12/06/2023
Poem After Death: Twenty Years
All the terrible catastrophes
Escaped your eyes
You did not burn in the tortuous fire of '46
The famine and the epidemic
That came through the blood
The land where sons killed each other
The flesh of mothers
Fueled a living hell.
You did not have to see
The '47 Partition that was
Worse than madness in Lumbini.
Contrary to these experiences,
A light of humanity had filled your life, Poet.
We too had learnt to dream from you.
These past twenty years
A history of sewage afloat,
Thirst, a bath, life, all inhuman.
Worse than the old hag
Who runs the brothels at Shonagachi.
Ministers, leaders, teachers, writers, students,
Dogs on heat,
This independent land joins all together.
All our dreams are like drunken jokes
Played on the reeds of an oft-used harmonium.
Even in your nightmares
You had not thought such calamity
Would befall this free country
You had thus remained true
To your dreams of humanity.
Summary
The title of the poem “After Death: Twenty Years” remind to the death of Rabindranath Tagore in 1941. Chattopadhyay’s persona addresses Tagore and portrays the massacre in Calcutta on 19 August 1946 in the very first stanza. He says that all the catastrophes happening around this period have escaped his eyes. Bengal became a living hell where thousands of people died each day. He did not have to see the Partition of India. More than 20 years had passed after his death, but his dream of a humanitarian nation was still a far cry. The dream Indians saw collectively had turned into nightmarish thoughts. Amidst this tremulous situation, Chattopadhyay’s voice relapsed into hopelessness. It was a moment of disillusionment for the nation.
Title of Birendra Chattopadhyay the poem After death: twenty years "After Death: Twenty Years: line by line explanation , Partition Literature