Passions of the poet

Nazrul takes you back to the valley of songs. You wander across the deserts of time, images of the beloved creating a festival of light in your mind; and you sing amar aponar cheye apon je jon / khunji tare aami aponae. That is where romance comes rushing back into your life. Or you might well ask if the romantic soul in you had ever deserted you at any point in your life. Nazrul, he who gave us Bidrohi and electrified us with chol chol chol, does not quite forget to inform us that beyond politics, beyond that historically underpinned spirit of rebellion in the heart, comes tenderness bathed in melody. And melody is but another expression, at once simple and potent, for the calling of the heart.

In Nazrul, you spot an entirety of feminine beauty encapsulated in song. Dwell, a little, on mor priya hobe esho rani / debo khonpae tarar phool. Move through the lyrics, take in the words and what you then have before you is a comprehensive definition of the beauty of woman. It is the woman you wait for, even as the rain falls in silence on an autumnal night. Perhaps she will come? Then again, perhaps she will not, cannot? And thus the sadness flows from you: shaono rate jodi / shorone aashe more / bahire jhorh bohe noyone baari jhore. Your sadness at the absence of the loved one crosses the frontier between light and dark, to recall the evening of the tears which flowed down the cheeks of the woman you keep waiting for. Amaro ghore moleen dipaloke / jol dekhechhi jeno tomaro chokhe. You speak of her long-ago tears, even as your eyes glisten in tears about to break free of imprisonment, to course down your weather-beaten face.
The poet in Nazrul speaks of the glorification of woman in passion. The pristine comes into play as you exult in the beauty of the one who lights up your world. As you sing, in the rising light of the moon, tumi shundor tai cheye thaki priyo / shey ki mor oporadh, that certain blush on her cheeks rises from the roots of her being . . . to give you cause for an enhanced showering of love. But love must pass through baptismal pain; and anguish must underline the desire for the company of the one you cannot do without. And therefore does Laily sing of the tortuous path she has travelled for union to bind her to Majnu: boner horeen horeeni kaandiya / poth dekhayechhe morey. Laily has returned. Majnu only needs to rise from sleep, from torpor, even from the shadows of death, to know she has come home to his heart.
But then comes autumn, with nary a sign of the lover on the horizon. The waiting has gone too long, will move into winter and past it and yet the longing soul will wait on the banks of the river or along a mud path cutting across a hamlet. You feel the sadness knifing through the air as the lover, Majnu-like, narrates his tale of woe in song: shaon aashilo phire / shey phire elo na. And yet the lover often turns inward, almost into seclusion, with tumi shunite cheyo na / amar monero kotha. Nothing can be more tragically poignant than the sadness of separation . . . of the lover from his woman, of the parent from the child. Emotions get to be in a constricted state and the only sounds you hear flow from the broken strings of the violin playing shunno e buuke / pakhi mor aaye phire aaye.
Songmakers give a lilt to the throbbing heart in you. They light you up somewhere inside of you as a woman in blue swishes past. Small wonder, then, that the soul breaks forth into nilambori sharee porhe / neel Jamuna-e ke jaaye. Or ask the damsel dancing her way through the pastoral paths even as she goes nowhere why she lets a thousand flowers bloom in her being. Jaani na jaani na jaani na, she blows the answer at you. Hear the melody wafting across from her and through the rainbow colours of the woods . . . keno mono boney maloti bollore. You watch her, for life has energised her inasmuch as it has electrified the world she inhabits.
The silence of passion, a softness borne on the wings of desire, sends a woman into indefinable rapture as the faraway strains of a flute reach her yard and move on to caress the heaving bosom of her rising passion. The breeze sweeps gently by, the ripples in the pond circle away from one another in widening circumferences. She cannot, will not resist an urge to ask a question of the distant flute player: ke bideshi mono udashi / baanshero baanshi bajao bon-e.
The night gathers pace. Somewhere in the spaces of the timeless, she waits under the stars for you. She tiptoes into your dreams, bends low to watch you sleep, startling you into frenzied awakening. The dreams are no more. But a sudden song brings you tidings of her, she in whose tears you have spotted monsoon cloudbursts of explosive romance. In gobhir nishithe ghuum bhenge jaae / ke jeno amare daake / shey ki tumi you reach out to her. Your Nirvana is here.