pointing fingers seeped into her mind and she really began to believe it herself” (Goswami 9). Abandoned by her husband’s family and neglected in her brother’s household, Durga is the traditional image of a Brahmin widow, and as Prof. D.K. Baruah says, neurotic and unconsciously perverse.
Saru Gossainee, the other childless widow, is somewhat bold because she is staying alone with only the jajmani Brahmin, Mahidhar to help her collect her rent and supervise her property. Her inner life is visible through her silent monologues and dreams. She is one who is aware of the restraint that an upper caste woman like her should maintain. Yet she is filled with a deep sexual longing for Mahidhar and his well built muscular body. She is often gnawed by anxiety, thinking about his wellbeing. The novelist has vividly portrayed her guilt ridden conscience “Watching this sleeping man, lying there almost half naked, behind the broken down mud wall? Should such thoughts flicker through the mind of a thirty year old widow?” (Goswami, 158). Even as a newly married woman, she would be sexually excited on seeing the graceful and sensuous movements of the body of the dancing Vishnu Ojha. “A warm sensation passed through her breasts. Her nipples hardened. The Ojha’s words became flowers and fell on her body. His eyes became swords and pierced her” (Goswami, 184).
The dream she has of Mahidhar accompanying her along the banks of the river Tarma to see the four-armed icon of Lord Krishna and the bush fire enveloping her clothes and body reflects her sexual longing and the eventual destruction of her desire. It is a picture of terrible irony that the very man on whom she placed absolute faith and for whom she felt a deep physical longing should suck her resources like a parasite. Her terror is vividly pictured “There lay her love entangled in the net like a snake! Everything is finished! It is not the same world anymore!” (Goswami, 214). She never appears anymore in the novel.
It is Giribala, the newly widowed young daughter of the present Adhikar who tries to rebel against the suffocating system. Her first signs of rebellion are seen in her screaming with rage at the group of women who have assembled at her house to indulge in base gossip. She shouts at them, “I will live on and have a better life than all of you…” (Goswami, 28). But she could not continue with her words. The image of “a severed branch of a tree” anticipates her fate.
Giribala does not feel any remorse while eating secretly the meat curry that is forbidden to a Brahmin widow. But just before eating it, her mind is full of thoughts of her husband eating pigeon curry cooked with papaya by the opium seller. It is as if she is committing an act of defiance against her dead husband, possessing only unpleasant memories of him. The room where Giribala lies and which is said to be dark and coffin-like and her inner thoughts reflect her sense of claustrophobia. “What can I do? Suicide? Ah, that Christian! Why doesn’t he say anything?” (Goswami, 127). Giribala’s sexual longing for Mark Sahib is reflected in her caressing the soft satin cloth of the ceremonial umbrella as if it were the smooth skin of Mark Sahib. “She rubbed the silk on her cheeks, her neck, her breasts… all over her body in a soft, languid movement of her hand… as if she desired to pull all the silk onto her, wrap herself in its softness…” (Goswami, 129).
Their visit to a ruined estate of a once prosperous Mahajan is indicative of Giribala’s breaking down of both caste and gender convention. Giribala speaks frankly of her fondess for Mark Sahib and her hatred for all the prayers that a widow has to offer to her dead husband’s wooden sandals. She confesses that she has no sense of sin. She admits, “I cannot just exist, just for the sake of remaining alive, like Aunt Durga and Saru Gossainee” (Goswami, 168).
Giribala is calm and composed when she goes to Mark’s dilapidated room in the wet and stormy might to escape being taken to her husband’s house. She cries out that she will “not go back to that graveyard.” (Goswami, 250) and implores Mark “Oh, my beloved Sahib, touch me and realize just for once… just once!…” (Goswami, 251). However, Mark though overwhelmed with sympathy and tenderness for her, could not go towards her and stood there “as if metamorphosed into an iron contraption” (Goswami, 252).
