Poems by Yashodhara Ray Chaudhuri

Selfie-full
 
 
The dead of the night - want of blood, 
want of sense, only selfie-full
What zest in interest if only for a moment,
that is want of blood and want of sense, of course.
Brain-death comes in secret and compromise. 
The hurt mouth drools, perforce.
 
In that fair cleft, it flushes 
views and notions, want of blood.
It only builds and builds a silence;
Stuffs with a good time for gauze
Into the hurting, drooling pit.
 
 
The Shoal
 
They feed at the surface as you lay in the deep
Know, and let them know
All you can give
And are willing to keep
 
On the face of the water toil stirs, and now
Mind’s soiled and how
This sickly morn
By Having, Wanting; worn
 
The chafes and the haggles, and keeping score,
As you sip at your tea
And nibble at your biscuits
Then ask for more
 
You lay in the deep as they feed at the top
They brawl and bicker
Wrestling minnow
Your shoal of carp
 
What troubled uproar, they're war-prepared
You know nothing
Of this furious throng
For it happened up there
 
You're in the deep where it’s quiet and bare,
Your mind’s ink-wrapped
Still and cooled,
And sunlight-rare
 
You lay unrippled for nothing fares here
Not your minnows and carps
Or their surface remarks
 
“How many is that now, dear?”


Translated by Chirayata Purna Chakrabarty 

Yashodhara Ray Chaudhuri (born 1965) is a 1992 batch officer of Indian audit and accounts service. She has served in different parts of India extensively.  She is a noted poet hailing from Kolkata, West Bengal, India.  Publishing her literary works since 1993, she has over 16 collections of poetry and short stories to her credit. She was awarded the Krittibas Puroskar in 1998 established by Sunil Gangopadhyay and Anita Sunilkumar puraskar instituted by Bangla Akademy in 2006.  She is the recipient of Barna parichay sharad samman 2011. She also writes short stories novels and critical essays and articles, publishing in leading newspapers and magazines of Bengal.
Yashodhara is a translator from the original French language into Bengali She was awarded the  Diplome de langue from Alliance Fraincaise du Calcutta in 1998 and has translated Leonardo Da Vinci by Serge Bremley in 2008 and Combat de la Vie by Dr Luc Montaignier in 2012. She is married to Trinanjan Chakrabarty, a scholar and teacher of French language.

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About the translator

Chirayata is a translator and musician who likes to dabble in all the trades, master of none. She grew up in Kolkata, did her Bachelor's and Master's in English Literature. Since 2021, she has translated a number of short stories and poems from Bengali to English, and has translated a speculative fiction novella called The Chronicles of the Timesmith by Dipen Bhattacharya.

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