Mahananda
You hear its hinges now,
peeling the silence
on purple-grey evenings.
Creaks are earned,
like grey hair,
an old adage laid bare.
Even rivers lose girth.
Knuckles and veins
rise like Lazarus
to a snot-green birth.
Every river has its tales.
Here there’s a dearth–
for this is now a city's river,
the river of eyeglasses
and a thousand calling bells.
Where are the stories of baits,
of tamed knots and fishermen's nets?
Stories come
from crevices of curses,
from foliage of fear,
from rotting juices
of abandoned babies,
leaking into a sap of slums
that line the river's skin
like hair on a woman's chin.
In this city where shops shut
their eyelids early,
the river wears laziness.
It flows like mourning.
The crematorium washes
its hands off the dead.
'Stock-keeping is a river's
responsibility,' it said.
Two legs of bridges on its chest,
like Kali’s on her husband's, at rest.
Season is the river's pre-partum depression,
Evening is a vapour opening like her yawn.
On evenings when the sky's a white lie,
I see ambulances,
red lights gasping, shrieking–
the river's in hospital, waiting to die.
Fish moved inside its body once,
like kites in a windy sky.
Now a black crow alights
on its neon-flaked skin.
It pecks
and claws
and caws,
flies to a new surname,
wearing a dead fin.
It’s the time of disease,
of waiting for belatedness,
of giant wheels of smoke.
The river– its spools
of uncoiled weed tapes–
becomes a recording studio.
It records the firewood's
crackle, the priest's chants.
Life becomes a sign–
the river a map’s thin line.
And school children
on their way home
change its name and sing:
“Maha-ganda, Maha-ganda,
Hope you are fine!"
*This is as much Saikat Chakraborty’s poem as it is mine, or the river Mahananda’s.
****
Sumana Roy lives in Siliguri, a small town in Bengal. The river Mahananda, that gave a rhythm to childhoods like hers once, now runs feebly through her town. She hopes to travel upstream to the river’s home some day.
You can read more green poetry, including another river poem by Sumana Roy, on our Voices page. And why not check out last year's World Water Day Special on Delhi's Nallahs.
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