Poetry: Moinak Dutta

Moinak Dutta

Durbin (The telescope)

It has been my favourite toy for long,

That durbin of my grandfather,

Made of copper with bronze rims,

Heavy and magical,

One night of Indian summer,

When our mufassil town after a long drawn loadshedding

Bearing the darkness and mosquito bites,

Thought of finally going to sleep,

My granddad took me to the open terrace of our house,

And showed me the wonders of the night sky,

Celestial things which I always thought them to be

Faraway and completely out of reach,

They came down like guests,

One after another,

As my grandfather introduced them to me,

That's Cassiopaeia,

That's Pole Star,

He told me,

'Do they glitter all day and night?

Do they not get tired?'

I had asked.

'They do get spent too'

He had told me

And recited two different poems,

One of Tagore and the other of Octavio Paz,

Two different poems,

But somehow they rang like two brothers

Or sisters,

Like twins almost,

'keep this durbin with you'

That had been his words,

I found a speck of sudden light in his eyes,

Were they glistening?

The next morning,

I woke up

My grandfather did not,

He went to meet those celestial beings.

(word note : mufassil: small town, a town in the countryside commonly found in India)

Laxmi

----------

My laxmi is a little girl

She runs all around the house,

In her red bordered white saree

With big dots of alta on her feet

She looks more like a girl

Who has all of a sudden grown up

Going beyond her age,

My laxmi is a little girl

She giggles and plays all day

After coming home from school,

If I ask her to sit for a while

And do those sums,

She will try to find a pretext,

One or other

Of not doing them,

 I do not like sums...I like something else'

She will declare,

'what?'

If I ever ask her that

She will go to the kitchen

And bring a dough of flour

And knead it and give it a shape of a doll

Or an abstract tiny sculpture,

My Laxmi is a little girl

And I call her ma

For only a mother can be a Laxmi.

(alta: red colored liquid used by bengali women to decorate their hands and feet on auspicious days)

Poush parban

-----------------

Patisapta, pithey pullies,

Notun gur,

Without them there is no way

To think of Poush Parban,

And some memories

They also conjure up

Magical things,

Mother and aunts making them,

All day long,

The mellowed light of prewinter days

Filtered through curtain

Falling on the verandah,

My grandmother sitting nearby

Watching over the proceedings

With keenness and commenting

On how she had learnt to make

Patisaptas, pitheys,

From her mother in law

That very year when she came to this home

As a girl knowing nothing about art of cooking;

Poush Parban,

It always brought sweetness.

(patisapta, pithey pullies, pitheys : different food items made with jaggery and rice paste.

notun gur: common bengali parlance used to describe  jaggery first available in the market at the onset of Poush, a month of bengali calender.

Poush parban: the celebration of the arrival of the month of Poush, a month of bengali calender / almanac)

Setu, October 2018