By: Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee
His canvas is vast, his imagination mythopoeic, his voice bardic, his concerns ranging from the political to the cosmic, from the contemporary to the primeval. The landscapes he evokes are epic and elemental: he speaks of fire and water, planet and star, forest and desert, man and rock, time and space, war and peace, life, and death. Phookan speaks lyrically of the Assamese countryside, the rich heritage of tribal myth and folklore, and the rhythms of village life, all of which have helped shape his sensibility as a poet. He reasserts the centrality of poetry in “helping a man find his soul”. He was the living legend of Assamese poetry. Nilmani Phookan was born on 10 September 1933 in the village of Dergoan, near Jorhat in Assam; he had his post-graduation in history from Gauhati University and joined 1964 Arya Vidyapeeth College as a lecturer in History till retirement in 1992. He started writing poetry in the early 1950s. The diversity in his writing flair was amazing. While, Damodar Mauzo, the Goan writer of Konkani for over three decades, won the Jnanpith Award in 2021 for his novels and a short story collection, Nilmani Phookan Jr with his ‘sage-like’ presence in Assamese literature is the third Assamese writer to win the Jnanpith award as one of the pioneers of modern Assamese poetry. He has written thirteen volumes of poetry, and has won ten regional and national awards; Phookan won the 56th Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary award. Phookan was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981 for his poetry collection, ‘Kavita’ (Kobita). He was also awarded the Assam Valley Literary Award in 1997 and 2002 he received the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest literary honor in India given by Sahitya Akademi.
In 2019 he D.Litt was conferred on him by Dibrugarh University. Besides these, in 1990 he was awarded Padma Shri and in 1991 he got Chaganlal Jain Award. He was more than a poet an art critic and a senior academician whose ‘Surjyo Heno Nami Ahe Ei Nadiyedi (The sun is said to come descending by this river) is a poetic milestone for Assamese literature besides his Gulapi Jamur Lagna and Kobita. His work replete with symbolism is inspired by French symbolism and is representative of the genre in Assamese poetry. Nilmani Phookan is considered Assam’s most distinguished living poet. Inspired by the example of his precursors, Hem Barua, Amulya Barua, and Maheswar Neog, he and his other contemporaries, Navakanta Barua and Ajit Barua took to free verse, exploring and extending the possibilities of Assamese modernism. And yet, you find not merely a sage’s reflective detachment here, but urgency as well as anguish and a deep sense of loss. Most importantly the unapologetic preoccupation with the cosmic and existential does not lead to grandiosity or a resort to misty abstractions. In his poem stinking reality prevails as in one of his poems ‘A Poem’ (Later Translated by Niren Thakuria), he wrote: “For days I have heard only one sound day and night. The burning tire is stinking. I have shed tears and wiped them away with one hand with both hands. In my tears the stones have soaked, the grass drenched in blood over there has soaked.” The poet has in himself the incurable Romantic who speaks of “the overblown surujkanti flowers have not wilted though they are about to, the Dichoi and Dibong have not changed into ice though they are about to. For days the moon has not risen over Diroi Rangali. You, with the wet lock of hair, might have lit the earthen lamp shedding bitter tears.” One heart-touching poem cannot be forgotten where the poet keeps his eyes open “even my death stares open-eyed for, in pool and puddle in the creek and lake fish in shoals glisten O you, my ambling horseman. (Later Translated by Pradip Acharya). The poet sounds mysterious when he says,” Don’t ask me how I am down the Kolong comes floating,/ A headless girl /For my corpse Was lying for forty-two hours/ On the pavement of Guwahati /For I’m open-eyed still /My death too has its eyes open,” this is how the poet weaves his imageries after imageries in the poetic tapestry. Phookan’s poems have a plethora of images,” every black sun of every season/ I am a naked man Ageless with my whole body/ I have felt some rocks hidden under water and earth /some rocks and a planet made of human flesh and blood /My lips tongue and innards have felt some rocks in the angular privacy of my prolonged life/ some rocks horizontal vertical round.”
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His definition of Poetry is quite clear. “Poetry is for those who wouldn’t read it for the wounds in their hearts /for their fingers where thorns are embedded for the anguish and the joy of the living and the dead /for the outcry that trundles down the road day and night for the desert sun /…. /For one kiss from you, that man of dust will become dust again, /for that old saying. “These evocative lines haunt the reader who is bound to be lost in the maze of the meaning that is on the crescendo till the climax is reached and connotation bursts into an avalanche of nuances. Sometimes Phookan’s poetry smells of blood and death as in the poem ‘That Day Was a Sunday’. The poem contains the graphic lines “That day was a Sunday/ A stream of fresh blood from the butcher’s Rolled over the street to the ditch by its side /The tumultuous passers-by took no notice of/ The stream of blood, Another Sunday had begun.”
Nilamani Phookan’s Nature is sometimes ruthless like a monster red in tooth and claw as we find Nature in his poem ‘The Sky Throbs’: “The sky throbs,/ I grope for the lamp /All of a sudden in full flesh and blood My mother /The lamp in her eyes, blood all over her face—I shriek…/’Mother and Motherland’. More translation of his poems is needed and there should be a proper assessment of his modern outlook this can be done by focusing on his poetic architectonics. The living legend passed away on January 19, 2023, and his death will create a vacuum for a long time in Assamese literature. No tear is enough for dumb eyes. (The author is a senior academician and trilingual poet from Kolkata. He can be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com)
