মা তোমায় বলবো বলে

মা তুমি কোথায় চলে গেলে মা। আমি তো নিজেকে হারিয়ে ফেলছি তোমাকে খুঁজে না পেয়ে। সেই ছোটোবেলায় পিপি গান গেয়ে ঘুম পাড়াতো স্কুলের পর, ও তোতা পাখি রে শেকল খুলে উড়িয়ে দেবো মাকে যদি এনে দাও। মা আমার বড্ড ভয় করতো মা তুমি যদি সত্যি না ফেরো অফিস থেকে? ঘুমিয়ে ছিলাম মায়ের কোলে কখন যে মা গেলো চলে। তুমি ঠিক চুপিচুপি অফিস চলে যেতে মা তোমায় তো কখনও ধরে রাখতে পারিনি। ঘুমোতে ঘুমোতে ভাবতাম সবাই বলে ওই আকাশে লুকিয়ে আছে খুঁজে নাও, সত্যি কি তোমায় খুঁজতে আকাশ পথে পাড়ি দিতে হবে? রোজ ভয় পেতে পেতে ঘুমিয়ে পড়তাম। আজ মা সত্যি ফাঁকি দিয়ে চলে গেলে? কোন মেঘের আড়ালে খুঁজব মা তোমায়? অফিস থেকে ফিরেও কি আমার কাছে ফিরতে মা? আমি তো সেই কবে থেকে তোমায় খুঁজছি। মেঘগুলো আজও ফাঁকি দেয় মা। ধরতে গেলেই বদলে যায়।

তুমি আজও সেই আড়ালে চলে গেলে মা? নাকি চিরকাল তোমার মেঘেতেই বাস? এক জীবন ভয় নিয়ে কি ভাবে বাঁচবো আমি। তুমি একটিবার বলে দিয়ে যাও মা। আমি তো আজ চল্লিশ বছর অপেক্ষায় আছি।

Water-wife

Sakhri looked up at the sky and let out a long drawn sigh. The first morning light was beginning to brighten the horizon and she could already hear other women of the village make their way to the well two villages away. She was late, having been up most of the night, tossing and turning in her bed thinking of her husband’s loving caresses and animal vigor that had kept her awake in the past. She had lost her heart and soul to her husband on the very first night of their wedding.

Bhagat’s attentions had wavered. His newly wed wife’s chuckles and moans carried through the thin walls of the mud house all night, burning Sakhri’s insides, stifling her with impotent rage and finally lulling her to an uncomfortable slumber in the wee hours. Even now, those thoughts haunted her as she prepared to join the other women on the trek. Drinking water had been scarce in the village for as long as she could remember, and with the rains giving their village the slip for the third consecutive year, the women had to walk to far off wells to collect drinking water for the family.

 It was also the reason Bhagat had gotten himself a new wife – an extra hand for fetching water – whom Sakhri had despised from the moment she had set foot into the house. The younger woman was etched with a lilting beauty that permitted her a bashfulness not granted to big-boned women like herself. They were fated, like oxen, to be burdened and worked all their life, with an occasional loving glance thrown at them, or a rare night of rewarding affection.

Those nights had been absent for a year now.

Balancing the two pitchers on her head, Sakhri saw from the corner of her eye Manju emerge from her room in the hut, stretching languidly in the soft morning light.

Heavily pregnant, she had reduced her treks to the water well in the past few weeks, and taken to resting in her room more.  It meant double trips for Sakhri to the well to fetch enough water for the people at home. Bhagat’s mother was old and infirm, and his sister had been married off. Both he and his father had to tend to the paddy fields they sharecropped with other men in the village. It fell on Sakhri to shoulder most of the housework while Manju rested on the chatai in her room.

“Did Your Highness sleep well?” Sakhri shot the first arsenal of the day. She had lately resorted to jibes as her only way to get back at the object of her husband’s current affections.

“Hardly, didi. He wouldn’t let me sleep all night!” Manju shot back, her face emotionless. Her tongue was as sharp as her beauty, and she never let go of a chance to get even with her husband’s other wife.

The two women had not been able to come to terms with each other’s presence, and with the younger one about to bear a child to their husband, she considered herself the undeclared queen of the household. The first wife was pushed to a corner, with the housework being her only respite.

Sakhri actually looked forward to her morning treks to fetch drinking water, when she would laugh and joke with the other women, and share the pain of sharing husbands with other similar fated women. The village men had taken to marrying more than once, just so they could have enough water for drinking and bathing in the house.

“Aree O Sakhri! Are you going to join us or not?” called one of the women from outside the hut.

“The witches from the other village are going to crowd the well if you don’t hurry up!” admonished another, sticking her head through the open door of the courtyard.

“Abhi aayi!” Sakhri adjusted the pitchers and picked up the bucket in her hand.

