তিলোত্তমার কলকাতা

Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

তিলোত্তমার কলকাতা

পুনরায় ক্ষমতায় এসেছিলাম সেইদিন।

রাত ভাঙ্গা ঘুম, নিম্নচাপের প্রভাবে এতদিন কারা যেন

গিলে খেয়েছিল আমাদেরকে।

আজ চেনা মুখ তারা, সবাই বড্ড চেনা।

অস্ত্র হাতে ভরসা পেয়েছিলাম,

নিশব্ধে যদি, মাথা নিচু করে

"হ্যাঁ" ব্যতীত অন্য কোনো কিছু না বলি,

তবে সর্বস্ব হারিয়ে যেতে সময় লাগবে।

নীরবতা কখনও সঙ্গী ছিলনা,

শুধু ছিল এক কৌরব-মুখী সাথী।

ভেবেছিলাম কোনো এক তিলতাম্মার কাছে,

পরম আনন্দে হাত পেতে দুটো অন্ন ভিক চাইলে,

হয়তো ফিরিয়ে দেবেনা।

পুনরায় ক্ষমতায় এসেছিলাম।

কবে... সেই খবর রাখিনি।

তবে মাকে যেইদিন শুধিয়েছিলাম এই রঙিন পটভূমির

আর তার শিরোনামের কথা,

তবে জেনেছিলাম, বাল্যকালিন উৎসাহ

চিবিয়ে খাওয়াটাই

শ্রেয়।

এক দুই বছর অতিক্রান্ত করলে হয়তো

সন্দেহের আড়ালে থাকা সন্ধ্যাটা

প্রদীপের শিখার মতন "ধূপ" করে নেমে পড়বে:

পড়েনি।

আজও রৌদ্র চোখে, কটমট করে তাকিয়ে,

গুলি চালিয়ে হেসে বলে:

"বল, আর করবি?"

তারপর আসবে শরৎ।

বাদ্দির আওয়াজ ছিন্ন-বিন্ন করবে এই দেহখানা —

আর উনি, শুধু ভঙ্গুর ধুনুচির অর্ধ-দগ্ধ ছাই দিয়ে

কপালে তিলক দেবে...

তার বিতৃষ্ণা জন্মালে,

জামার ছেরা পকেট

বন্দুকের নলটা মাছির মতো হাতে এসে পড়বে —

উনি গ্রেফতার হলে

হাত ধুয়ে দু মুঠো ভাত খাবো।

কবে যেন সে ক্ষমতা লোপ পেয়েছে,

মনে করতে পারিনা:

আর খেয়ালে পড়েনা।

rat in an electrifying cage

i say a prayer everytime I think of you and i think of you all the time. the gods might confuse me as their follower but heaven knows, my loyalty lies with you

i wish i could crumple up all these desires into a fist and throw my hands at you, you'd see the harm, not the war I intend to hide. and maybe that's good. that's what sympathy is for: for seeing someone in a worse state and wincing and thinking "oh dear god": that's the closest to heaven you'd ever peek at, and i would smile in vain because that was for me. i made you think of heaven, even as a response to remorse. that's the place i would nibble at, the habit you make at calling god, time and time and time again, until the energy crashes over you, washes you like a tide.

maybe at the end of the time, we are rigged to be the customer and the buyer: you sell me pity that i use as a conduit for your affection. i coil it, it's trapping: it's a blessing to be thought even a glimpse like this, this morning as you would rush down the veranda, the ceiling fan is replaced, i cling to the ceiling like a devotee meeting the lord, and you'd scream, again: “o, god!”

a shock would run through me, because that's the nearest to love from you that I could get.

you're the warm wanderer of the ocean, I am merely a sailor with a broken mast. the air stabs right through the torn clothes, right through your dignity. i am at your doorstep, you are attending my funeral: and we are one hell apart. i jump in to close the distance, a shock runs through me. my insides churn with the best copper wire that they could find in my market. i squeak weakly.

it's silly to take a route that close to the sun, that deep the ocean to never think of you: i am a rat in an electrified cage, i run into the same flash i am running away from.

“please, god,” i would chew on my fingers, “make me the biggest star the world has ever known.”

i say a prayer everytime I think of you and i think of you all the time.

publishing old incomplete pieces because they've been incomplete for so long, i don't know, how else to complete it

english translation:

That day, I returned to power.

Nights had split open my sleep, the low skies pressing against the chest until it felt as if some unseen mouth had been swallowing us whole.

And then the face appeared — familiar, unbearably familiar.

A newfound courage found me as I found the weapon; and I knew, if I only bent my head, whispered nothing but “Yes,”

then there'll still be some time before all breath becomes air.

Silence was never a companion.

Only a Kaurava-faced confrère.

I dreamed that perhaps, before some Tillotomma (earth-stained goddess), if I stretched out my palms, begging for two morsels of grain, she would not turn me away.

That was the day, I returned to power.

I cannot say when.

But the day I asked my mother of this painted backdrop and the name it bore, I knew: childhood’s hunger must be bitten down, chewed into pulp, swallowed with shame.

I thought — let years pass, and suspicion’s dusk would collapse like an incense stick snapping, flame falling into ash. But it did not. Even now, the sun bares its teeth, its eyes bloodshot, it fires into me and laughs:

“Tell me — will you dare do it again?”

And then autumn comes.

The drums of battle shred my body like a garment —

and he, with the half-burnt ash of a shattered censer,

smears a tilak upon my forehead as though it were seed.

When disgust swells in him,

the ragged pocket of his shirt coughs out the gun-barrel into his palm like a lover’s tongue.

And when he is taken away in chains,

I will lick my fingers clean and eat two fistfuls of rice.

When that power left me, I cannot recall.

And now, I no longer wish to.

---

n/b: "Tila” is the Sanskrit word for sesame

seed or a bit and "uttama" means better or higher.

Tilottama therefore means the being whose smallest

particle is the finest or one who is composed of the

finest and highest qualities. Tilottama is the name

of a mythical apsara, virtually meaning the beautiful

lady who has been created with every particle of

beauty in earth. The association of the city of

Kolkata has come from a poem of bengali poet

Jibanananda Das, where he wrote that Kolkata shall

some day be the most beautiful city.

This becomes a bitter irony in the contemporary

Bengal with the upsurge of rape cases. As a gesture

of revolt and an instance of reclaiming agency,

women who are raped are given pseudonymous

names. One of which is Tillotomma.