A Poet's Aside

The entangled branches of Tangail's tamal tree.

(Photos courtesy of Mohammed Shafiqul Islam).

Hurry! Hurry! Delay is waste, to tarry, distraction: so says the modern world. It’s probably why intercity buses stop only once, at some kind of wannabe-grand roadside eatery with a fluorescent name along the lines of “Food Village” or “Leisure Spot.” The conductor says we’ll be stopping for twenty minutes. It means half an hour.

Lord Krishna's tamal tree. Can you hear his flute song?

But the village flute doesn’t run like an intercity bus. For one thing, everybody knows a flute song never need cram extra passengers in. For another, flute songs don’t travel at death-defying speed. No – the meandering, the tugging of the soul along detours and improvised paths is what any flute song is about.

…which is why, though time is of the essence and we should be hurtling non-stop towards Dinajpur by now, it can happen that the flute leads us momentarily elsewhere, to a different kind of leisure spot. 

Like the flute, this place was favoured by Lord Krishna. It’s to be found in Tangail.

A journey by flute meanders, tugs the soul.

Moreover, well, let me be clear… It’s not a physical journey that I write of this time – I’ve never been there. It’s a journey heard about, a place that might be hoping to be known. Who am I to refuse the wishes of such a place? And instead of leisure – we are, after all, talking of Lord Krishna, we might say pleasure.

The hearing of the place came about when Shahjalal University of Science and Technology English lecturer and poet Mohammad Shafiqul Islam contacted me recently. Our conversation worked its way towards villages as conversations often do with me. The Tangail native was keen to speak of a village three kilometres east of Ghatail Upazila’s Sagardighi – the village called Gupta Brindaban in reference to Lord Krishna’s childhood home. Our poet wanted to tell about an old tamal tree.

The tamal tree collects the threads of people's prayers.

The last time he reached there, he says, with friends he sat beneath that tree and took comfort from its shade. It offered coolness and peace on a day of particularly scorching heat. “We were showered with the grace of life,” is how our poet described it.

Sridan, Sudan, Basudam, Subal, Madhumangal, Subahu, Arjun, Gandharba, Daam, Stokkrishna, Mahabal and Mahabahu: when Lord Krishna reached the place many moons earlier he brought with him twelve friends, according to our poet – others say there were sixteen. He came for leela, for secret pleasure.

It’s believed Krishna used to sit in the tree and play his flute. To its melody Radha would be entranced, Krishna absorbed in the duality of music and love. At other times his friends would be with him and Lord Krishna would take pleasure of a more platonic kind. Either way, Krishna is said to have stayed by that tamal tree for a long time.

As his forefathers did, Sree Prafulla Chandra Baishnaba cares for the tree.

 

“Sree Prafulla Chandra Baishnaba welcomed us with a smiling face when we arrived,” says our poet. Like his father and forefathers before him, he has taken on the duty of looking after the tree. There’s a temple nearby, the Bigraha Mandir, where people every day offer puja.

Krishna devotees fasten threads around the tamal tree’s branches, believing their ailments can be cured and wishes fulfilled by God’s grace. Muslims and Christians are also known to revere that place. 

Hundreds of years: the root of the tamal tree.

“The tree,” says our poet, “now hundreds of years old with its skin dried up, may seem weak with the weight of age but from the tranquillity of shade it grants devotees – with the nurturing of secret wishes and the drawing of feelings of sacredness from hearts, it surely measures great strength.” As Krishna once played his flute people now spend long hours absorbed in meditation.

“Their faces seem to glow with heavenly colours,” says our poet. “They begin to feel light, both physically and mentally as God is sure to grant life to their hopes.”

The tree itself is said to have died many years ago – but people did not stop their worship when it was lifeless – and then, after twelve years its branches mysteriously donned once more the decoration of new green leaves.

“Sree Prafulla showed us other aspects of the tree that are unusual,” says our poet. “It has an opening in the root and trees should not survive in a condition like that. And the shade it provides is extraordinary.” 

Through the twisted, turning years of this world...

