Ashajyoti and other poems by Ayaan Halder

Ashajyoti

I loiter across its dusty rooms

That hunch and creak, as if in old age—

I mean certainly,

In old age.

My kin have fled to places strange;

To the warm cities of Delhi and Bangalore,

And to tenements in the next street,

To scrape their skies and dig their graves

At a safe distance from these walls

Which shall come crashing down in due time.

A few things that my mother claims, lay scattered across these dusty rooms—

Across the city, in fact.

An old bride made of poster paint;

A sweet wooden violin, the size of her fist;

And her sister’s breath, that had ceased to be

Only a few minutes ago.

Then of course, there is the warm light of the evening sun

That no longer heralds the clinking cups of tea;

Or curfews meant to keep bullet wounds at bay,

But nonetheless lies splattered on the floor like honey.

They count days, and buy time—these things;

From a place where her father; And her fathers’ father

Had grown weary of the weight of a nation split apart, and had sat down to rest

Oh, to never rise again!

And so my mother,

She hunches and creaks,

As if in old age,

Or in the sweet, sweet taste of her childhood

To gather them and flee—

Far from these wretched walls,

Which shall come crashing down again

In due time.

Surfaces

What does it matter to me,

Or to you

If water drips from the kitchen tap,

Or overflows onto the terrace;

Swallowing each crack

Of that flattened slab of concrete

That you call your sullen crown—

As if you were light, and it itself, a blurry shadow.

Don’t you know that we no longer live amidst the sighing pines,

Where the roofs of our homes were slanted,

And where the sound of rain would slide off quietly

If we were to only shrug our own shoulders?

Kashful

As evening sets in, and I wet my throat with tea,

Somewhere along the warm horizon lingers

The sound of a hammer 

Slamming onto concrete at quick, equal intervals. 

The man who bears the hammer has no time—or intention—to catch his livid breath. 

My ears strain to seek and find him, 

And find the place 

Where he has birthed this sound.

Beyond this warm horizon, and the many auburn light-years that separate us, 

Lie fields that brim with Kashful; 

Lies my amputated tongue, 

That suddenly quivers again 

At the taste of fresh blood. 

Scattered in the fields are Nazrul's children,

And I wonder if it is their groans I hear. 

It is hard to tell now, for the hammer, and the man, 

Have both gotten louder in their ire in the time that I've taken to write this.

And when I listen closely, I hear the dull thuds of a pillar falling.

Rabindra Jayanti

I run off to my lover early in the morning;

Dodging cross border missiles,

And my rather cross father—

And all that they have set ablaze with no mercy.

The bike ride costs a fortune, and leaves me with a sore behind;

A small price to pay, I suppose, in times of war.

My lover laughs, and then buys my meal;

And we hold each other, until evening has set on our skins like gelatin.

I think that there are moments in which I cry,

And in the end, we cannot keep our oath about quitting cigarettes this year.

I run off to get us a few, and over them we tell stories of our childhoods.

I think then I cry again—this time, a little more fluently.

Finally, my mother calls, and I board a green city-bus, and then another,

Until at last, I have grabbed a hold of a tempo in Paltan Bazar,

Which ferries me home, and to my father—

Past the rubble of a flyover under eternal construction,

And the counters of Banik Chat House, which have emptied by now.

At Bharot Shebashrom, someone gets off,

And struggles to find their change just long enough for us to hear

The amplified voice of man sermonizing a crown on Tagore.

He speaks of him as an antidote to Gandhi.

Tells us that we don’t understand him in the way that he does.

The woman next to me,

Who seems like the women in our fold

Who are taught Tagore as a rite of passage

Into a life of domestication completely bereft of him,

Listens closely.

Footnotes:

1. Kashful (Saccharum spontaneum) is a grass native to the various parts of the Indian Subcontinent, including Assam, Bengal and Bangladesh. The bloom of the grass is often regarded as the harbinger of autumn in these regions, and holds a certain cultural value for Bengalis on both sides of the border—often finding mention in folk songs and literature.

2. The “Green City Busses” are air conditioned public busses, which are the newest addition to Guwahati’s intra-city public transportation system.

   
   

3. India, "tempo" is a colloquial term for a three-wheeled vehicle, particularly those used for transporting goods or people

4. Bharat Sevashram Sangha is a Hindu religious and spiritual organization founded in Kolkata, and having a tight grasp over the religious sentiments of the Hindu Bengali across India. Its Guwahati branch is located near Colony Bazar—a primarily Hindu Bengali populated neighbourhood in the city.

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About the Poet:

Ayaan Halder is a poet, author and Doctoral Research Scholar from Gauhati university, Guwahati, Assam. His works have been published in various national and international platforms such as Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature Magazine, The Wire, The Little Journal of Northeast India, Kitaab Magazine, and Littera Magazine. His work mostly revolves around the coexistences and contestations in the day to day lives of indigenous and diasporic populations in India's Northeast.