Ancient desires coming alive
Syed Badrul Ahsan reflects on the interplay of words and imagery
Nachchhi, Atika Cherry, Bidyaprakash
ATIKA Cherry is very young. As a poet, she is also brave, with that element of the profound which must define one who is acutely conscious of modernity. In Nachchhi (Dancing, in Bengali parlance), she gives you all the reasons why you should take her seriously as a maker of verses with all the underpinning of imagery and pathos such poetry entails. Observe the obsessions, a tiny sign of them, in the poem Oshshosti (Discomfort): Last night death, coming close to me, flew by my eyes / What do you say? / No, this is no obsession anxiety / Nothing like that . . . And thus Cherry throws up some images reflective of the dark times individuals happen to be living through. Death, in that broad sense of the meaning, perhaps has little of the romantic that some would like to associate it with. In this particular instance, the poet asks why death must, flapping its wings, cause to have her enveloped by the breeze thus created. In the flapping of the wings of death, she spots a black fan, made of palm. The discomfort says it all. Much anxiety appears to drive Cherry's poetry. Watch her worries in Premobhyash (Love Habit): Your favourite word is play / poetry is truth / word is false / habit of love / poems weep / you rush / old habits come back in new covering / the tissue box is empty / the waste box is full to the brim . . . Cherry carefully delineates her passions. She prises words out of poetry, turns word and poetry into two distinct entities and in effect cuts through the personality of the one she is hurling her sentiments at. Note the end: Bathed in mist I watch all night long / after how long a path is traversed do two rivers mesh one into the other . . .? An insistent sense of inquiry drives Atika Cherry. And with that comes a certain sense of desperation, especially when it comes to her observation of politics. In Shundor Hey Shwadhinota (Beautiful Freedom), she goes back into lost times: Sheikh Mujib had dreamed of you / and dream did Haq-Bhashani / every child dreamt, from dusk to dawn . . . The poet worries about the blood shed in the course of the struggle for freedom, a hint of the frustrations that sometimes may take some of the shine off liberty, and yet Cherry remains aware of the positivism that is always embedded in the idea of freedom: Freedom, you are needed / Placing my life on the line / I sing the triumphant song of life . . . Cherry carries this theme to a further dimension in Khola Chithi (Open Letter): Accept, Bangladesh, my love / are you ailing? / See, I weep for you / see, flowers I have brought for you . . . / You are, and so I laugh / fluttering a blue sash, red bangles on me / I keep coming to you / my dreams are with you / with you lies my wish / you and I are for each other . . . / The pledge of my last drop of blood / will be my way of discovering you anew . . . Love of country in Atika Cherry is charmingly conjoined with love of paramour. That is what comes through in the poem Esho Na (Do Not Come): When your warm, liquid voice I hear / inebriated I go amidst a crowd / a little smile on your face / makes seven stars envelop me in their brilliance . . . That sense of euphoria soon gives way to heart-breaking sadness: Why? In the light / you do not place your hand in mine / you spend all day in a darkened room / why, why do you look for so much darkness? The passion of a woman in love breaks forth a few moments on: I do not, I do not want you now / because you play the game of dolls / whenever you wish, you keep me adorned in a house of cards / me in a red saree . . . In her poetry, Cherry brings forth the lyrical. You dive into Ebong Shopno (And Dream): I never dreamed / in deep sleep I lay unconscious / between the conscious and the unconscious lie dreams / suddenly I see polash flowers in my khonpa … Clearly it is in the title poem, Nachchhi (Dancing) that Cherry shoots forth in creative frenzy: I used to dance beyond the shower of light / you used to strum the strings of dreams / I used to dance on the plains between heaven and earth / tireless me, leaving Wednesday, Friday and Saturday behind . . . The past comes in gleaming patterns for the poet. The present is but a bagful of memories: These days you only play dreams / I dance to the same rhythm / along the shadowy paths… Atika Cherry makes you fall in love with the throbbing of the heart once again. Ancient desires well up in you, because she has brought them to life again. Syed Badrul Ahsan is with The Daily Star.
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