Two branches of the tree are unusually entangled around one leafless, small branch – it is believed that was the branch upon which flute playing Lord Krishna sat.

In Chaitra month on occasion of Madhukrishna Troyodoshi a festival is held. Thousands of people congregate – of many faiths and from as far as India.

But of course one can’t anticipate taking comfort from the shade of a tamal tree forever. The devotees take their spiritual fill from the Radha-Krishna pleasure grove and eventually leave. Poets must understand too, of course, that once a poem is done there’s a need to move on. Even Lord Krishna, though he may have stayed for many days knew he had more to do elsewhere. 

Krishna the flautist, with Radha, at the nearby temple.

 

Our poet with his wife.

“As we left,” says our poet, “We carried with us a distinct celestial feeling of solemnity and sanctity.”

And so, like the devotees, like our poet and Lord Krishna, we are also bound to move forward. The village flute cannot give pause to the song for long. 

And so, like the intercity bus the mind with body must re-embark… One stop is sufficient, surely, for the trip to Dinajpur. Don’t worry it’ll only take twenty minutes, which really means half an hour. Don’t be late in getting, once more, on board.

With thanks to Mohammad Shafiqul Islam for sharing his experience.

The tamal tree from the south.

The Song Catcher

Dumdee village in Narail.

Knowledge, I want to know your real name...

Bahmini Mohon Roy has reached an age. His hair is grey. He sits on the mud veranda of his house in Tabra village, Narail, waiting to speak. There is a lot to speak of and he takes a moment to consider where to start.

You think of the city mornings when half-asleep pupils file into the microbuses that circle. You’ve seen them on their honking, jam-crawling ways to school. Maybe the a/c is broken and maybe it’s sweltering inside.

A small stage in Dumdee, for Bijoy Sarkar events.

You think of the villages where the only thing circling might be a pigeon flock, where students set out on foot. From historical Dumdee village it’s a long walk to the Tabra schoolyard – and you’ve heard that when Monsoon arrives she enforces a nouka-boat necessity on them. But Roy the teacher, he lives in Tabra, so the worst the rain can do for him is to make squelching muddy steps towards the school gate. It’s obvious: the paths leading to knowledge are many.

“We are calling You different names; some say Bhagawan and some say Allah...” Roy begins. He’s reciting the lyrics of a song by Bijoy Sarkar, his Guru. “I want to know Your real name.”

There’s enough to learn from textbooks – sure – to copy into notebooks and memorise. But also from birds, from trees and from rivers are things to learn. The sun can have something to utter and neither are the farm fields silent if you care to listen.

Baul singer Bijoy Sarkar.

While SM Sultan wrought knowledge onto Narail’s canvas from all he saw his friend Sarkar listened. As he caught and was caught by songs he wrote Narail’s score. From some time after his birth 111 years ago in Dumdee, Sarkar plotted the course of Baul wisdom, what has turned up once again, just now, on that Tabra veranda. Roy has just begun to open that knowledge treasure chest.

“Vaitarani and Pul-e-Siraat are. Allah, if I can cross the Pul-e-Siraat easily...” are the lyrics of another Sarkar song, referring to the Hindu river and the Muslim bridge to be faced after death. The righteous will see nectar-like water in the Vaitarani, the sinful will see blood. The Pul-e-Siraat is thinner than a hair, sharper than a sword and hotter than fire – yet the righteous will pass quickly.

“He believed everyone should go the same way,” Roy continues in prose, “That’s why he wrote this kind of song. He wanted the whole world to be successful.”

“His name is a man’s belief,” Roy recites. Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim – in the human religion it’s obvious: the paths leading to knowledge are many.

It was 1965 and Roy had just passed his SSC examination when his father thought to take him about the villages to share the good news. He took him to Bijoy Sarkar’s house in Dumdee – they met for the first time.

Bahmini Mohon Roy with his wife, Tabra village.

And as Roy recites in this later age it returns to his eyes a curious youthfulness. His face is calming and even while animated seems to harbour a resident kindness. There’s something touching, something indefinable... Does it border on the eternal? You can feel it. It’s exciting.

