Banalata Sen

File:Painting-Banalata-Sen.jpg

Banalata Sen by painter Khalid Ahsan, 1995

Banalata Sen (in Bengali script: বনলতা সেন) is a Bengali poem written in 1934 by poet Jibanananda Das that remains, arguably, the most read, recited and discussed poem of Bengali literature. The title of this lyric poem is a female character referred to by name in the last line of each of its three stanzas. A draft of the poem was also discovered that widely differs from the final version. Poet Jibanananda Das was a quiet person, who preferred to live in obscurity. Until the discovery of his diaries since mid-1990s, it was considered unlikely that he could have a woman of love with or without the name of Banalata Sen. However, Banalata Sen of Natore, a tiny town in the Rajshahi area of the then Bengal, has become the emblem of feminine mystery as well as beauty and love.

Introductory notes

"Banalata Sen" was composed by Jibanananda Das in 1934 when he was living in Calcutta, passing life through struggle after losing job of Assistant Lecturer at the City College. The relevant manuscript was discovered and labelled Book-8 while being preserved in teh National Library of Calcutta. The poem occurs on page 24 of the manuscript. It was first published in the December 1935 issue of the poetry magazine Kavita edited by poet Buddhadeva Bose. It is also the first poem of his third collection of poetry published in 1942 under the title Banalata Sen. Earlier, the lyric was collected in Modern Bengali Poetry jointly edited by Abu Sayeed Ayub and Hirendranath Mukhopadhyaya, published in 1939. Although popularly regarded a romantic lyric, poet’s historical sense of human existence is unmistakably the underlining essence.

The Poem

The poem consists of three stanzas each comprising six lines composed in the Bengali metrical pattern Aksherbritta or Poyar. The title of this lyric poem, Banalata Sen, is a female character referred to by name in the last line of each of its three stanzas. The poem is self-narrated by an unnamed traveller. Banalata Sen is a woman's name who the poem describes to be from the town of Natore, a town in Bangladesh.

In the first stanza the traveller describes seeing her after having wandered upon the earth over thousands of years. The narrator informs that it has been a thousand years since he had started trekking the earth. He describes it as a huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters to the Malabar coasts. From this geographical expanse he refers to temporal stretch and informs that, in course of his wandering he has traversed the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka too. He adds, he went further, including the forgotten city of Vidarva. Finally he speaks of himself that now he is a weary soul although the ocean of life around continues to foam and adds that in the meanwhile he had a few soothing moments with Natore’s Banalata Sen.

In the second stanza the traveller describes Banalata Sen, her woman of love. First he compares her hair with the dark night of long lost Vidisha. Then he compares her face with the fine works of Sravasti. Then the traveller-narrator recollects that when he saw her in the shadow it was like a cinnamon island lined with greenish grass spotted by a mariner whose ship wrecked in a far away sea. In the first encounter Banalata Sen, raising her eyes of profound refuge, inquired of him, “Where had you been lost all these days?”

In the third stanza the traveller returns from geography and history and recalls Banalata Sen with emotion. He informs that when at the day’s end evening crawls in like the sound of dews and the kite flaps off the smell of sun from its wings; and, then, when all colours take leave from the world except for the flicker of the hovering fireflies as all birds come home and rivers retire, a time comes when all transactions of the day are done. Then nothing remains but darkness when the traveller would like to sit face to face with Banalata Sen and share with her his ballad of stories.

The poet-narrator proceeds by alluding to different mythological and ancient persons, places and events. He describes having wandered from the Ceylonese ocean to the seas of Malaya, having travelled in Ancient India in the times of Emperor Bimbisara, and centuries later, in the times of Ashoka the Great. He describes having wandered in darkness in the ancient cities of Vidarbha and Vidisha, yet, for his tired soul, the only moment of peace in any age was with Banalata Sen of Natore.

The lyric Banalata Sen is the most representative of the essence of Jibanananda's poetry and exemplifies his use of imagery. The weary traveller is an interactive motif of his poetry. The poem itself uses four key images comprehensively, namely the darkness, flowing Water, passage of time, and a Woman. Jibanananda progressively develops these same four images throughout the poem, metamorphosing these from remoteness to intimacy, dimness to distinction and from separation to union.

Choosing the name

Banalata is a women's name in Bengali Language that would have been fashionable in the Bengali middle class Bhadralok community of Jibanananda's parents' generation. The surname "Sen" ordinarily denotes the vaidya caste to which Jibanananda's own family belonged before they became Brahmo. Natore itself is a small Mofussil town, now in Bangladesh, that developed during the Colonial era at a time that a number of other towns developed throughout Bengal, spurred by the Colonial economy and social changes. She is thus a contemporary woman. However, Jibanananda described her in terms forgotten and classical locations, essentially portraying her as 'timeless'. Like Banalata Sen, other female names that occur in the poetry of Jibanananda are 'Suronjana', 'Sorojini', 'Sabita', 'Shefalika Bose', 'Sujata' and 'Amita Sen', among others. She is as much as a spirit as a woman. Populalry, she is an emblem of beauty. Famous Indian painters who have tried to capture Banalata Sen in their works include Ganesh Paine and Jogen Chaudhuri.

