Saurav Saikia (Assamese)

FOOTBALL SUN

Like a spring morning
The football
came flying and entered the ovary of the flower
Said –
Would build my abode here. Would you spare a little space?
to grow a bud on your bosom

Thrill would flow in every fragrance
There’d be a garden of football
Let us compose some verse
Countless stars would swarm the mind, would loiter
As if the Sun is a football
Horizon – the epical battleground
and at the core of the dream the divine purity of beauty
So new – oh!
It plays like a piano
not with two feet
with the feelings of heart
they are playing football there
Look ! there is such a flow of spectators.
Turn around to look at the circular stadium
From the flyover above
Look up from the last gallery rising to the sky
This is a garden, football garden
The sports arena has turned into a rainbow
Romance has spread everywhere
Why wasn’t I turned into a vuvuzela? Why not?
The excited souls are crying in ecstasy
Here, here itself I can create the heaven.

Translated by Bibekananda Choudhury

ARTIST

His feet are his mountain stream
As if entered into the field to write a poem

His feet are his brush
As if entered into the field to draw

He suddenly scores a goal
And suddenly turns invisible
Enigma

You spoke about a deer, isn’t it?
Leo Messi.

L M Ten is the name of the deer

Translated by Bibekananda Choudhury

FOOTBALL WILL COME TO THIS HOUSE TONIGHT

At the freaky strokes of a brush
The football is moving.
There will be uprising
The earth will turn into a field tonight
The moon will come down to this world tonight
Tonight the world will be split into two.
The two friends will turn into enemies tonight
Hamelin’s flute will play tonight
Football will speak in its own tongue.
Jerseys would continue to reek tonight
All the feet would turn into sword tonight
The dead champion would turn into history again.
The stallions would gallop on
Colour of dichotomy would turn more vibrant tonight
Script would be inscribed by the creator tonight
Quest would turn into weapon
The tongue would turn dry tonight
Fetters would drop tonight
Packing charges in the ovary of the flower
The heart appears like a football
Unfolding the rousing of creation
Night of flesh and blood, the rose flame is set alight
A fresh window will be thrown open
Football will win tonight
Would take a stroll along the wharf of the Luit
Tonight your dream will be fulfilled
Tonight

Luit – local name of riveaputra

BRAZUKA SUNDARI

It flew in from the halfway line of Holland.
Don’t know who booted the cross pass
And she instigated exposing her back
That eternal youthful Brazuka beauty!
When it was wafting in the air heading towards the goal of Spain
Then standing at 26 yards
A striker – romantic whimsical
Suddenly turned alert
Because the beauty winked
Enticed by her naked, inebriated yellow beckoning
Run, run
But the waving Brazuka disappeared behind the line.
In a strange longing of holding her into an embrace
To touch her bosoms
Here this way
Here this way
He leapt in the venomous, killer allurement
The way
So, like a hovering bird spreading the wings towards her
So, like a throbbing love opening the heart towards her
He released the dream filled body in the air
Whoosh and a head
The spark received the momentary rhythm in its wings
The ecstasy of beauty on the right shaking the net
Goa..a..a..l
She gazed at the striker with gratified eyes
And appeared to whisper in the ears
‘Happy I am filled with your love
Take me with flowing warmth of the heart’

SKY IS THE LIMIT

Dedication: France World Cup Football 1998

One naughty friend commented
Another measured the little world breaking into a dance
A beautiful round ball touching the unseen tropic of cancer of geography
Sweating feet on meadow
Have you come to play that
Here green fever has broken out.
You have smeared the green on the football itself
Pulled to the television set spending sleepless nights
Would skip dinner tonight silence would sleep latching the door
Silence castigates me if I watch your game
The sky draws my border if I get ensnared by you spell
And I am very much game, because you present
Enrapturing football

Truly, you means meteoric shower of joy
The city has drenched up and turned into a paperboat
Watching your magic sitting on the sweet thrilling line of elation
You have told a blatant lie
Searched for a fresh stream in the river of your rival
Offensive have come in waves, cloud accumulated on the goalbar
Still you are yet to succeed
Some are cheering, some others …
Look evening has descended in the thrill of victory
No one is there on the playground
Someone etched in serenity
He has died conceding goal from mist
Look, he has collapsed with the setting sun.

Translated by Bibekananda Choudhury

Saurav Saikia(b.1969)

Well known Assamese poet with eleven volumes of poetry in print. His poems have been published in English and several Indian languages including. Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Oriya and Kannada. Translations of Saikia’s poems have appeared in leading literary journals like Indian Literature, Samakalin Bharatiya Sahitya, Beyond Borders(the SAARC Journal) and Poetry India, and included in noted anthologies like The Dancing Earth (Penguin India), The Penguin Book of Poems(Random House) and Best of Indian Literature VOL.II BookII (©SahityaAkademi). Some of his remarkable poems deal with painting, music, film and football. Since 1998 Saikia got invited to more than a dozen Sahitya Akademi’s national poets’ meets to read his poems. Saurav Saikia lives in Guwahati.

Address :Saurav Saikia , Assam Tea CorporationLtd. Housefed Complex , 7thFloor.
Dispur,Guwahati-781006 Assam, India

Bibekananda Choudh

Bibekananda Choudhury, an electrical engineer by profession working with the State Government of Assam has completed his Masters from BITS-Pilani. He has also earned a diploma in French language from Gauhati University. He has got published works (both original and translated) in Assamese, Bengali & English in popular periodicals and newspapers. His translated poems and stories have been published in ‘Indian Literature’, the bi-monthly journal of Sahitya Akademy on several occasions. His translated poems of Nilim Kumar has been selected in ‘Poems from the seashore’ from the representing poems in Indian Ocean Rim Association poets conclave hosted by Ministry of External Affairs, GoI and Sahitya Akademi and in the compilation ‘100 Indian Great Poems by Bloomsbury’ and also in the ‘Penguin Book of poems on Indian Cities’. His translated poem is being taught in the undergraduate Courses of Bangalore University and Post graduate Courses of Cotton University. Recent addition has been translated novel ‘The Strangers’ from Harekrishna Deka’s Assamese oeuvre published by Dhauli Books, Bhubaneswar. He has some one dozen translated books to his credit. He hails from Bongaigaon and presently stays at Guwahati.