This collector’s item of 87 poems, originally written in Assamese, and collected from Nilim Kumar’s sixteen collections, has been impeccably translated by Dibyajyoti Sarma.
Divided into three sections- The Garden of Sleep, I’ll Start Loving you from Tomorrow and These Two Hands, the book has a certain mystique drenched in a passionate intensity and pathos.
I don’t know Assamese, but the effortless flow of the translation appealed to me immensely and I found myself interpreting the multiple layers in myriad ways, enriching myself thoroughly.
Yes, while going through the poems, I could feel the truth of Nabina Das’s words, ‘his verse seems to tap on the nerves of his readers in a fitting way.”
“This is ‘a rare collection of poems, by one of Assam’s most lyrical poets, translated by Dibyajyoti Sarma with ease and elegance. “Says K Satchidanandan
In his conversation with Anindita Kar, he says, “I rejected conventional poetic language and form. And I brought the language of my poetry closer to everyday speech and narrative”.
Inspired by Lorca’s poetry, who, he says, taught him to make art out of pain, Walt Whitman who taught him to strengthen his free-wheeling mind, and some Assamese poets, who guided him in developing a sense of poetry, he says,
“Poetry comes at its will. It comes on its own and will leave the same way. Poetry is a prayer fulfilled.”
… a poem is ‘a death born when stones embrace each other.’
“Poetry is the language that facilitates conversation between the life and the world.”
The reality of the surreality intrigues, and the inherent lyricism creeps right into the heart.
His poems make one introspect; some of his poems left me with disquietude and deep churning, making me see a ‘poem tossing and turning’, in the throes of death, falling to pieces, leaving the reader wondering, ‘who wrote this haunted poem?’ p 23. With him, I rambled through a Garden of Sleep, feeling the rhythmic chug of The Train of Dreams p 21, pausing to decipher the pulls and tugs that the poem produced in my heart. I heard oranges laughing gleefully ‘like a bevy of young girls’ p 27. In The Fishhook, p 37 I saw fields, labour soaked in tears of salty sweat. I heard laughter and dreams, the sighs of exhausted farmers, cowherds’ songs, croaking of frogs and groans of the farmers’ wives- and was riveted.
The back page blurbs give the reader insights into his poetry.
Anamika calls him ‘a poet of lyrical epiphany.’’
.She also states, “seen through the prism of his poems, this world of everyday affairs seems to be hiding behind a meditative space.’
K. Sachidanandan also says, he is ‘a poet of love and loss, of myth and legend, of poems that die and survive, of earth, heaven, hell and beyond. There is a deep and profound lyricism in Nilim’s poetry, rarely seen in contemporary poets.”
Nabina Das in Introducing Nilim Kumar says that he brings alive “the Guwahati cityscape, and the small wonders of the environment in that part of the world.’
She further says that his poetry is ‘a curious mix of the urbane and the introspective.’
‘He can be flamboyant in love and desire and muted and soft in pathos and peregrinations.
Chandrakant Patil opines that “Nilim Kumar derives his inspiration from the magnificent and mysterious nature, as well as from the very process of living’.
Every poetry lover will be undoubtedly overwhelmed by his mesmerizing word- play, powerful imagery and inherent musicality.
In her groundbreaking book, Why Translation Matters [2010], Dr. Edith Grossman, who gave the translator his \ her due place, elevating the art of translation, says that the role of a translator is “not as the weary journeyman of the publishing world, but as a living bridge between two realms of discourse, two realms of experience, and two sets of readers.”
The translator does not have a magic wand by which a book can be changed from one language into another. But, the translator needs to have a good command over both languages, a passion, and love and an ardent desire to see the translated work in another language. A good translation requires as much creativity, as much passion, as the original work.
I feel, literary translation has come of age, and become a serious academic discipline.
Of late, I have read quite a few translated works, and have been intrigued by the effortless elegance of the translator, whose role cannot be overlooked.
How otherwise would I have come to appreciate the exalted poetry of Nilim Kumar, a poet who enchants. Let me reiterate, that it is no easy task to grasp the translated poet’s diction, and syntax but Sarma does it with commendable finesse.
I feel it is high time that we bid adieu to linguistic isolationism and that publishers should go all out to commission more and more books for translation, so that a global tete e tete takes place, and the classics in other languages do not go undiscovered.
As I closed the book, his verses kept tapping staccato beats on my nerves, intoxicating and enchanting me continuously, and there and then, I decided that I would try to sneak more Nilim Kumar poetry into my life.
In the first poem of the second section, I’ll start Loving you from Tomorrow, p 65, the refrain is, ‘I’ll start loving you from tomorrow. Today, I am too busy. ‘Applying that refrain to this collection, I would exhort all poetry lovers not to postpone reading this book, even if you are too busy today.
The book needs to be read NOW for its tender, dreamy quality, and soul- stirring impact.
I echo the words of Subodh Sarkar who says, in his article in the book, An Indian Poet: evaluating Nilim Kumar: “Nilim Kumar’s poetry is like clouds in the sky, like sand on earth, like oysters under the sea. It’s light shining through the bottom of a closed door.”
ABOUT THE POET
Winner of many prominent awards, Nilim Kumar, an Indian poet, writing in Assamese, has written 21 volumes of poetry, three collections of short novels, and other prose writings. His poems have been translated into many languages.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Dibyajyoti Sarma: writer and editor, has published three volumes of poetry, three books of translations, and two academic books. He runs the independent publishing venture Red River.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Santosh Bakaya, PhD. Is an internationally acclaimed poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, Tedx speaker, who has written twenty- four very well received books across different genres.
