Among the books I received as a prize from my school in one of my senior years, there were three by Subhash Mukhopadhyay, whose birth centenary is today. The first, Jato Durei Jai (However Far I Go, 1962), was the book of poems that had won him the Sahitya Academy Award in 1964. The second was Amar Bangla (My Bengal, 1951), a collection of journalistic sketches, while the third, Bangalir Itihaas, was an adaptation for youngsters of Nihar Ranjan Roy’s monumental history of Bengal’s society and culture by the same name.As a child growing up in an old-fashioned communist household, I was not unaware of Mukhopadhyay’s name or his work. And yet these books were a revelation. Was the poet who wrote the eponymous poem in Jato Durei Jai the same militant activist who had been a member of the party since his teens, who indeed had spent years in Budge Budge, one of greater Kolkata’s industrial ghettoes, organising, agitating, writing leaflets and pasting fiery posters on curfew-bound walls?However far I gowith me goesthe name of a riverstrung in a garland of waves –However far I go.On my eyelids lingersthe memoryof a courtyard scrubbed cleanand on ita long row of the marksof Lakshmi’s feet.However far I go.Nothing from Mukhopadhyay’s earlier poetry that I had been familiar with – Padatik (The Foot Soldier, 1940), Agnikone (The Abode of the Fire-God, 1948) or Chirkut (The Parchment, 1950) – though written between 1951-57, the poems of Phul Phutuk (Let Many Flowers Bloom) were not anthologised in a separate book before 1990 – had prepared me for something quite like this.Also read: ‘Flowers of Stone’: Intimations of Loss and Triumph in the Poetry of Subhash MukhopadhyayThe unrelenting intensity of tone and the stark vividness of imagery of my favourite piece from Agnikone – ‘Ekti Kobitar Jonyo (For the Sake of a Poem)’ were still fresh in my young mind:A poem is about to get written. For its sakethe sky, like a blue tongue of fire,seethes in rage; over the seaa violent storm flails its wings, the smoky locksof the clouds’ wild hair unravel, the roll of thunderechoes in the forest, in its rootsthe terror of landslides throbs fiercely…How could I, then, help being struck by the very intimate tone, the very soft-focus images, of ‘Dur Theke Dekho (You Can Look on From a Distance)’:I will keepstirring up my thoughts with a spoon –you can listen to themfrom another table.In front of me will stand a cupand on my lap two fingerslike two knitting-needles will go onweaving a pattern of many memories –you can look on as you sitat another table.Even when the poem transitions from the very private world of two individuals to a landscape in ferment, it manages to retain the very personal tone of its voice:Thenwhen time will have gone coldnoisily will I get up from my chairand without looking back even onceI will walk awayto where lightningis striking houses like a whip-lashwhere pulling giant trees by their hairthe wind is driving them to the groundwhere a fierce torrent of rainis scratching on window-paneswith its claws.You can look on from a distance.Clearly, the diction was a lot mellower here, the tone softer. The clever turn of phrase, the irrepressible wit of the Subhash Mukhopadhyay of the Padatik days still show up now and then, but they had fully shed the somewhat harsh urbaneness of the poet’s vocabulary (“My love, now’s not the time to play with flowers / for ruination, stark, stares us in the face./ Gone from our eyes are the blue dreams of pleasure / as a remorseless sun our backside bakes”):His money grew on treesin his backyard.Goddess Lakshmicame to his house on stilts,in double-quick time.A tall wall mounted with spikesstood guardso that the churlish windof lowly birthdid never get an entry.But thenas he was busygulping down big mouthfulsbreathlessly,suddenlyone daythrough the fingers of his handlife fell offand rolled away from him.The man never knewwhen.Mukhopadhyay’s worldview, his politics, could still be divined by any attentive reader of his verse. But its compelling quality now derived from a clear stream of universal humanism from which men of different ideological and cultural sympathies could slake their thirst.Also read: Nirendranath Chakraborty – The Poet of Starry Nights and Sun-Drenched SummersThe belief in a new dawn which was to come, in a future which would light up the horizons, still steeped in the darkness of misery and unfreedom, was no less ardent. But that belief no longer felt the need to declaim, or speak in strident tones.On the giant slab of jet-black stone overheadbusy sharpening its clawslightningseethes in blind rage.Tiny ants, on their tiny feetscramble for cover in the safety of their nests.The storm is just about to break.Terror hangs over the open field.Blades of grass quiver,and somewhere nearbythe restless flapping of wingsof birds who lost their way.Well, let the storm come—after all, it will pass sometime, surely?We will keep standingjust where we happen to be,our heads pushed back, high –and our rootsstruck deeperdeeper still inside the earth.With Flowers of Stone, his elegy on the novelist Manik Bandopadhyay – whose life had been cut short at the tragically early age of f48 – Subhash Mukhopadhyay’s verse had achieved an austere beauty of cadence that was as moving as it was graceful:Oh, take the flowers away –they hurt.Garlands pile upto become mountains.Flowers pile up, one heap on top of another,till they all turn into stone.Take the stone away, please –it hurts.Because men make flowerstell so many lies,flowers did never much appeal to me.I would rather that I had sparks of fire –no can make masks with them……..Night after long night I sat awake to watchwhen and how it becomes light.My days passedtrying to unravel the mysteries of the dark.Never did I, even not for a moment,stop and sit still.I squeezed out life’s essencesand left them to settle in many hearts –today they spilled over, every one of them.No.I am no longer content with mere words.I would rather that I could reach