When the king goes down the street

A young band called ‘Rain of Heart’ has come up with a sad song about bomb blasts in Assam. This translation is an acknowledgement of how much I like it. Many thanks to the person who introduced me to this song….

When the king goes down the street

Happily blowing his siren,

A hungry man on the sidewalk

Runs and hides in a dustbin.

Sleepless lies the dying city,

Shopping malls, discos and bars;

False men, false times, false love:

The birth of a hollow civilization.

O mother! O father! O my children!

In this future of sooty gunpowder,

Nothing seems to make any sense;
The foxes have invaded the borders,

Why is Lachit's sword fast asleep?

A youth lies in a pool of blood

His beloved’s message on his mobile;

The lifeless body of someone’s sister,

The burnt remains of someone’s brother.

O mother! O father! O my children!

When the king goes down the street

Happily blowing his siren,

A hungry man on the sidewalk

Runs and hides in a dustbin.

Invigilators and examinees

There,

Where the silence
Is earth-shattering,

With the scratchings

Of your scrawling pens,

With a commotion of voices

Inside brains

Cluttered
With last night’s crammings,

There,

We will meet

At the appointed hour
Like enemies
On two sides
Of a dusty old desk—

My tryst with eternal boredom!

Raijei Bhaoriya: People are the Players

A Song by Bhupen Hazarika


People are the players
And the world is a stage.
What role do you want to play?
Come, there's no time to lose.


No need for a rehearsal
No need for costumes.
Just come out naked.
Tie your own towels 
Around your hungry bellies
And come out.
That's the way
To make a colourful play.


It's time to ask the director,
How long will you cheat us
With the mask on your face
And your dramatic techniques.


No need for sweet dialogues;
Say it with your screams.
Fight the corrupt men
With your consciousness
And become worthy heroes.
That's the way
To make a colourful play.
What role do you want to play?
Come on! There's no time to lose!

Transient light

Bit by bit,

The dancing flames

Grow dim

As an evening lit up

By a million sparks

Comes to an end.

An evening

When a million homes

Came alive,

United

As one vast expanse

Of sparkling light

Under a cold, misty

Rumbling November sky.

Now, as the dying flame

Sucks dry every pore

Of the darkening lamp,

Time surrounds me

And swallows me

Into it’s darkest depths,

Like a sparkling moment

Of transient light.

Monor batoribur: Tidings of my heart

A song by Jayanta Hazarika. This is how I would sing it in English:


If the tidings of my heart

Fall like the petals of a flower

And my silent poems

Come alive in new forms,

Would you come flooding in

With the colours of Phagoon*

And songs of the monsoon?


The sun sets
On the dreamy blue horizon;
The evening falls
On the wings of the stork;
O what a picture it paints!


Would you wipe out
The vast darkness
Of the night sky? 

If the tidings of my heart
Fall like the petals of a flower
And my silent poems
Come alive in new forms....

*I prefer to keep the word Phagoon here, even if it can perhaps be translated as March or spring, because it reminds me of Holi, the festival of colours. And of course, it rhymes with monsoon.

Guwahatik Nomoskar

The song of the Assamese common man, sung by Dost Habibur Rahman in the 1970s. I have always been delighted by this song about a villager who visits Guwahati, the confusing, corrupt, muddy, dusty, mosquito-infested capital city of Assam. I remember hearing it for the first time on the radio when I was a child, and I remember going breathless with laughter. After that, this song has been a fleeting thing which I would hear once in a blue moon, always on the radio, till a person named Himjyoti Talukdar uploaded it on Facebook and Youtube for everyone to hear at leisure. Although I'm afraid that the old world delight of being taken by surprise with this song playing on the radio has gone away, I have to admit that I'm grateful to him for making it possible for me to hear it so far away from home in Delhi. And I also have to admit that this song might soon be rarely played, or not at all, by the radio stations of Assam.


Rahman sings the song in the Kamrupiya dialect, and the song has a typically perky, funny folk tune. Each and every line in this song is so hilarious! And in the midst of that humour, he manages to touch so many socio-economic problems in the state. I wish I could translate it right now, but I know that this seemingly simple song is extremely difficult to translate. The accent and dialect, along with region specific idioms, and the situational humour make it practically untranslatable. So, I'll compensate by translating two lines that made me chuckle this time I heard it, but I'll have to tell you the story in order quote those lines. So here goes:

One day, our common man sits under a tree and wonders where his life is going, why his life is so sad. He wonders how people get to live in buildings in the city, while they can't even build a small house in the village. The next morning, he sets off to the railway station before anyone wakes up at home. There, he decides that Guwahati is the best place to go, because that is where he will be able to make some money.

When our common man gets down at Guwahati Railway Station, it begins to rain, and the water flows all over the roads and houses. After the rains, the sun comes up and dries the water and mud. The mud promptly turns into dust, which flies around and drastically reduces visibility. When the dust clears, our man sees people walking down narrow lanes and sings,

Nau men baat manuh soilsi, soisli motar bohu, 

Tatei dekhu baat gilanot dangar dangar khohu.

(So many people , so many cars 

are running on such tiny lanes,

And there are such big blisters on those lanes.)

These are probably my favourite lines now because of the current deplorable state of the roads in Assam (usually a seasonal problem), what with the Brahmaputra rising and the roads getting battered with heavy rains and heavier vehicles, and the government's famous inefficiency at repairing the damage. And I know that each time I hear the song, a new line will catch my attention, depending on what concerns me about Assam at that point of time. 


To continue with the song, our man goes through a lot of misadventures: 

He mistakes the High Court for Kamakhya temple and prays to Kamakhya Devi; he goes to the marketplace and sees 'foreigners' monopolizing the market; he sees people indulging in adulteration, smuggling with impunity; he sees 'beggar-like' people lining up at the ration stores where they are given half a kilo of rice each for a week, and he wonders how they manage with that; when evening comes, he sleeps in some verandah and is woken up in the middle of the night by the crowing of a cock and the buzzing of mosquitoes.... 

Finally, at dawn, he decides that his village is much cleaner (in all senses) than Guwahati and bids goodbye to the city, hence the name of the song: 'Guwahatik Nomoskar!' 


It's a wonderful song, so here's the Youtube link to it:

Set me free

There’s anger in the wind today

Out there, the world is red with rage

And yet an icy numbness kills
Each remnant of my dying soul

‘cause where I live, there’s emptiness

Bricked up with walls of silences


Break this wall of silences

And let this anger fall on me

Twist my heart, break my soul

Let this anger set me free


Trees are lashing at the skies

The skies are crying angry tears

But not a teardrop in my eye

Reveals my aching soul within

‘cause where I live, there’s emptiness

Bricked up with walls of silences


Break this wall of silences

And let this sorrow rain on me

Burn my eyes with salty tears

Let this sorrow set me free