In the pages of Bengali little magazines of India and Bangladesh and the obscure recesses of an ever-vibrant literary culture, spring other voices, other words – another art of seeing. Hidden from the glare of mainstream writing and often ignored in the portals of high culture, secret wizards of verse are chiselling away at experience, conjuring up the poetry of a stricken time.

A poetry which genuflects before no one while delivering its irreverent message in whispers or cat calls. The subterranean chambers of Bengali underground poetry echo with angst and experiment, glow in the blurry heat of passion or slip into a meditative silence as it plumbs the depths of the heart.

These aren’t exactly subaltern poetry. The poets here thrive on the periphery. They prefer remaining in their psychic wilderness, content with being published in little magazines, mostly intentionally maintaining a distance from mainstream Bengali verse-writing. Perhaps the idea here is to remain receptive to alternative perspectives, to never forget the dark corners of life.

Writer/translator Rajat Chaudhuri brings together poets from both India and Bangladesh, from cities like Kolkata and Dhaka, who write in Bangla. Here the poets cover a gamut of emotions that span life and death, passion and disenchantment, philosophy and dark laughter in their work.

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Selected poems from – The Great Bengali Poetry Underground (Kitaab,Singapore, 2022)Translated from the Bengali by Rajat Chaudhuri

Comrade

–Mitul Dutta

Comrade, a stale smell of corpsesRises from our rose garden
Comrade, what flowering season’s this, no flowersHermit, what sort of spring is it then?
Comrade, fellow-travelers roam around, who to trustIn the horizon of hatless heads
Where to go on holiday, the sea or jungle, or elseReturn to the room that suffocates?
If counting lizards on the wall, starving cockroaches, in lakhsCome crawling down the drapery
As if they’re hunger-stricken, Comrade, give me cadresGive me a betting hand, without dilly-dally
Comrade, our spades were real great, and the bibiWas the ravishing Sultana
And in that tale of the saheb, were sitting rooms proper, and we hadThe six and nine annas
Sans logic and fireflies, what’s this healthy timesComrade, appearing over the horizon?
Touching the harvest fest perfunctorily, a jaundice coloured cloud lightlyFlies away to the parched heavens.

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Books

–Tanmoy Mridha

So much have I spent buying booksAnd all this while buying books didn’t feel that badReally liked Gorky’s words, even in translationHad deeply perceived Rilke’s Duino Elegies’ lines,That I had wanted to leave out the last few pages of ResurrectionWas only because I liked to read books.From time to time I would read Rupashi Bangla to ensureMy eyes are working right. Now me and all my booksSit and stare, open-mouthed at each other.Rows upon rows, well settled on my shelf,They try to enhance my respectability. But sadly my respectabilityDoesn’t seem to get enhanced. From reading books, one day I had discovered—Van Gogh, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Gauguin these superheroesThe stories of their glorious deaths. The glory of their deathsLike luckless mosquitoes, dead and crushed on the pages of books,Now dry as bones. Brush and they fall, shake and theySplinter into impossibly fragile bits and pieces.Once I make some money I will do away with the bookshelf and putA long tub there, and you rightly guessed,Plant red and white water lilies with care —Small room — blooming in the cool breeze, a weightless wisdomSans commentaries and explanations, the love of aquatic flowers.

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The Hooker–Agni Roy
Awake in this chilling winter, like an owlWho are you prepaid disenchantment?Swaying like a drunken bearBehind you the urban symphony’s dhin-tinak-dhin!Who are you that crawls out of a broken homeEach night, from under the rail bridgeHolding hands with the glowing drunkInto communal new-moon nights

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Overcoming

–Gouranga Mondal

From the planting of a kiss to the cleaving lineI travel alone, the flesh encircled isle
Fire comes close. Half-burnt hand of GodBlocking my way, in the fog — Wild tuskers
Refusing to quit, like poison ants, I romp senselessly around On my feet Adding distance to separation

To overcome you, dammit, my manhood to cinders burn

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Distance

–Shapla Shawparjita

There’s no coffee here.Besides I don’t like coffeeAt most an espresso out of the blueVery bitter. One gulp.And it’s over. Done —

This night so still.

I’m free — an open verandahWith a life exchangedIt’s very breezy hereMany birds arrive, just as they do in the morningFlitting and darting about, peckingAway at the midday sun, ushering in the evening.Ah! Now a heavy rain inside my roomAs if the rains of Lalmai are still falling relentlessly here.Here, that spring sky, turned into a miniature.Where had these been! All along!
Inside and outside meld indistinguishably …Disintegrate by themselves.The glass walls’ very cold hereStill I cannot concentrate on coffeeI don’t light matchsticksFinishing the espresso in one gulpThen … Look at our photograph.The night — deep. The cold — of many winters.The distance — much too vast …

Image by Wim Kantona from Pixabay