In Defence of 'The Wheel' ~ Translating Binoy Majumdar

To the bewildered reader who might already (and passionately) have read Binoy Majumdar's work, I apologise. I myself am quite perplexed as to how I amassed the courage to translate Binoy, and translate "মানুষ নিকটে গেলে প্রকৃত সারস উড়ে যায়!", for that matter. A couple of years back, I had almost made up my mind about getting that verse tattooed somewhere near my shoulder but had resorted to the decision of rather giving up imagining the look on the tattoo artist's face if he had to engrave that on someone's skin. 

I connected with Binoy's work on a number of levels, most of which would be impossible to accommodate within the scarce framework of the English vocabulary. Out of one of the many things that I could find resonance in was his obsession with mathematical metaphors. And these metaphors were not essentially metaphysical, they were reflective of Binoy's understanding of mathematics as an art (which is the discipline he had been majoring in at that point). For example, in 'একটি গান' (A Song), he literally calls the void, which is represented as zero, a song in and of itself! There are countless instances within the vicinity of his work in the iconic collection of poems titled 'ফিরে এসো, চাকা' (Come back, ferry wheel) where his choice of adjectival words are often dependent upon this obsession with math. Partially because of this, and partially because he so fearlessly presented himself as a third person, as a Kafkaesque observer to an actively happening multiverse of language and inevitability, it becomes quite a bit of an ordeal to translate his work. With due respect to Kieslowski's take in Dekalog 1, where he argues how "poetry is untranslatable", I am going to rest my case concluding that I tried. I tried thinking for years how I possibly could explain this to someone who did not understand Bengali, and now I have finally done it. I erred, I know, but I erred right - it was my error to make. The original poem of no name was written on 26th August, 1960. 

মুকুরে প্রতিফলিত সূর্যালোক স্বল্পকাল হাসে |

শিক্ষায়তনের কাছে হে নিশ্চল, স্নিগ্ধ দেবদারু

জিহ্বার উপরে দ্রব লবণের মত কণা-কণা

কী ছড়ায়, কে ছড়ায় ; শোনো, কী অস্ফুট স্বর, শোনো

'কোথায়, কোথায় তুমি, কোথায় তোমার ডানা, শ্বেত পক্ষীমাতা,

এই যে এখানে জন্ম, একি সেই জনশ্রুত নীড় না মৃত্তিকা?

নীড় না মৃত্তিকা পূর্ণ এ অস্বচ্ছ মৃত্যুময় হিমে...'

তুমি বৃক্ষ, জ্ঞানহীন, মরণের ক্লিষ্ট সমাচার

জানো না, এখন তবে স্বর শোনো,অবহিত হও |



সুস্থ মৃত্তিকার চেয়ে সমুদ্রেরা কত বেশি বিপদসংকুল

তারো বেশি বিপদের নীলিমায় প্রক্ষালিত বিভিন্ন আকাশ,

এ-সত্য জেনেও তবু আমরা তো সাগরে আকাশে

সঞ্চারিত হ'তে চাই, চিরকাল হ'তে অভিলাষী,

সকল প্রকার জ্বরে মাথা ধোয়া আমাদের ভালো লাগে ব'লে |

তবুও কেন যে আজো, হায় হাসি, হায় দেবদারু,

মানুষ নিকটে গেলে প্রকৃত সারস উড়ে যায়!

(Photographed by Søren Solkær)

Our sunlit distances smile

Liminally, at mirrors

Learning resonance

Amongst serene groves

And the sordid quiet

Of salt and saliva

Epithets and shreds of 

What was strewn

And who had strewn 

Interwoven tune

Where would one find

Wings...brilliant in white

And umbilical cords

Amassed amongst the likes of men?

Or would it be written in paper?

Like statutory axioms 

Is it shelter or the statuesque 

Chill down one's spine

At the chilling hearth of death

You - like the harrowing groves

Treacherous, unconscious

Bourne in and of death

Be reminded of the oblivious nature of sound.

Beyond the sanity of the statutory 

Stand the ravenous danger of deep blue seas

And beyond them, the brutality of the livid blue skies

And beyond such truths, we desire

To be allocated into the many seas and skies

Perennially 

Like the gasp and murmur of a shower

Within the body of a burning fever

But why then do they? 

The smiling wind?

Whispering groves?

Tangentially touch

As the crane takes off

Upon the weight of its wing

Ascendant

As violent as disregard for human proximity.