Poems by Mitul Dutta
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Comrade
Comrade, a stale smell of corpses Rises from our rose garden Comrade, what flowering season’s this, no flowers Hermit, what sort of spring is it then? Comrade, fellow-travellers roam around, who to trust In the horizon of hatless heads Where to go on holiday, the sea or jungle, or else Return to the room that suffocates? If counting lizards on the wall, starving cockroaches, in lakhs Come crawling down the drapery As if they’re hunger-stricken, Comrade, give me cadres Give me a betting hand, without dilly-dally Comrade, our spades were real great, and the bibi Was the ravishing Sultana And in that tale of the saheb, were sitting rooms proper, And we had the six and nine Annas Sans logic and fireflies, what’s this healthy times Comrade, appearing over the horizon? Touching the harvest fest perfunctorily, a jaundice-coloured cloud lightly Flies away to the parched heavens. Chicken Feather I’ve reaped the bitter fruits of joining protest marches Nowhere a urinal on the streets, no cobbler Only an old bearded destitute’s words I keep hearing, the rickshaw bounces up crying ‘You get what you pay’, the price of pins Soars up higher, towards orgiastic revelry Slides open the innocent door bolt, All notes soft or sharp have disappeared Asking you to wait, and like lyric poetry Void of musical notations, a few pass by Spoiling everything Today, who should I turn to, who should I feed upon At whose face should I blurt out all this rubbish Thinking over, I get to the final altar of this deception Today I’ve sat down offering my head at the altar At Bengal’s chicken coop I’ve shed myself like chicken feather Translated by Rajat Chowdhury |
Mitul Dutta was born in Kolkata. Her first passion was music and she trained under a number of eminent gurus of classical music. This training imparted a delicate rhythm to her poetry. She feels her work to be influenced both by romanticism of a time long gone as well as postmodern tendencies of playfulness and meta-thinking. Dutta’s published poetry collections include, Janla Jure Megh, Moron!, Bidushak o Saudamini, Mayabi Libido, Je Meyeti Gopone Guitar, Rangilajanmo(Poems and short stories), Machh-lojenser Din, M to M, Amader Kalo Samyogaan, Berabinuni, Weekend, Mithu ar Duggamai and Obhisargatha. Her autobiographical novel Pargachha, was serialised in a magazine. She has been editing the poetry magazine Kobiyaal
since 2003. She made her short film 'Button Hole' in 2023, on Autistic adolescent boys' sexual problems and solutions. Dutta is the recipient of several awards including Sahitya Academy Travelling Grant, Sanskriti Award, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad’s Yuva Puraskar, Krittibas Puraskar and the Ministry of Culture’s (India) Junior Fellowship in literature. |