“As the world is now so it shall continue. I will go leaving this beauty behind.”

“These wonderful words,” says Roy, “the meaning that every human life shall pass. He wanted us to think more about our souls.”

Lyrics and prose, the flow of Roy’s words continues – as though certain lines have pressed themselves upon Roy’s lips, needing to be told at a particular moment. It’s like he wants to express all of Sarkar’s life and lines at once, in a rich, overwhelming and unified oneness.

Roy performs a Bijoy Sarkar song.

Sarkar wrote songs about nature: rivers, birds, waterholes called beels, trees and forests. According to Roy, Sarkar captured about 1800 songs before his passing in 1985. There are 150 in one book and 250 in another, he says. A further 450 exist in the memories of his followers; many other songs have, like their composer, already left their beauty behind.

In 1971 as Bijoy Sarkar moved about, recounts Roy, it happened one day that razakars stole some papers of his lyrics. “He tried a lot to get them back, but he couldn’t. After that, what he could remember he wrote again.”

In 1971 both Sarkar and Roy separately fled to India. Roy took with him 100 Sarkar songs, noted down – prized possessions – in order to save them. He found Sarkar at his new home in India and when he arrived there was a small stage set up in anticipation that the bard would give a concert. Sarkar addressed him, “Pundit Moshai, from where did you come?” “I am living just beside your home,” said Roy, “From there I came to meet you. From there I came to sing your songs.”

“We need another banana leaf...” called Sarkar in that house at that time when banana leaves were used as plates. He was insistent, as always, on food and pleasantries coming first – How is your family? How are your finances? Later there could be music. Later there could be the wisdom in Baul songs.

“You will come on stage with me,” Sarkar said – to Roy a great honour. And he sat beside his Guru as the concert got underway.

“Mainly we love our parents and family,” says Roy, “but not strangers, not in the same way. We can love them too, but not in the same way. Yet it’s true. Pagol Bijoy – Bijoy the fool – thought everybody was the same.” From his followers he had been gifted the nickname Pagol Bijoy, certain as they were that the man was possessed by God.

“One day the house bird will go to the sky if he gets the chance.”

Roy at the harmonium.

“You would never think about it, but it’s true that your taken-for-granted faithful pet bird will die one day. Some of us might even think that lyric was about a wife leaving from the house,” says Roy, “but he did not give this kind of message. We did not think about the soul, which he meant.” When asked how he came to write such songs he said it was simple logic that the human soul would depart.

You wonder if there is a pet bird in a cage hanging somewhere on Roy’s long veranda.

Songs caught Sarkar or he caught them – in the morning, in the evening; he even met them in his dreams. “Sometimes he would dream songs,” says Roy, “and it would wake him and immediately he would note them down.”

The conversation meanders still further into the harmonious depths of the song catcher’s soul. Roy tells of a time at the last of Choitro or the beginning of Boishakh many years ago when Roy’s son was deathly ill. Sarkar came on three consecutive days to pray at the hour of Fajr – and it wasn’t easy to move about in those days – but Roy’s son recovered surely enough.

Biplob Biswas and Brahmini Mohon Roy.

More remarkable is the history of 45-year-old Biplob Biswas who has come to join us. When he was aged six he could not walk and his mother appealed to Sarkar to see him. Sarkar went there, touched his legs and blessed him, promising that after two days he would be able to walk again. And it happened – just as the bard foretold.

The harmonium is brought and both Roy and Biswas ready themselves. The first notes begin and their faces, each in turn, fill with emotion – uplifted and overflowing. There’s something indefinable there, on the veranda. Does it border on the eternal? You feel it. It’s exciting.

Knowledge, I want to know your real name...

The emotion of a Bijoy Sarkar song. Spiritual and uplifting.

Biplob Biswas plays harmonium.

Temple in Dumdee featuring Bijoy Sarkar's photograph.

Bijoy Sarkar gave to Narail its score.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: The Song Catcher

*song lyrics are challenging to translate. Please forgive these humble efforts.