Though the author has portrayed Giribala as taking a bold step, yet she is shown as being racked by the pain of not being able to satisfy her husband even though she was regarded extremely beautiful. In between sobs, she says, “I couldn’t bind him to me with either my body or my mind.” (Goswami, 251). During the purification ceremony, she is shown as “detached” and “motionless” (Goswami, 253). However, after the ritual incantations are over, she refuses to come out of the burning hut and is soon engulfed by the raging fire.
Thus, Giribala realizing that the only other way of escape for her, i.e. through Mark Sahib, now being blocked chooses death over life as the sole means of liberation for her. The author, through the depiction of Giribala’s suicide, shows the tragic consequences that accompany an act of rebellion. Prof. D.K. Baruah points out that if flames symbolize sexual passion, the self immolation of Giribala is a symbolic fantasy of fulfillment of desire. However, he also says that if the novelist wanted to celebrate fulfillment of desire in the positive sense, she would have found other ending to her fiction (Baruah, 39). I would like to point out that death is the easy way out and the author has shied away from showing her female protagonist involved in a more radical subversion of patriarchal norms. Thus, her final act can be seen as more an act of surrender than one of defiance.
Giribala’s suicide can be seen as an act of voluntary sati or as Rajeswari Sunder Rajan points out while citing the anti-sati crusaders’ view, not a true choice but merely an option that is preferred to life as an ill-treated widow. She is no doubt exercising choice but ultimately, she is portrayed as a victim. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan remarks in Real and Imagined Women how the colonial imagination has seized upon an actual narrative scenario of a single white man saving a brown woman from a mob of brown men. But in Goswami’s novel, the white man Mark Sahib proves to be utterly helpless.
The novel cannot be called a feminist work. It has shown all the three widows being crushed by the grinding wheel of patriarchy. Even the two men who stand out as being more humane in an environment where cruel practices are widely prevalent in the name of caste and religion cannot ultimately rise above their situation in the traditional orthodoxy. Mark, bogged down by religious conservatism and moral scruples, fails Giribala in her moment of direst need. Indranath voices his desire for the union of Mark and Giribala only after the latter’s death. And despite his love for Elimon, he had no courage to break the custom that forbids the marriage between a Gossain son and an ordinary Brahmin girl.
The author’s description of women in the novel are marked by a sexist tone – her constant focus is on the body and clothes of the women. Saru Gossainee’s beauty and her dainty ankles and feet are remarked upon. She appears before Mahidhar “wearing only a short gatala over her bosom”, her body “reflecting a kind of mysterious light!” (Goswami, 192). Regarding Giribala, the author comments on the “finely weaved gatala, which covered her shapely, swelling breasts” (Goswami, 62), she being the object of Mark’s gaze. Later, “the wet, soggy markin chemise was stuck to the contours of her bosom. Her mekhala was drawn up to the knees” (Goswami, 249).
Moreover, Elimon is turned into a woman possessing mere physicality as she is seen constantly through Indranath’s eyes – sometimes it is her pair of legs resembling the “tender shoots of bijulee bamboos” (Goswami, 16) or her body which is “as fresh as the saturated, wet ground around the newly dug well” (Goswami, 30). Indranath’s mind even veers to “her undergarments probably stained with menstrual flow” (Goswami, 45). When Indranath tries to recollect where he had seen Elimon first, she merges in his memory with other girls who had “the skin colour of white mushrooms and breasts like tender white pumpkins” (Goswami, 17). Moreover, marriage with Indranath seems to be the only goal for Elimon, though her forthrightness is seen in her very first appearance when she herself strikes up a conversation with Indranath.
Besides, beautiful young women like Giribala and Saru Gossainee are always shown as having sweet fragrances emanating from their body while poor old women are shown to be giving off unpleasant smells. For instance, the old women who is Elimon’s maid is said to emanate a “sour odour” (Goswami, 44). Thus the novelist has portrayed women primarily as sexual beings. As Monique Wittig had said, “Although women are very visible as sexual beings, as social beings they are totally invisible” (Wittig, 8).
