The unageing Image of juvenescence Frozen at fifteen in eternity's frame. Still haunts Trishal's Kazlrsimla Reliving the magic of the rhaiden meeting; The treasured reminiscences of an epiphany. It all happened due to one Kazi Rafizullah, An insignificant OC of the British Raj A uniformed defender of imperialist interests Whom we can’t but thank and acquit from Charges of onanism of loyalty to looters. Uke most homecomers but unlike all whose Feral relish Is confined to flamfews He brought to Trishal a living curio Languishing at an Asansol bakery

A fifteen year old dilutee; a gazelle eyed boy Of kinky flowing locks — Dukhu Miah! What a name! A kind of sad-sack it means What a fate! Lotted to be hand-cuffed , In 1922. Comilla. Nazrul's first confinement Began here with an affectionate arrest Policemen need not be gemmologists for Their trade is mostly to listen and not to see but Rafizullah imps. in picking an uncut diamond from mire. For once in this vermlculous zone

Deceit could not turn a discovery Into dilluslon. Darirampur School had room for this lad Winning in turn a place In history unwittingly But the inchoate chapter of love and security closed For a man fatally enamoured of love and freedom Of higher Intensity, of tenuous tensor and the truant Was out of Mymenslngh. furtively back to Burdwan Were the morsels at the Presidency Jail;

The carping clerics in Calcutta; the spleen-synging brew So overwhelmingly fascinating'.’ Certainly. All the better. The concoction of suffering gave us an egalitarian poet Wide, embracing and stretched across the horizon Like the flaming, rubefacient summer sky But you. poet, lost tn the tranquil Trishal A loving canopy of wide welkin.

Memory's medley held you in a muted trance As I entered the P G Hospital sixty one years later in the old capital of new-fangled Bangladesh in 1975 Resigned to a rueful regression by the throny rivage on a summer noon

He was tuning unheard melodies for the 33rd year Under the dual reign of amnesia and alalia

Armed guards kept vigil to the solitary servitude To me It seemed the last Imprisonment of the rebel. Nazrul Islam in this cell?

Limp limbs were emboldened by a sudden rush ot blood Sentry refused entry. Not now

Reesty rebel Inside surprised me Yea right now!

Only to see a masque of many moods on a white bed.

A sudden turn of a pair of eyes baptised In innocence; What cruelty Oh Lord ?

Ah what a plight tn sight!

Translated try ( hnruhuuhrkhur Das

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