Not the history
of a life
never what is
personal
Always what is
outside time
never a moment that
begins
to end
Never a thing and
a horizon
never all lines meeting
far away
Though playing together without
beginning or end
Radha and Krishna
haven’t struck an acquaintance
yet
No hope to be
fulfilled
always a returning like
the turning earth
never an arrow moving
forward
Never a receding
far
always an emerging
forth
This invariable face
this variable body
To be one
not a consequence
but an impulse
from where everything
begins
Never things one
at a time
but a manifold
universe
How many suns are there?
How many dawns?
How many waters?
The universe in a child’s
opened mouth
Not muscle or sinew
nothing to resist
the precision of
infinity
Abhimaan
In Sanskrit, abhimaan, is arrogance, pride. The word is definite and closed. Great classical languages have words for the grand emotions, the most complex philosophical insights. When this word comes into the vernacular Bengali, it loses its rigidity, it gathers moisture, firm earth giving way to a sudden, still pond in which the trees are reflected, so numerous in the Bengal landscape. It changes in meaning to a sense of self which has been wounded, and which cannot have, or does not want to have, any direct expression of that wound. This can occur only between those who share the most fragile of relationships — lovers, parents and children, the nearest of friends. Bengalis are a loquacious people, but in abhimaan, there is silence. It is on the face, in a gesture, in the eyes, and if there are tears they are held at the edge and rarely overflow. In a woman the drape of the sari could almost hide it. We are an argumentative people, but in abhimaan there is no argument or fight. The pond is silent but aware, whether at noon, when the trees protect it from the harsh light, or at night, when some distant nightglow makes it luminous. The word combines the tender and the tough, in a way that the two sometimes lose their separateness. It belongs with other emotions like respect, or surrender that are disappearing, because the self now refuses to bend. Abhimaan assumes a childness, a kind of wound and love, or wounded love, of which only a vernacular is capable, a daily tenderness, a contiguous self, a searing need for the other. Tigers still wander in the mangrove forests of Bengal. There are words that give expression to the temperament of a culture. The long sound of abhimaan indicates a feeling that doesn’t simply come and go, but stays, for hours, days, months. This word reveals something of the Bengali soul, its exaggerated sense of self come together with its genuine capacity for feeling.