outto that one place where all words ariseand also end –that one source of all our words,the final destination of all our names,the earth, the water, and the wind —I wish now to be one with all of them.Yes, put me down now,letloads of firewood embrace me.Let an ineluctable spark of the fireallow me to forget for everall the pain that flowers bring.The sparseness of Mukhopadhyay’s diction in Jato Durey Jai, I soon made out, was deceptive. I could see that he used the spoken word with a verve and flexibility I had not encountered yet. Colloquialisms, ‘rustic’ turns of phrase, even colourful street lingo – he could harness all of these to fine poetical use, and they provided his poetry with a dynamic that had few parallels in Bengali literature.Also read: No Diktat on Poetry in Dark TimesHe wrote prolifically for nearly 40 more years after Jato Durei Jai – talking of poetry alone, and not counting the many books of translations from other poets that he authored, he published 11 more anthologies after this – but his poetic idiom had pretty much taken shape by then.His craft evolved after this also, of course, but no more did he push the boundaries of his craft. Both Kaal Modhumas (It’s Spring Tomorrow, 1966) and Chheley Gechhe Boney (The Exiled Son, 1972) sparkle with Mukhopadhyay’s flair for using the unassuming spoken word to dramatic effect:I know that the momentI sit down to a game of chess,a million touts, leaving whatever they were doing,will crouch low near my shoulderand try to tell me my every movemuch as one would teach a parrot how to talk.I don’t know for sureif, after this,I should not tell them with folded hands:Distinguished gentlemen,please sit quietly and watch,or elsebe so kind as to go back to your seats.And, for god’s sake,let me play my own gameas I please.The late 1960s-early 1970s were traumatic years for the Indian Left, with both official repression as well as deadly fratricidal battles inside the movement maiming its soul. Mukhopadhyay engaged with these turbulent times with alacrity and intensity.Leaving me alone to grapple with my chains,my son went into banishment.Though they knew very wellthey would find nothing,two truckloads of policemenat gunpoint last nightturned the house upside down.They little knew they were stokingthe fire that silently smouldersin a man well past forty.Even now, as a procession goes by,silently I stand by the road.To every rally I still make my wayand listen to all that people say.For whoever that does something good,my hand always goes up in support.But then, with my nose to the grind,I no longer havefire on my mind.Leaving me behind in my chainsaway went my son in banishment.And yet, in his hands unfurled,I see but my own ensignanointing himthe Prince of our time.Another poem from Chheley Gechhe Boney memorably captures the devastating effects of the squalid internecine battles that the Left was waging against itself in those terrible years. Two erstwhile comrades who had gone their own separate ways meet up accidentally after many years. A lot of water has flown under the bridge and the euphoria of the ‘revolutionary’ years is now a distant memory. The friends reminisce about those years enthusiastically, but then the time comes to talk about the present:And, suddenlywe realised we had been touched by fear,both of us.We fell silent for a while,perhaps neither of us wantingto give anything away.Then, suddenly, as we began to let it all out –where we stood, on which sidewe stood nowA monster wavecame screaming in, and in its two handspicked us up highand dashed us down in fury.Suddenly, before our eyes,rose a sheer wall –and leaning against the iron dooroutsidestood the dark night.With a start, we realisedwe stood once againin two cellsnext to each other.Caught in our own web, back in the prisonThat we had built ourselves.From the late 1980s onwards, Mukhopadhyay’s politics began to shift focus. One imagines that the dismantling of the Soviet Union played its part in this transformation. At any rate, all across the world there was loss of faith in radical socialism – in its familiar incarnations, at all events – and India could not be expected to buck the trend.Also read: A Riveting Mix of Poetry and PoliticsMukhopadhyay’s own health began to fail him, too. He continued to write, at times desultorily, at others with great skill and feeling about things that still moved him deeply. We will close with a look at one of his last published poems – ‘Aranye Rodan (A Cry in the Wilderness)’ from the book Chhorano Ghunti (Flying Dice, 2001) – which is animated by some of the themes that always exercised his sensibility with great force:The dust of roadsthat I walked on long, long ago,chases me around in my sleepevery day.Hissingand swaying its sinister headlike the hood of a cobra,a flag – raised high in the sky –is discharging its load of poisonon to the ground.Eyelids droopin dark fear.Saroj Roy, who couldcatch a snake with his bare hands,Robi Mitter, who in ‘forty-two,had plunged inwith his bow and arrow,Satya Ghosal, that wizard of words,who could cast a spellon whole crowds of men —From Garbeta to Keshpur,from Keshpur down to Chandrakona,I go around, calling out namesin vain –my cry in the wildernessupon a dark night.These lines from nearly 20 years ago, when India was still a very different country from how we find her today, stare back at us despairingly, with great poignancy. Mukhopadhyay, then, was not only looking back to his past, to our collective past: he was anticipating also the shape of things to come.That is the marker of a true poet. Zeitgeist – the spirit of the age – takes hold of his mind and he gives expression to that spirit for the benefit of several later generations. Mukhopadhyay had set this task for himself, and he seldom strayed from it.Anjan Basu is a literary critic, commentator and translator of poetry. As Day is Breaking is his book of translations from the work of Subhash Mukhopadhyay. Basu can be reached at basuanjan52@gmail.com.