Sankha Ghosh

Subhransu Maitra

I.

A heartbreaking shadow has fallen upon us –

Sankhada has withdrawn behind it.

Shadow at radiant summer morning

Darkens the flaming Krishnachuras

studded around leafy summer boughs.

Shadow darkens the city.

He also numbered its internecine terrors and beauty in his verse.

Though the city is impervious to the shadow,

The few thousand orphaned and bereaved

Grow acquainted with their grieving hearts

And find that a vacant stillness now

Questions words

Instead of words interrogating stillness.

Sankha Ghosh had early on internalized

The incomparable inheritance of Rabindranath

And Jibanananda in its entirety

And performed interrogation with mastered ease.

He unobtrusively struck chords to transform

Implacable besieging silences into indelible speech

And all the emotions, memories and troubled histories

That constitute a Bangali’s universe

Used to be sung into being.

Perhaps now the disembodied voice

Will expound eternity to the Gaandharvas and Vidhyadharas.

But when will the shadow lift?

 

(April-May 2021)

 

II.

 

Rabindranath consecrated Kolkata,

Though he wasn’t exactly fond of the city.

Jibanananda fell late in love with the city

And consecrated it too.

Kolkata hurt you into great verse and

You consecrated it as only an insider could–

You hewed songs out of its harsh features.

Kolkata now receives you into its sphere of sympathy.

Will you now rest in peace or coax again silence

Into speech and song?

 

(May 2021)

 

III.

He walks along the length of the procession

                     Smiling, nodding, questioning.

         Learned persons, writers, artistes, painters

                     Walking too, eagerly reply.

         Thuggery and butchery is ripping Gujarat apart,

         The march enacts an angry protest.

          Sankhada now walks back to bring up the rear.

          Reclusive by nature, his quiet decisive incursions

          Always emanate from the rear or sidelines,

                                                   then engulf you.

                  *     *   *   *   *   *

                   Was it so long ago?

                    A moment, a scene, a purposive action–

                    Amorphous inevitable ingredients that fashion

                          History and lie cheek by jowl in it.

                     His tremendous lyrical onslaught

                     Unchained and loosed the tide of the history of our being.

                      Having hurt history into speaking,

                      Sankha Ghosh himself is receding into it.

                      Who will arrest and transfigure time

                                    And interrogate history now?

 

(May 2021)