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Unforgettable Times
Indo English Poetry in the Seventies – 2
by Dr. Amitabh Mitra 

A column called JS Blue Print in the magazine JS caught my attention. A young poet named Pritish Nandy from Kolkata was publishing a poetry journal called ‘Dialogue’. An irregular publication, it featured poets like Kamala Das and Arun Kolatkar along with Nandy’s own poetry. Pritish Nandy a young science enthusiast had enrolled in the Presidency College. Kolkata was bristling with Naxalite Movement. My grand ma’s house in Shibpur, Howrah was plastered with such slogans as ‘Off with the heads of capitalists, Naxalbari Lal Saalam’. It was hard to be young and not be a leftist. There was a heady brew of an emerging sociopolitical change and basic emotions like love. Love poetry flourished under such circumstances in Bengal. Love was a classless urge that gave affirmation and romanticism to a Maoist movement. Pritish started writing under such circumstances. His poem on Kolkata remains famous for its depiction of life and turmoil in the seventies –

Calcutta if you must exile me wound my lips before I go
only words remain
and the gentle touch of your finger on my lips
Calcutta burn my eyes
before I go into the night
the headless corpse
in a Dhakuria bylane
the battered youth his brains blown out
and the silent vigil
that takes you to Pataldanga Lane
where they will gun you down
without vengeance or hate

Calcutta if you must exile me burn my eyes before I go …

Pritish Nandy filled up a need during that period when Kolkata needed a young poet who could write love poetry with the imagery of an artist but who could also collude with the political environment of a changing scenario. His poetry was a breath of fresh air, almost true in an Indian environment and remained different from mainstream Indian writings of the day. Purushottam Lal a Professor in English Literature at the Calcutta University and a well known Indo English Poet published Nandy’s poems through his Writer’ Workshop. I had the fortune of meeting him at his Lake side Garden residence where I had gone to buy early poetry of Kamala Das. Writers Workshop to this day brings out regularly Indian poetry and writings in English of poets from all walks of life and remains a representative forum of Indian literature.

Pritish wrote ‘Most of the time I am madly in love, stranger faces at stranger times’. He was in love in Kolkata and wrote the most beautiful love poetry bordering on to sensuality and erotica.

Tonight I draw your body to my lips: your hand, your
mouth, your breasts, the small of your back. I draw
blood to every secret nerve and gently kiss their tips, as
you move under me, anchored to a rough sea. I cling to
you, your music and your knees. I touch the secret vibes
of your body, I fill my hands with the darkness of
your hair. This passion alone can resurrect our love.

Tonight I surrender to the closing of wings: the
dark shall testify to this tremulous thyme:
whenever you move under me, my body celebrates
this beautiful ceremony. Within my hands, your small
breasts move into the twilight: yes, we have loved
like the wind that swirls into the seasons:
your breasts content against my proud absence,
shipwrecked into expectancy as your tongue turns
hunter tonight.

During the time Pritish Nandy was showing promise, another poet, Kamala Das from Kerala wrote love poetry and brought Kolkata within her confines. Her first book ‘Summer in Calcutta’ and later ‘The Descendants’ published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata made me feel love poetry with a difference. Pritish Nandy‘s imagery of a neo fantasy world where ‘carriages whipped out long lost promises in the dark’, Kamala instead wrote of a stark realty, a love that can be obsessive and hurtful. Kolkata remained a fertile ground for their creativity to sprout.

From the Descendants –

When I die
Do not throw the meat and bones away
But pile them up
And let them tell
By their smell
What life was worth
On this earth
What love was worth
In the end.

– Continued

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Image of Kamala Das courtesy kcgeorge.com

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