Trishanku Bhuyan- Mid Term Assignment
4)
(I)
The Window
I sit by my bedroom window
As I look through the glass
The world outside,
Beyond the world of sunny days and cool shadows
Of the summer
It reminds me of her whispers
Of memories of lost summers;
Befogged upon the window’s glance
I see the Neem tree of yesteryears
Evenings when the lamp was lit
In the hopes of better tomorrow
Her echoes can still be felt around the tree
By falling leaves and stunted branches,
Engulfed by the shadows of silence
My thoughts spinning in endless circles
Looking for the light
In this endless circle of nights.
I hold the billowing curtains
To catch a whiff of her scent
The peeling yellow paint of the window grill
Reminds me of her yellow eyes
As she transcended from this realm
I can see people through the glass
But not the one which I seek
I hope there’s a world beyond this window,
Beyond the glass,
A liberating portal,
A world far away
Devoid of pain or sadness
A window of laughter and smiles,
As she looks at me from the other side.
(ii)
The Waiting Room
Flew at the break of dawn
Over the Brahmaputra,
To the waiting room.
A chamber full of chair
Adorned with the living
A room of faces
Some tired, some sad,
Some sickly whereas
Others bored
The old wall clock keeps on
ticking
With the promises
Of ever approaching footsteps;
The bearer of news,
The television sits in the corner silently
Only images in a blur.
The gentle murmur of
The people around
is a soothing hum
to the loud conundrum.
Night falls. The chamber is calm,
Only the gentle snores and
The painful ticking.
As I lay on the chair
and gather my thoughts,
The waiting room is home.
5) Two poems that are triggered by news events within the last six months
(i)
The Photograph
I saw a photograph in class.
The picture of a lady being held
She seems to be smiling
At the futility of our times
Of deceptive democracies and false promises
Where questions lead to bars
I can see a police car in the picture
The sound of sirens ringing vividly
At the beck and call of the broken system
The glasses hang loose around her neck
Where the lines of freedom have become blurred
Where expression is being stifled
I can see another lady looking at her
She seems quite glum or angry
I can't figure which
She has a faraway look
Of distant hopes and peaceful dreams
O what times we live in.
(ii)
Curse from the
heavens
The skies have torn asunder,
The drops from heaven which were a blessing
Have come in the form of a torrential curse
A vast river of suffering flows,
With cities underneath
People sleeping with the fishes
And fishes’ swimming over people
The tears of children drowned
By the screams of hunger and loss.
The heads of houses can be seen bobbing up
And down,
Over the city of the fishes;
The drops from heaven:
A far cry of the farmer’s smile,
There is no end in sight
For this-
Curse from the heavens.
1) Two poems, each in the voice of any historical or mythological character of your choice.
(i)
(I refer to the
period of Ban Raja or Banasur, a mythological king from Assam and supposedly
the king of the town that I belong to, Tezpur. One of the most famous incidents
or folklore around is the great war of Hari-Har. Shiva siding with him whereas
Krishna or Vishnu coming to rescue his grandson against Ban Raja. It supposedly
let to a lot of bloodshed and that’s how the city of Tezpur was named. Tezpur
in assamese means the land of blood. I refer
to the time when Ban Raja was preparing for war.)
Tezpur
The battle lines are being drawn,
There is a storm of blood brewing;
It’s the calm before the storm,
I, Ban, the king of Sonitpur;
Bow before the Mahadev,
The slight of Aniruddha can’t be forgiven
Crush the mighty hearts
Entering my palace of blood
The flames of agnigarh shall bring
me victory;
With the blessings of the mahadev
I fear no Vishnu nor Krishna;
Blood shall flow
Through this ancient land
The walls shall be painted with crimson light
The Luit shall wash the river of blood
It’s shall bring the dawn of a new land,
The land of-
Tezpur
(ii)
(Joymati was an Ahom princess
and the wife of the Ahom King Gadadhar Singha or Gadapani. She was tortured and
killed by the Ahom king Lora Raja or the teenage king as she didn’t give her
husband’s whereabouts since the teenage king feared someone else might lay a
claim on his throne. I have tried to recreate the last few moments of her life
as she was tied to a tree and tortured for days until finally succumbing to her
injuries.)
Joymati
I was picked at the fall of dusk,
This tree is now my sole respite
The strikes on skin
Burn like fire
I hope the slow burning ashes in
My throat
Die down like the dying amber
I feel my body give away inch by inch
But I won’t part with my partner’s inn
The prickly thorns don’t prick anymore
It is but a garland of flowers
I dream of a day when this land
is liberated
From the ignorance and tyranny of-
The teenage king
The burning in my throat is dying
Its like the calm of an ocean’s mid
As I slowly fall into the lap of sleep
I dream of liberating dreams.
The poems- Curse from the heavens and Joymati are really well written. Both the poems trigger the emotional aspect in you for instance, the lines "I hope the slow burning ashes in/My throat/Die down like the dying amber...", "As I slowly fall into the lap of sleep/I dream of liberating dreams."; "People sleeping with the fishes/And fishes’ swimming over people", moves you completely when you try to imagine the situation. But I think you could have added more in the former poem. Nevertheless, great efforts! :)
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed The Window, and The Waiting Room. As a descriptive poem, The Window succeeded quite well, especially your description of the leaves and the trees being engulfed in silence. I also thought the mood and thrum of the poem was very well maintained throughout the poem, a subdued-ness, if you will. This is something I struggled with personally, to maintain the mood till the very end.
ReplyDeleteTrishanku, your poems were so deeply expressive, it feels like you really put deeply internal parts of you out there, in the words of these poems. It feels also candid and spontaneous in the journey the poem takes, I am thinking of "The Window" especially. It shifts from the literal image of the window, into memories of so many nights, and then returns to the very honest expression of head spinning in endless circles and night spinning in endless circles. It is the kind of poem that demands a kind of unravelling, that is genuine but doesn't open itself to you without work on part of the reader. The last stanza made me go back and read it again and again. "A window of laughter and smiles, / As she looks at me from the other side." It is a poem that is also spinning through so many feelings, you managed to capture it without taming the feelings, and so each feeling casts such different lights on all the other memories and feelings...
ReplyDeleteI liked your poem about Sudha Bharadwaj also, "the sound of sirens" and "of the broken system" really gets into the chaos of those arrests, and those moments – which are aplenty these days – when you can't make sense of this violence and onslaught of particular people. I thought perhaps you could do more with the opening lines: "She seems to be smiling / At the futility of our times". This seemed a bit literal and straightforward to me, I think perhaps the smile is a chance to talk about her expansiveness as a person or hit a positive note by talking about the kind of work she has done, which gives some respite and some hope and direction that the news of the arrests itself seems to drain away with fear.
The window was brilliantly descriptive, you mixed your memory with the surroundings and created an amalgamation which was seamless. Good work.
ReplyDelete