Sumita translates Rabindranath Tagore’s song ‘Agniveena bajao tumi kamon korey’, highlighting the relationship between creative inspiration and profound pain, exclusively for Different Truths.

How you play the lyre
that lights up fire! 
The sky throbs, vibrates, drowned in music of
            lights of the stars! 
In similar fashion, you have felt with your own hands,
the  places where my hurts happen to be;
newly and newly rekindled, pulsating creativity,
as if, have been awakened on placid life;
   as the fiery music is being played
that you play in great glory, in great solemnity;
trusting: My life-spirit will bear with
  all the deafening sounds—the pains, the pangs coming forthwith;
         with  the thundering roars of yours,
                         over and over again; 
You have kindled new  stars; fuelled up with pains
at the night hours of my life; when no stars were seen,
   when all had gone dark, over and over again.

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Sumita Bhattacharya

Sumita Bhattacharya is an honours graduate in English literature from Calcutta University, a former subeditor in Northern India Patrika and NCZCC, Allahabad, Translator Fellow (IIAS, Shimla). She translated in English the “Veda Mimamsa, Volume 1” by Srimad Anirvan. Her articles were published in The Times of India, Pioneer, and the Bulletin of the Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture.

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