To Manju, she shot a glare, “Are you coming or are you going to put up your feet like the Queen herself and while away the morning?”

Manju hesitated for a while, and then told her to carry on. She would join them later, she informed Sakhri.

“Don’t take all morning. The girls from the other village are beginning to get rowdy these days. There’s too much pushing and shoving. And we also have to feed the men when they come back at mid-day.”

Manju moved slowly, with one hand on her protruding belly, and turned to go back into her room. She had left her dupatta inside.

“Black faced wretch! Her parents never taught her any shame,” Sakhri grumbled as she made her way out of the mud house.

Outside, she saw no one, all the women having already made their way out of the village, on the long journey to the well a few kilometers away. The absence of rain had caused the only well in the village to dry up, and the stream that flowed just outside the village was just parched earth now, with wide cracks big enough to swallow small babies.

At the beginning of summer, a neta ji had visited their village and promised daily tankers of drinking water to the village. Men and women had all thronged the political meeting, hoping for their woes to be solved by this man, who had all kind words and promises for them.

That had been before the elections. They had all pressed the button by the symbol that the neta ji’s cohorts had furnished, but neither tankers nor any of those people were seen after the elections. They had all vanished; as if the wide cracks in the earth had engulfed them.

Sakhri quickened her steps. This was the only time when she felt alive, when there was no competitor, younger and prettier than herself, no one to remind her of how she had lost her husband to youth. She was glad to get away from the house for a few hours, and on most days if she left early, she could avoid Manju too. And with the younger woman reducing her outings of late, Sakhri was beginning to feel happier while she was outside.

It didn’t matter to her that she had to balance two heavy pitchers on her head and dangle a bucket from her hand as she made her way back to the village under the parching, unrelenting sun. She had to be careful while she walked, or water would spill from the containers as she walked. Some nights, her shoulders and back would be pounding with pain and as she lay awake, she would hear Manju’s muffled laughs and soft protests through the walls.

She walked the distance by herself, having been left far behind by the women of her village, and all the way she went cursing her souten for having ruined her life, for having been born, for delaying her today in fetching water.

She had once been pregnant and had felt her water break while she was carrying water back home one day. She was walking alone that day too, her heaviness slowing her down. The world swam in front of her eyes washing her vision with shards of broken darkness before she felt her grip loosen on the pitchers. The containers had come tumbling down, throwing her off balance, and as she fell forward, towards her imminent irreplaceable loss, her only regret had been that she had lost all the water she collected that day.

She would have bled to her death had a young neighbour not spotted her writhing like a wounded eel. Even now she shivered a little every time she passed the spot where she lay, more than a year back, in her own pool of blood. The midwife at the village had informed her that she had lost her chance to be a mother for the rest of her life, and to the combined misfortune of water scarcity and childlessness she had lost her husband to another woman.

A wave of anger swelled in her heart now, against the younger woman who had displaced her from her bed, from her husband’s heart, and from being the queen of the household, reducing her to a mere caretaker. Many nights Sakhri lay awake. She tossed and turned with a burning that she never could identify. But her thoughts always went to Manju whose evil moans she heard through the thin walls. When all went quiet in the middle of the night, she thought longingly of her souten sharing her fate, lying under the leafless tree, blood oozing out of her, as the parched earth drank in the steady stream of liquid. She sometimes dreamt of Manju being sucked dry by the sinewy branches of the leafless tree, while she stood there and watched. She always woke up confused and thirsty, and it would be time to go fetch water.

She crossed the spot quickly, without looking at the tree that stood like a skeleton in the vast, bald field.

The well was crowded, and the rowdy group from the other village was already there. Sakhri’s friends took turns to draw the water from the deep well while some of them got into an altercation with the women from the other village.

Sakhri waited patiently. There was no way she could jump the queue and fill her pitchers. She would have to wait for her turn, even if it meant she would return alone. Manju was nowhere in sight and as she stood under the strong sun, she couldn’t help but feel bitterness creep all over her. That black faced wretch must be getting it on with her husband again, she thought bitingly. The thought of the two of them together made her want to throw up, but she bit her lip and held her bile.

When her turn at the well came, her friends had long since left. There was still no sign of Manju.

The sun was beating down on her, and she washed her face and neck with the water she drew from the well, drinking till her stomach hurt, and filling the pitchers and bucket she had brought with her. Manju must have stayed back at the hut and would take care of the meal. Sakhri upturned the pail she had drawn up, drenching herself, a luxury she wouldn’t have allowed herself on any other day. Her clothes would dry out in the sun before she reached her village, so no one would know she had treated herself to a bath. Feeling refreshed and content, she balanced the pitchers with a little difficulty on her head and picked up the bucket to start her trek back to the village.

The sun was glaring down on the earth now, but she was in no hurry. Lunch would be taken care of, and there was enough water for cooking one meal.

