A Story of Teesta and Rangit

        

 - Manprasad Subba

 

The Rangit nowadays

is an irony to himself.

Emaciated and thinned as he is today

even a goat kid can hop across him.

 

While in his eternal youthfulness

he would show masculine pride

to his beloved Teesta.

At the mere sight of his pride

the rising hills trembled with fear.

But while he glided lovingly singing

all trees rejoiced and birds fluttered cheerfully.

His breath was a boon to the hills and valleys.

His attractive gait, confident move,

his indomitable power of roaring flow

bearing torrential rain…

All these are now but merely a mythical story.

And who else has the time

even to listen to this story?

 

At the crack of dawn

as the wild fowl let out its first crow

the Banjhankri would perform his ablutions

in the crystal Rangit water.

But, as even his incantations

couldn’t rejuvenate the Rangit,

he, nowadays, has just vanished.

(He is believed to have uttered -

Any deity’s wrath could be appeased,

but things fallen under dark human-spell

rarely escape.)  

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His brother, Chhota Rangit,

coming from the south

carries him on his back nowadays

down to Tribeni and leaves him to the care

of the Teesta who arrives there sighing.

And seeing each-other’s poor shapes

both break down in embrace.

Without uttering a word, both know

that their souls have been abducted

by one dark eye coming from the underworld.

 

(Strange! Who is singing so soulfully -

Where the Teesta-Rangit flow…)

 

‘Never to part with each other’

is the promise they made aeon ago.

 

Now both in one single entity

that moves on haltingly-

sluggishly …

In winter season

Teesta unable to drag itself

needs rest quite often.

Her stomach swells up

like suffering from cirrhosis.

 

Like silver medals on the chest

of an ex-soldier now in wheel chair

flashes in her memory the words -

‘O Mighty Teesta !’- once uttered by poet Devkota

standing on the Anderson Bridge.

 

In such an infirmity,

she thinks also of the poem

Bikas Gotamey had once read to her -

‘Flow on, O Teesta, keep flowing..’

 

And all these songs and poems get mixed up

in her memory like a jigsaw puzzle -

‘where flow O mighty flow you Teesta..’

___________________ 

 

*Banjhankri - A mythical shaman living in some deep forest cave.           

  

  [Translated from Nepali original by the poet.]