In my sparkling youth, on a delightful day of the college picnic, an ever-smiling teacher said to me "In your stubborn state, you don't seem to allow your eyes to get wet; aren’t you, really?" I don't remember what I said that day. However, when I think back to that old time today, I feel like I would have tears in my eyes if I heard the song on those early days; and, mto ne very candid, even today, my eyes get wet often when I listen to that song.
A decade before I was born, a song was written by Shri Salil Chowdhury, and, with the immaculate rendition of the song by Shrimati Utpala Sen, it had been immortalized in hearts of music lovers. When I heard the song as a child, my heart would feel a pain. Although, it was not age to understand its contents and spirit, but it qould leave a deep imprint of agony in my heart. When I grew up, with countless loss and defeat in life, the melody of the wailing soul and the words signifying such, lead to let open the mind as a strange confluence of a pure urge emerging out from within the pain. It does not speak about the worldly desires and hardships of life, not the stale balance sheet of victory and defeat; it is the source of great human truth. This pain is blended with the decayed vibration of a fainting humanity. Even today, when I listen to the song, I feel the same. I am involuntarily torn into pieces by the rhythmic world of childhood dreams. What a spotless stream of pain in the heart, what a wonderful image of peace in the all-lost sky; This infinite expanse is the inexhaustible dream of life in the core and the selfless sacrifice of memories that weave panels around it.
Such simple expression is possible only in the mother tongue. Yet, I dream about many more to read it, feel the flow of his poetry, the beauty of the other world of his thoughts. So I attempt its transliteration to the best of my ability.
Oh! The songs of those distant meadows!
The ballads of wild pastures!
When in a pensive corner of the day
Do they fade into a smudged horizon?
How do they set the sky aflame?
How do dreams of those moist days
Let my unharvested soul weep in silence?
In wantonly flow of southern breeze
What leafless words do I listen to?
In calm presence of mind
I feel loosing these tunes
In unspoken tale of someone’s pain
As if rustling leaves swirl and cry
In sweeping wind of an autumn dusk
Closing my tired wings
I seek for a nest to rest
I crave for the bank
In endless expanse of a fierce stream
Hours go in futile dreams
Sailing thoughts to drift and far
And, my soul finds solace in
Trifling means of an endless journey
I haven’t aspired anything more
But to string sweet melodies for
To pour in the urn of this world
In lonely corner of my room.
Yet, delusions of such dreams
Lay waste to the feeble nest
And, are swept away
By a dark tempest; forever.
The original song in Bengali is also given below :--
প্রান্তরের ও গান আমার
মেঠো সুরের গান আমার
হারিয়ে গেল কোন বেলায়
আকাশে আগুন জ্বালায়
মেঘলা দিনের স্বপন আমার
ফসলবিহীন মন কাঁদায়
মাঝে মাঝে উদাস হাওয়ায়
এলোমেলো কী যে শুনি
বুঝি কাহার ব্যথার ছোঁয়ায়
হারায় আমার সুরের ধ্বনি
ঝড়ের হাওয়ায় পাতার মতন
ঝরিয়া যায় যায় যায় যায়
ক্লান্ত ডানায় নীড় খুঁজি
অথৈ নদীর তীর খুঁজি
শুধুই আমার যায় বেলা
ভাসায়ে আশার ভেলা
অন্তবিহীন পথের পুঁজি
অন্তরেরই সান্ত্বনায়
আমি তো চাহি নি কিছুই
শুধু আপন নীড়ের ছায়ায়
আপন বীণার সুরে ভুবন
ভরে দিতে প্রেমের মায়ায়
প্রেমের মায়ায় ভাঙিল সে ঘর
ঝড়ের বায় হায় হায় হায়
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