Partition literature Poems

After Death: Twenty Years

by Birendra Chattopadhyay

All the terrible catastrophes

Escaped your eyes

You did not burn in the tortuous fire of '46

The famine and the epidemic

That came through the blood

The land where sons killed each other

The flesh of mothers

Fueled a living hell.

You did not have to see

The '47 Partition that was

Worse than madness in Lumbini.

Contrary to these experiences,

A light of humanity had filled your life, Poet.

We too had learnt to dream from you.

These past twenty years

A history of sewage afloat,

Thirst, a bath, life, all inhuman.

Worse than the old hag

Who runs the brothels at Shonagachi.

Ministers, leaders, teachers, writers, students,

Dogs on heat,
This independent land joins all together.

All our dreams are like drunken jokes

Played on the reeds of an oft-used harmonium.

Even in your nightmares

You had not thought such calamity

Would befall this free country

You had thus remained true

To your dreams of humanity.

- from Looking Back: The 1947 Partition of India, 70 Years On (2019), translated by Debjani
Sengupta

26th January

Sudhir Ludhianvi

Come, let us ponder on this question

What happened to all those beautiful dreams we had dreamt?

When wealth increased why did poverty also increase in the country?

What happened to the means of increasing the prosperity of the people?

When wealth increased why did poverty also increase in the country?

What happened to the means of increasing the prosperity of the people?

Those who walked beside us on the street of the gallows

What happened to those friends and comrades and fellow travellers?

What is the price being set for the blood of martyrs?

What happened to the punishable ones for whom we were ready to lay down our lives?

The helpless cannot even afford a shroud to cover their nakedness

What happened to those promises of silks and brocades?

Cherisher of democracy, friend of humanity, wisher of peace

What happened to all those titles we had conferred upon ourselves?

Why is the malady of religion still without a cure?

What happened to those rare and precious prescriptions?

Every street is a field of flames, every city a slaughterhouse

What happened to the principles of the oneness of life?

Life wanders aimlessly in the wilderness of gloom

What happened to the moons that had risen on the horizon?

If I am the culprit, you are no less a sinner

O leaders of the nation you are guilty too

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Rehabilitation

by Shankha Ghosh

Whatever I had around me

Grass and pebbles

Reptiles

Broken temples

Whatever was around me

Exile

Folklores

Solitary sunset

Whatever was around me

Landslides

Arrows and spears

A homestead

All shiver with their faces turned west.

Memories are like a serpentine crowd

Under the mango trees, broken boxes

One step denying another

And suddenly all are homeless.

Whatever is around me

Sealdah station

High noon

Pockmarked walls

Whatever is around me

Blind alleys

Slogans

The Monument

Whatever is around me

The bed of arrows

Lamp-posts

The Ganges flowing red

The bones and the darkness within

Surround them all

Inside a tune plays on

The Howrah Bridge is holding up high

The void

Under my feet drifts Time.

Whatever is fountain around me

Flying hair

Naked path

The stormy torch

Whatever is transparent around me

The sound of the dawn

The body after a bath

The Shiva of the cremation ground

Whatever is death around me

Each day

A thousand days

A birthday

All return in the palms of memory

As the beggar who sits in the fading dusk

What was and what remains,

Two flintstones that scrape each other

And ignite my daily rehabilitation.