Banalata Sen is a recurrent theme in Jibanananda's work. Jibanananda's poetry, with his characteristic rich tapestry of imagery, repeatedly portrays the image of human fulfillment personified by a woman--Banalata Sen in this poem. For a long time it has been helf that none like Banalata Sen actually existed in Jibanananda’s life. However, Jibanananda first used this name in Karubasona, by and large an autobiographical novel he wrote in 1932 which was never discussed. The novel was first publishd in 1986 many years after his deatyh in 1954. There Banalata, a young maiden, happens to be the neighbour of the protagonist. Banalata Sen also occurs in three other poems of Jibanananda Das. These are Playing for a thousand of years, An old poem and Bangalee, Punjabee, Marathee, Gujrati.

Poe's To Helen

Often Jibanananda's Banalata Sen has been compared with To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe. In a certain sense, Banalata Sen is akin to "To Helen" by Edgar Allan Poe. However, while Helen's beauty is the central theme in Poe's work, for Jibanananda, Banalata Sen is merely a framework to hold his anxiety for apparently endless human existence on earth since primordial time. She has occurred with various names like Shaymoli, Sobita, Suronjana, etc. However, one can see that while Poe has ended by appreciating the beauty of a woman, Jibanananda has gone far deeper and on the landscape of a woman's beauty has painted the expanse of human existence both in terms of time and topography, drawing attention to the ephemeral existence of humanbeing. Unlike many others', Jibanananda's poetry is the result of filtered interaction between emotions and intellect. In the endless tumultuous continuum of ‘time’ Banalata Sen is a dot of quietitude and tranquility. Banalata Sen is a feminine emblem that Jibanananda created in his virtual world and faced on many occasions with wonder and questions as embodied in different poems. In sum, although popularly regarded a romantic lyric, poet’s historical sense of human existence is unmistakably the underlining essence.

Translation into English

Starting with poet Jibanananda Das himself, Banalata Sen has been translated into English by many hands. They include Martin Kirkman, one with the initials S.D., Puroshuttam Das together with Shamosri Das, P. Lal, Mary Lago in collaboration with Tarun Gupta, Pritish Nandy, Chidananda Dasgupta, Ananda Lal, Clinton B. Seely, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Anupam Banerjee, Hayat Saif, Faizul Latif Chowdhury, Fakrul Alam, Anjana Basu, Joe Winter, Ron. D K Banergjee, Joydeep Bhattacharya, Arun Sarker, and Amitabha Mukerjee. A comparison of the translations reflect difference in understanding and interpretation as perceived by the translators. In certain points, interpretation by the translator differs from that of the poet himself, as reflected in his own translation.

It is interesting to note one instance where all translators, except one, have decidedly diverted from the temporal sense of the text. The first line haajaar bochor dhore aami path haatitechi prithibir pothey is in present perfect continuous tense. Most translations have rendered this either into simple past tense or present perfect tense. Oblivious of the continuity of the act Martin Kirkman translated : A thousand years I have wandered upon the earth. Amitabha Mukerjee translated : A thousand years I have walked these paths. Sukanta Chaudhuri rendered : I have walked the roads across the earth’s breast for a thousand years. Ananda Lal also used present perfect tense : I have walked the paths of earth for thousands of years. Now the translation by Joydeep Bhattacharya : I have walked earth’s byways for millennia. Fakrul Alam followed suit by writing : For a thousand years I have walked the ways of the world.

On the contrary Clinton B. Seely used simple past tense : For thousands of years I roamed the paths of this earth. Joe Winter translated : For thousands of years Earth’s path has been my path. This is in line with Jibanananda Das himself who translated like : Long I have been a wanderer of this world. Anjana Basu's translation is not comparable here and hence excluded.

It is Anupam Banerji who maintained the literal sense of the poem (1998) and wrote in translation : For ages I have been walking the paths of this earth. This is partially echoed in translation by Faizul Latif Chowdhury who rendered it like : It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth. However, a recent translation by Arun Sarkar again considers present perfect continuous tense : For thousand years I have been walking all over the world.

It is interesting to note that, in 2008, Clinton B. Seely improved on his original translation and used present perfect continuous tense.

References

• Template:Harvard reference.
• Template:Harvard reference.

• Recitation in Bengali
• Banalata Sen
• Translation by Joudeep Bhattacharya
• Translation by Ron. D K Banergjee
  Translation by Amitabha Mukerjee
• A video recitation
• Comments on Banalata Sen
• Banalata Sen - the original poem in wikisource
• A Bengali Web-site on poet Jibanananda Das
• Bonolota Sen of Natore