Poems of Falguni Ray

nonchalant charminar

       ma, i can’t smile well-scrubbed twisted-smirks in your noble society anymore

in the godly dense ocean of kindness with krishna’s duffed up white teeth      with studious eyes of the devil      i can’t

anymore    in a ramakrishnian posture     use my wife according to the matriarchal customs
       substitute sugar for saccharine and dread diabetes no more   i can’t no more with my unhappy
organ do a devdas again in khalashitola on the registry day of a former fling.
       my liver is getting rancid by the day   my grandfather had cirrhosis   don’t understand

heredity    i drink alcohol  read poetry   my father for the sake of puja etc used to fast   venerable dadas in our para

swearing by dharma gently press ripe breasts of sisters-born-of-the-locality on holi
       on the day ma left for trips abroad many in your noble society had vodka   i will
nonchalantly    from your funeral pyre    light up a charminar    thinking of your death my eyes tear
up    then i don’t think of earthquakes by the banks or of floodwater   didn’t put my hand on the string of the petticoat of an unmarried lover and didn’t think of baishnab padavali ma, even i’ll die one day.
       at belur mandir on seeing foreign woman pray with her international python-bum veiled in a skirt

my limitless libido rose up   ma because your libido will be tied up to father’s memories even beyond death      i    this fucked up drunk am    

 envying you   carrying dirt of the humblest kind looking at my organ

i feel as if i’m an organism from another planet   now the rays of the setting sun is touching my face on a tangent

and after mixing the colour of the setting sun on their wings a flock of non-family-planning birds is going back towards bonolata sen’s

eyes peaceful as a nest – it’s time for them to warm the eggs –

        

  

a personal neon

i am completely talentless so i touch the tip of the nose with my tongue

to prove my talent

sometimes while walking in front of manik bandyopadyay’s house

i wonder – the same street through which manik bandyopadyay

walked, i worthless, phalguni roy, am walking, inside the second class

of a tram sometimes i wonder – was it this tram that had once

trampled upon jibanananda’s body –

i have been moving on in this way – in this way my earth sun stars have been moving

at that moment when my foetus was formed another death had fallen upon the solar family

a friend of mine sits in a bar and drinks alcohol from far-off regions of the world quite often –

one day he became very angry and called me a toddy-addicted

ganja-addicted fucker

i consider dronacharya a murderer

for snatching away eklavya’s thumb

বেক্তিগত নিয়ন

আমি পুরোপুরি প্রতিভাহীন তাই নাকে জিভ ঠেকিয়ে
প্রমাণ করি প্রতিভা
কখনও মানিক বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়ের বাড়ির সাম্নে দিয়ে হাঁটতে
হাঁটতে ভাবি - একদিন মানিক বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় যে-রাস্তা দিয়ে হেঁটেছিলেন
সে-রাস্তায় আমি, অপদার্থ, ফালগুনী রায় হেঁটে যাচ্ছি, কখনও ট্রামের
সেকেন্ড ক্লাসে উঠে ভাবি - এই ট্রামটাই কি জীবনানন্দের
শরীর থেঁতলে দিয়েছিল
এইভাবেই আমি চলেছি – চলেছে পৃথিবী সূর্য নক্ষত্র আমার
আমার ভ্রূণমুহূর্তে আরেক মৃত্যু নেমে এসেছিল সৌরসংসারে
আমার এক বন্ধু বারে বসে দূর-দেশের দামি মদ খায় প্রায়ই –
সে খুব রেগেমেগে শালা তাড়িখোর গাঁজাখোর বলেছিল
একদিন আমায়
একলব্যর বুড়ো আঙুল কেড়ে নেবার জন্যে
আমি দ্রোণাচার্যকে হত্যাকারী মনে করি –

manik bandyopadyay’s specs

your paddy ridden field in baishak is my soul’s stamp – not the heart’s

in the winter fog i exhale smoke - not a cigarette's

in bed bereft of a woman i masturbate early in the morning

in whose tummy will my child arrive

one for which i will provide two morsels of rice?

                        without a party flag i have been surviving     without

                        the love of a woman i have been surviving    in order to listen to

rabindranath’s songs  at twelve thirty in the afternoon sun i have been surviving

no i never wanted to be rabindranath never ever     i have never wanted to love

sumita never ever    had never wanted her body   have never wanted mita’s

body      had only wanted her love but nothing happened to me

but of course the khan army in bangladesh     the US mines from the coast of tonkin

and the CRPF hiding behind the sand bags in kolkata      have left

the china nixon treaty has been signed    white black America has sent

a jeep to the moon     some grains in bharat     some armymen in vietnam

and some athletes for the Olympics

                        hindu bengalis

                        have killed

                        hindu bengalis

                        in kolkata – then under

                                                netaji

                                                lenin and

                                                gandhi’s statues

the wellwishers of shahid minar have called a public meeting – hence –

a lot of things have happened but i’ve still not got a job

                                                   and so haven’t got a wife

hehehehehe

the prostitute’s pimp and the bride’s parents never let their women

in our hands if we don’t show them some money

but will we all keep our organs settled inside a loincloth

and become sanyasis?

tear up for martyrs and become ministers?

once on my way to vote i saw a hungry person die

in the voting line their name was called as a proxy    and their ration card

confiscated     my father died even after receiving good dietary

medication and even His ration was confiscated – i have finally seen

death makes no difference between the rich and the poor or between the bourgeois and the                                                                                                                                                                   communist                                                                                                                                                                    

                        yet some deaths are lighter than a bird

                        yet some deaths are heavier than the mountain

hai bharatbarsha! will my death be heavy or light

hai bharatbarsha! will i be a dead body or a martyr – or will i die the way buddhadev

died when he tried to find a reason behind death?

death – are you just extinction or are you a passport to reincarnation?

who will tell me where is my real path?

who has provided me with life inside my heart – who will tell me what price is my heart?

who will provide me with pen and paper to write poems?

if i’m sick who will provide me with dietary medication?

who will provide for my food if i’m hungry?

who’ll provide me with a woman if i long for love?

                        can the state provide for everything?

                        can communism make the last boy first?

                        can socialism make a bad poet into a good one?

yet the vedic song of praise songhocchodhong songbaddhong etc means

                        our paths become one

                        our languages become one

                        our thoughts become one . . . this higher communism

was constructed by indians four thousand years before marx was born

                        our meals become one

                        our clothes become one . . . magical magical

but if after listening to this someone gets up and says our wives become one then

i mean i mean i’ll run away because i cannot i cannot think of sex with a woman and

sucking up to the guru as one and the same thing

so even after sucking our mother’s milk we can’t ever think of sucking our mother’s flesh

but after sucking the milk out of the cow we've had the cow’s flesh.

 

      

Translator's Note : Manik bandyopadyay's specs" and "nonchalant charminar" have been translated from Phalguni Roy's poems published in Khudartho Sonkolon (Hungry Anthology) (Ed. Saileswar Ghosh; published by Dey's Publishing). "বেক্তিগত নিয়ন" has been translated from the online magazine of Bengali poetry Journey90s. I am thankful to Mantra Mukim and Sneha Chowdury for their comments on earlier drafts of the translations.