When My Footprints No Longer Fall (Jokhon Porbe Na Mor Payer Chihna)
Translation  © Monish R Chatterjee 2014
When my footprints fall no longer upon
this field
And I no longer row my boat to this shore;
I will have then finished buying and selling my wares
And balanced the ledger of what I owe
and am owed-
My
journeys to this marketplace will be over.
It's fine, dear, if you remember me not
then-
Gazing at the stars, it's fine if
you do not call me.
When dust shall cover the strings of
the tanpura
Thorny
creepers cover the doorways, aha,
Dense
wild grasses stifle the exiled flower garden,
And
algae smother edges of the pond-
It's
fine, dear, if you remember me not then-
Gazing at the stars, it's fine if
you do not call me.
Then, too, the flute shall play in this
theater just like now,
The days shall pass, indeed, the days
shall pass
As they do now, aha,
The
ferryboats shall fill up just like this at the riverbanks-
The cows will graze and
cowherds play
In the meadow yonder.
It's
fine, dear, if you remember me not then-
Gazing at the stars, it's fine if
you do not call me.
Who says I am no longer there at that
dawn?
I shall be a player in every game that
day- aha,
They shall call me by different
names, bind me
In new
embraces,
Coming and going, forever, will be the eternal me.
It's
fine, dear, if you remember me not then-
Gazing at the stars, it's fine if
you do not call me.
YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSY3rfj6hik
Finding ten Tagore songs out of the many dozens in the HM compendium is a truly futile exercise- many absolutely stirring numbers come rushing to my mind. Here is one probably from the latter part of HM's 40+ years at the forefront of the golden age- this was a duet (of which HM did not have many in the Rabindra Sangeet genre) with a young Haimanti Sukla. I have used this song with its exhortations to the Creator to awaken to life from the coldness of death enlivened by the tunes of a song.
This is the Boon
I Ask (Tomar Kachhe E Bor Magi)
Translation  © Monish R Chatterjee 2014
This
is the boon I ask of you-
That I may awaken from death
By the tunes
of a song.
When
I open my eyes-
Like nectar from mother's breast
May I be filled with fresh new
life
By the tunes
of a song.
In
that new world trees and reeds
Rise up from the great flute of the
earth
Like the tunes of a song.
There
heavenly light brings the tidings
Of the boundless joy of the sky-
Lingers in the depths of the
heart
Stirred by the tunes of a song.
MP3 URL: https://gaana.com/song/tomar-kachhe-e-bor-magi-5
Follow-up parts of my remembrance of Hemanta Mukhopadhay at his Centennial as a personal journey through my own life will appear in the weeks ahead.
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