CROSSING OVER SIXTY
¼lkB ikj djrs gq,& yhyk/kj txwM+h English translation by GPBahuguna ½
I am not sixty just today.
Every past day, every past night form these years
Could not have reached sixty straight after fifty
Without going through many births I couldn't have faced these ten years
Even after fifty-eight I could not have stepped over to become sixty
Overlapping a fifty-nine in the middle.
Fifty-nine had a crucial role to play.
So I am not sixty just today.
Should I recall my Autumn or the Spring
The rains or the summers
Or should I summon memories of winters past
Without my wears of coat, muffler and shoes.
My days,My years,my seasons and my circumstances
Weighing heavily on each other.
So I am not sixty just today, right now, all alone
Visiting the world of books
I return again and again in the book of life
My essays are scattered filled with poems, novels and stories
Where I include myself among people
Looking for bold steps and tricks
So I am not sixty just today all alone.
There has been many Falls mixed with
nature and circumstance in my life
Due to which I had to buy Spring incessantly
And received many hardships in return
Each hardship had a finish with varied ends.
There were many plots hatched by me against my own self
I regretted but waited for the Spring to arrive
It knocked for the first time at my eleventh year.
So I am not sixty just today .
The blue heaven is spread like a large tent
Extended up to the seventh sky
Filled with the winds of ages.
There are many stakes fixed on the girdle of hill ranges
and peaks
As if this was the limit of the world.
Under the brownish green shade of tall coniferous pine trees
I could hardly save my childhood soaking wet in rain
I felt the heat for the first time in my body
As if I was burning under hot sun
On my sixtieth birthday
I am filled with the impatience of twenty
So I am not sixty just today.
The green minarets of growing cedar trees appear to me
Changing their form in towering mansions.
Like abode of Gods built on mountain slopes
I try to plant in future whatever was left by past
The jungle of yesteryears followed me in Rajasthan also
The century- old trees sent shivers into my body
Like trembles of wires.
Inspired by pricking songs of green thorny acacia bush
in the regions of
Kansli, Kotpootli, Pilani, Pushkar and Baggar
The camel in me learnt to eat thorns
while wading steps in the desert.
Here arrives the Spring nevertheless,
Now the Spring arrives at my Sixty like cumin seed in camels mouth.
So I am not sixty just today.
The flower tops colored in prolific impiety of betrayed austerity
Each shivering of stone on mountain is reflected in lake
I have preserved all missile-arrows of Love-God
To be greased and used later as
I have not reached my eighty yet.
The semen speaks from the top of my head in old age.
No interest being promised on seminal fluid and poems
It could not be retained in fixed deposit
Otherwise only interest could be used by me keeping the principal intact.
I faced many chapters of life
After the fifty-ninth chapter came the Spring in the grip of sixty.
So I am not sixty just today.
Now I realize when it is night outside
And when it is full day inside
Now it is seen when it is full day inside
and when it is all night outside
In darkness forest lie in rest with covered thighs
Its knees raised like high mountains,
The sky pressed close to the bosom of earth
stretching like deep night in the valley.
There is down pouring in the valley of night
filled with crackling sounds of daytime
Sometimes in the night storm
an afternoon-lust sails in the wind.
Then like flakes of fire,the tendrils of sunlight flame up in the bush
The spring ultimately drew close to be under sixty
that I feel I am not sixty just today.
The snow on hill tops down the slopes
where flowers on apple trees
Fall in the rivulet flowing below.
Some buds and shoots stay back
To save the grace of Spring.
The new leaves will learn to be wise
after suffering bruises on itself
to retain the glow of daytime colors even during nights
Like a flake of fire falling apart
Every shining star stood alone to beckon
Now came Spring close to sixty holding
roseum flower in its hand
But I am not sixty just today due to any flower.
On every fall during the past fifty-nine Autumns
Scurrying between village and towns
I saw many old oaks, cedars, teaks,rosewoods and mulberry trees,
standing like multi storied green fountains,
some five, some seven and some ten storied.
I saw more of them near Doiwalla throwing their shades
It is not only today that I bathed in this greenery
I am not sixty just today only.
Keeping the value of love on high stakes
I kept thinking like money players for fifty-nine years
Going on my beat to Jogiwalla
This is my sixtieth Spring flowering in Dehradun
.
Sixty years means- twenty-one thousand six hundred days
And twenty-one thousand six hundred nights
With equal number of sunrise and sunsets
Are spread like veins on the body of time
from the sea level to the height of mountaintops.
The nature of a forest- dweller flourishes in jungle only
The wild nature of Spring finds its joy of colors in the jungle only
In the glow of twain shines the urbanity of renunciation
The radiation coming from every atom has reached my eyes
The Spring has finally come to terms for my benefit.
A universal homeliness pervades in jungle only
It is not tamed by Spring.
In the wilderness of sixty years there is buoyancy of the natural Spring
which comes through roots and not by flight of birds
Betraying self-discipline the Spring loves to haunt
free jungles like freely wandering ascetics.
The Spring will risk its future many times with me.
Finally the spring has come so close to sixty
that it may give lead leaving sixty behind.
So I am not sixty just today
when somebody gave lead to me just toady
Or I trail behind just today.
-------------------------------------------
Translation into English by Govind Prasad Bahuguna
