Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










Mother by Amit Chaudhuri

‘Mother’ was simply one of you –
with that funny nose
the freckled tip,
your exacting littleness.
The manifold stick-on teep on the forehead.
You were a singer.
From diaphragm up and down
you were music: clear, surprising tone.
I feel now I’d encountered you
at other times – ‘force of nature’ is said
glibly of many, and was only part-true of you.
I would have recognised you in forms
immaterial, material, human and
old and insentient; prescient, I saw
you before knowing it was you,
and, retrospective, in the aftermath,
found you again, even when I didn’t
know you, I knew you were before me;
‘mother’ was only one of you –
that printed silk sari, the low-heeled sandals –
you were multiple, too diverse,
for me not to have, in this world and others,
forgotten you, fallen into your presence.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer and music composer. He is the author of the novels A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag, Freedom Song, A New World, The Immortals, Odysseus Abroad, and Friend of My Youth. He’s also written Real Time, a collection of short stories, St Cyril Road and Other Poems, a collection of poems, D H Lawrence and ‘Difference’, a study of Lawrence’s poems, and two books of literary and cultural criticism – Clearing a Space, and The Origins of Dislike. His nonfiction work includes Calcutta: Two Years in the City, Telling Tales, Small Orange Flags, among others.
Bijoya Chaudhuri (1925-2016) was a singer, one of the most original interpreters of Tagore songs, Nazrulgeeti, the songs of Atul Prasad, and Hindi bhajans. She wrote a memoir late in her life called Sylhet Konnar Atmakatha (The Autobiography of a Girl from Sylhet).