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Guns and roses

Indira Goswami has edited "Melodies and Guns", a book of poems by the jailed ULFA militant, Megan Kachari. The multi-faceted writer relates the background to SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY

PHOTO: ANU PUSHKARNA

MAY PEACE RULE Author Indira Goswami at her New Delhi residence

Let us go, where lies the end
Of the end of this universe,
A beginning,
Away, far away...

Confuse not. These are no lines of a perturbed lover craving for a life in Utopia with his beloved, far away from the cuffs of convention.

Megan Kachari's poetry reflects the mind of a man with a gun, and with a throbbing heart. Known to the world as the publicity secretary of the militant outfit, the United Liberation Front of Asom, Mithingga Daimary has another name: Megan. That is since the early 1990s when he turned a poet. A life led in deprivation and disparity in Barama, a hamlet in Nalbari district of Assam, though, had named him Jatin Das, way back, on May 17, 1967.

With many names, with many memories of a family eliminated in secret killings, with many episodes of a life led in hiding, with hopes of living one day in an idyllic `janambhoomi', Megan's poetry has that blend of guns and roses, of aches and joys, of belief and distrust, of loss and gain. His collection of poetry published in Assamese, "Memsahib Prithibi", now translated into English as "Melodies and Guns" by UBSPD, and released by acclaimed Assamese author Indira Goswami at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair, catches the eye for its fearlessness and spontaneity. "Even at the Fair, those who knew the background, showed a lot of interest," says Indira Goswami, while showing a still of author Amitava Ghosh holding the book for a photo-op at the Fair. To add to the importance, Megan's release is one of ULFA's conditions for resuming peace talks with the Government.

But far away from foreign shores, Megan, in Guwahati Jail since 2003 after he was caught in Operation All Clear on the Bhutan border, "is happy about the book's release."

"He has written a letter to me about it though I am yet to receive it," says the Delhi-based Jnanpith awardee. She has edited the book and the poems are translated by Pradip Acharya, a professor from Cotton College, Guwahati, and Manjeet Baruah, a PhD scholar from Delhi University.

Goswami says she first met Megan at the jail as she has been involved in peace negotiations between the Government and ULFA. "He reminded me of the young actors in a British play," she remarks. Though she had read his poems in Assamese, she had no idea that he was the same person.

"He was so shy," she says. So shy that a friend had to relate to her the story behind his capture. "While at the camp, he had a few birds as pets. On the night of the crackdown, when everyone was fleeing, he wanted to take them with him. On finding them asleep, he waited for them to wake up, but it was too late," she relates. Goswami calls him a humanist and cites the reason she became a part of the book: "It is an important book, not only for Assamese literature but for recent Indian literature too, where a militant-poet's collection does not exist."

Goswami's books

The Frankfurt Fair also saw the release of Goswami's book of poems, "The Pain and the Flesh", dedicated to V.S. Naipaul, and "The Man from Chinnamasta", a novel. She was once complimented by Naipaul as "the most beautiful woman", and you wonder if that is the reason why she dedicates her book to the Nobel laureate. She says no.

"Most of my books are about debenture labourers and I always thought that Naipaul belonged to that class of people. I visited his now-abandoned house on the side of the Atlantic in Port of Spain. As I was touching the walls with only the hammering waves of the sea for company, I felt as if a hand had touched me. Long after that, when I first met Naipaul at a literary meet in Delhi, I told him, that day you came to the house," she relates.

Certain things, you know, have no logic. Or else, a gun-totting Megan would not have been a poet.

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