Banalata Sen
I have walked earth’s byways
for millennia
from Ceylon’s coast
to the archipelago of Malaya,
in the night’s darkness,
moving ever.
I have been a guest
at the now hoary court
of Vimvisar
and Asoka;
in the further dark
of the city of Vidharva.
Life’s seas foamed
all around. I was weary
And my sole respite came,
when
I spent a couple of hours
with Natore’s Banalata Sen.
Her hair dark, like some long gone
Vidisha’s night,
her face like Sravasti’s delicate
handiwork
Like some mariner,
helm lost, gone astray
in far seas,
by chance discovering
the greenness
of Spice Islands—
I saw her in the dusk.
And raising eyes, like bird’s nests,
she asked: ‘Where were you
so long?’
She asked me then
Natore’s Banalata Sen.
Evening comes at all our day’s end
like the sound of dew,
The kite wipes off sunshine’s scent
from its wings.
When all the earth’s colours are spent,
in the fireflies’ brilliant hue,
completing an unfinished tale,
an old script
finds a new arrangement.
All the birds return home,
all the rivers.
All the day’s transactions end.
Just darkness remains
and sitting with me
face to face,
Banalata Sen.
—Jibanananda Das, translated from Bangla by Ron. D.K. Banerjee; from ‘Signatures One Hundred Indian Poets’ edited by K Satchidanandan; National Book Trust, India 2000