Sakhri ambled her way through the dusty path, careful of not spilling too much of the precious liquid she was carrying. The air simmered ahead of her, and there were mirages in the far distance. The sun had directed all its wrath on the earth today.

She first dismissed the figure on the ground as a mirage and then the mutt that strayed around the village in search of scraps of food. But after a few more steps she could distinctly make out the figure of a woman splayed on the ground. Two aluminum pitchers lay strewn beside her, and the woman wasn’t moving.

A cold wave ran down Sakhri’s spine as she recognized the skirt that was hitched high above the woman’s knee. She ran towards the figure on the ground, and could now distinctly make out the earth that had turned red from the blood oozing from under the woman’s skirt.

She had been lying there for quite some time. A couple of flies hovered on her face and over the earth wet with blood.

A short cry escaped Sakhri’s throat as she watched Manju’s lifeless face and frothing mouth. Blood had seeped through to the roots of the leafless tree under which Manju lay, and the patch of earth around her finally seemed content and wet.

The water-wife carefully lowered the pitchers and prepared to splash water on her souten’s face.

Them

There is a boy and a girl I know

Their faces impressed upon my mind

I surely know one from the other

But every time I try to describe them

Their features meld.

Her nose becomes his eyes

His lips turn into her fingers.

I never can tell one from the other

How old are they?

I do not know.

Like the nose and the lips

And the fingers and their tips

Their timeline baffles me.

Are they in their teens?

Or are they nearing the winter

Of their lives?

I cannot tell.

Neither can I see.

What I can see

Is that some days

Their smile dazzles the sun to shame

The glow on their faces

Loaned from a full moon night.

The laughter in their voices

Can silence a thousand crickets

Under dark starlit skies

—

One day I saw dried soil on her blouse

A patch of red earth, almost invisible

But as sure as gravity clung

To the soft fabric for dear life

She’s a city girl

I thought.

Where would a patch of soil find her?

The next day

I saw the same unmistakable red

Clinging to the hem of his trousers

Coincidence. I dismissed it.

Another day I saw her walking,

A blade of grass stuck to her hair

Her shirt just a little crinkled

And a little while after

I saw him.

His shirt had bits of green and brown

Smudged across the back

Had he been lying in one of

Van Gogh’s sunflower fields?

Spent and happy?

The greens were the same hue.

Another coincidence?

I couldn’t dismiss it this time.

They never seem to speak

When anyone’s looking.

At times I think

They do not even know each other.

But I see patches

Of a wide vastness

In their hair, their shirts,

And in the tilt of their smiles.

The fabrics they wear

Bear the telltale signs

Of the field they have found

Beyond

The barriers of our cityscape.

And I know

They always meet there.

ভালবাসি ভালবাসব

ধরো, ভীষণ ক্ষুধার্ত তুমি
প্রখর গ্রীষ্মের থাবা থেকে –
ঘর্মাক্ত ক্লান্ত হয়ে ফিরেছ ঘরে
চাইছ এক গ্লাস শীতল জল
রান্না ঘরের কোনে রাখা জালা থেকে গড়িয়ে তোমায় সে জল না দিয়ে
যদি গলা জড়িয়ে ঠোঁটে ঠোঁট রেখে বলি
ভালোবাসো ?
তবে কি সদ্য পরাজিত সূর্যের মত রাগি আগুন জ্বলে উঠবে তোমারও বুকে ?
এক ঝটকায় দূরে ঠেলে সরিয়ে দেবে আমায় ?
নাকি –
ঠোঁটের ছোঁয়া কে আর একটু ঘন করে বলবে ---
ভালবাসি ভালবাসব !

nights get lonelier when you are in love.. every second without him is an eternity. eternity with him is a fleeting moment. damn you, cruel heart

Bichched

Tomar mrittyur sawmoy ta bar bar vebechi
Je muhurte tomar sara soorir shithil hoye elo
Hridawyer karmojogge porlo bnadha
 Jibon mrittyur shondhikkhone haat chharle
Dnariye deklam tomar chole jawa

Takaoni firey pechone

Tomar samne tawkhon agamir daak
Jodio amar drishti chilo sedikei
Tobu pa sawreni amar
Buro awshotther mawto
Thom mere dnariyechilam
Mota mota jhuri amar sara shorir theke neme,
Paye haate ashte pristhe joriye mati te gnethe diyechilo!

Jyamon sawmaj bnadhe bibahe..

Norte deyni ayk chul
Awsawhay du chokh dyake tomar chole jawa
Jyamon dekhechilo tara tomar agomon
Abege chokh buje esechilo amar jedin
Ese thont e thont rekhechile.
Bidayer byalay sei thont e aj nuri pathor
Boja chokher gawrve lukiye mukto dana asru

Bidae janalam tomae tumi chole gele

এবার বর্ষায় ভিজবে তুমিও