In one scene, Aparna Sen recites part of Kalidas' (middle of the 4th and early 5th centuries A.D.) poem Meghdoot. She recited from a Bengali translation of the Sankstrit original, which I read in the English subtitles, but still - the imagery was so beautiful that I wanted to read it again.
In Meghdoot, the Cloud Messenger, a lover, separated from his beloved, sees a cloud - it is the first day of the rainy season - and requests it to carry a message to her. He describes in great detail the route that the cloud must take in order to reach her, and the sights it will see on the way.
Here's the Sanskrit text with English translation, with links to more information about Kalidas and his works. Click on each line of the text to read the translation - it's a bit tedious because you have to pause after each line to click on the next, but it's worth it. Oh, and there's a second page, too - the link is also in Sanskrit, so you might miss it. These people (SUNY at Buffalo) are not interested in idle readers. Bless them anyway - the only other translation I could find was ghastly, rhymed doggerel.
Here are a few lines which I've lifted from here and there in the poem, just to give a bit of its flavour:
Even the mind of a happy person is excited at the sight of a cloud. How much more so, when the one who longs to cling to his neck is far away?...
The wives of travellers, holding back the tips of their locks of hair, taking courage from their confidence (in their husbands' return), will look up at you raised on to the path of the wind...
cranes, like threaded garlands in the sky, lovely to the eye, will serve you...
...the eyes of the country women who are ignorant of the play of the eyebrows, who are tender in their affection, and who are thinking 'The result of the harvest depends on you'...
You will see the river Reva spread at the foot of Mt Vandhya, made rough with rocks and resembling the pattern formed by the broken wrinkles on the body of an elephant....
you who have made a momentary acquaintance with the flower-picking girls by lending shade to their faces...
On the way, after you have ascended to the Nirvandhya River, whose girdles are flocks of birds calling on account of the turbulence of her waves, whose gliding motion is rendered delightful with stumbling steps, and whose exposed navel is her eddies...
Reveal the ground with a bolt of lightning that shines like a streak of gold on a touchstone to the young women in that vicinity going by night to the homes of their lovers along the royal highroad ...
which has been robbed of light by a darkness that could be pricked with a needle. Withhold your showers of rain and rumbling thunder: they would be frightened!...
I could go on quoting lines, but instead, please go and read it yourself. And see Titli if you have a chance. Rituparno Ghosh is a great film-maker. There are too many superlatives in this post, but it can't be helped.
No comments:
Post a Comment