The author not only betrays sexist but also racist bias as when she compares Saru Gossainee’s fair complexion to “the white-skinned soldiers who had camped nearby during World War II” (Goswami, 63). There are other instances where fair skin is praised as a mark of beauty which resembles European skin.
Though the most important episodes in the novel are concerning the three widows, they have very little say in it. Giribala’s voice is distinctly heard only twice – in the site of the ruined estate and in the stormy night at Mark’s hut.
The author does not give any hint of female solidarity in the face of oppressive patriarchy though there is occasionally some manifestation of love as when Giribala runs crying after the moving palanquin of Durga. But the same Durga had scoffed at her when she offered her ornaments to help her go on the pilgrimage as she herself had no desire to immerse her husband’s ashes in the holy waters. Durga had said, “It would be a sin to take anything from a person whose tongue utters such words…!” (Goswami, 170). Overall, there is much hostility among the women. This is reflected in the Gossainee refusing to part with any money to enable Durga to go on the pilgrimage and Bhoomichampa who derives sadistic pleasure from the tragedy of Giribala.
There is no picture of happy women in her novel except the women playing Golokdham is Bolo’s house. But they are only heard and not seen. Goswami’s novel has not shown any common cause that women collectively can take up and individual protests are bound to end tragically. In fact, when Giribala’s mother, says that she will go to court to settle the land disputes, the other women cry with shock.
The novel captures the weakening of the feudal structures as the historical reality of the immediate post-independence period. The land grants of General Jenkins have diminished the land-holding power of the rich Adhikars of the Sattra. Meanwhile, the tenants incited by the communist agitation into rebellion are refusing to pay taxes and threatening to seize the lands if the Gossains themselves do not take the plough in their own hands. However, this changing historical scenario of the world outside does not find a parallel in the position of women in the novel. While one section of the oppressed class, the peasants are raising a collective voice against the feudal authority of the adhikars, the condition of the marginalized women is strangely static. Indira Goswami has not shown any collective voice of resistance coming from the women.
The last pages of the novel give an account of the changes that have come in the sattra in 1981 – the land ceiling act, the Gossains involved in the unprecedented act of fighting their cases in the courts of justice, the advent of electricity but lighting only a few houses. Prominence is given to the land issue – after so much bloodshed, the communists have failed to improve the condition of the peasants, and to distribute the land effectively among them. The novelist, after portraying the misery of women, does not give much narrative space to any changes in their condition. It is in two lines that she sums up the change – the first is that there is now marriage between girls from Gossain and Brahmin families and boys coming from the lower castes. The second is that girls and boys now study together in the new college that has sprung up at Mirza near the sattra.
Thus, the author in the novel A Saga of South Kamrup has portrayed vividly the institutionalized and cruel oppression of widows in the sattras but she does not offer any reformist solutions to their problems nor does she show any animosity towards their oppressors or those who sympathise with them but cannot resist against the system.
Works Cited
Baruah, Prof. D.K. “Mamoni Raisom Goswami : The Insistent Pattern.” Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) and Her Fictional World – The search for the sea. Comp. Kaikous Burjor Satarawala. Delhi : B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2002. 19-43.
Goswami, Indira. A Saga of South Kamrup. 1988. Trans. Indira Goswami. New Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 1993.
Irigaray, Luce. “This sex which is not one.” New French Feminisms ed. Elaine Marks & Isabelle de Courtivron. New York; 1981. 99-106.
Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder. Real and Imagined Women : Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism. London and New York : Routledge, 1993.
Sangari, Kumkum and Sudesh Vaid, eds. Recasting Women : Essays in Colonial History. New Delhi : kali for women, 1989.
Wittig, Monique. “The Category of Sex.” The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Monique Wittig. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. 1-8.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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