Aju  Mukhopadhyay

Aju Mukhopadhyay, Pondicherry and Kolkata, India, is a bilingual award winning poet, author and critic; writes fictions, essays, features, travelogues and participates in other genres like Japanese short verses and many more.  Besides literature he is published as writer on animals, wildlife, Nature and Environment.  He has authored 34 books including 10 volumes of poetry in English and received several poetry awards from India and USA besides other honours.

He is a member by invitation of World Poetry Society. As World Poet he has contributed by invitation to Margutte (Italian); Poetas Del Mundo (Chile), Best Poems, Poetry Hunter, etc. His poems have been critiqued in large numbers of books and journals besides in more than two dozens of anthologies. He has contributed Japanese short verses to World Haiku Review, Akita International Haiku Network, Japan, Chrysanthemum, German, Atlas Poetica, Haiku Scotland, Poets International, Sketchbook, US, UHTS, US, Autumn Leaves and other poems to Syndic Literary Journal, US. THE SEVENTH QUARRY SWANSEA POETRY MAGAZINE, Wales, Creature Feature, Cyprus and in other national and international journals.  His Japanese short verses have been published mainly in international journals.

Some critics’opinion about his poetry are:

“Your unique way of describing the phenomenon of nature and particularly the very sensitive and keen observation of birds, insects, worms and animals, I think- this is a rare element- in the very writing of poetry- in any language so far. You have certainly become pioneer and path finder in this special aspect of minute observation of nature and the non human life around us. You have touched greater peaks in this respect- than Wordsworth, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, etc.” Syed Ameeruddin

 “The poems speak of the mystery of things in a profound way. The poet’s eye and ear are intensely tuned, so that image and sound are partners. Forest and garden, water and tundra, the images are vivid.” Patricia Prime

“The anthology also covers almost all gamut of human thoughts and emotions and serves as a sumptuous mental and emotional food for the entire literati all over the world; posterity will also surely remember him as a great poet.” Dr. Dalip Khetrapal     

“Indian romanticism in poetry has been initiated by Aju Mukhopadhyay but he has not confined himself to the mediaeval period of the Western romantics.” Dr. Poonam Dwivedi.

(Source- Critics on Aju Mukhopadhyay’s Poetry)

His short stories have been published in numbers of magazine and anthologies including Indo Austrilian Anthology of Short Storeis, Einfach Menschlich" (Simply Human), published by the German Language Department of the University of Mumbai, as one of the Indian Short stories and other anthologies and journals. There has been number of critiques on his short stories.  Earlier he won a prize for one of his short stories. He has published two volumes of short stories and one novel in English besides those in his mother tongue, Bengali.

He has written more than two hundred Essays for books and journals besides larger numbers of features in newspapers. As an essayist he received Albert Camus Centenary Writing Award, 2013. His essays and books contain such important subjects as Sri Aurobindo (Life, Philosophy and Literature), The Mother of Pondicherry, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sant Kabir, Albert Camus, Saadat Hasan Manto and among the lates writers and poets he has written number of essays on Mahasweta Devi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Khushwant Singh, Arundhati Roy, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; Rebirth of India and other essays and books on India, He has critiqued large numbers of contemporary poets of India besides such important subjects as Sufi and Bhakti Poetry, Devotional Poets of Modern India, Spiritual and Mystic Poets. On animals he has contributed mainly to Creature Feature, Cyprus. 

He is in the editorial advisory board of some important literary journals. Member of various Literary and Environmental organisations, he is a regular contributor to various magazines like the Bulletin of Ramakrishna Institute of Culture, Kolkata, Poetcrit, Contemporary Vibes and others. Among the latest ezines he contributes are, Episteme, Creation and Criticism, Creative Launcher, Langlit, Galaxy, Criterion, Research Chroicle and Research Innovator and quite some others.

He edited some literary regional magazines and Guest Edited the Indian issue of Twenty20 Journal from USA in August 2011. He was a member of the Research Board of Advisors of the American Biographical Institute. He has participated in 40 national and international conferences and festivals on poetry, literature and environment. He has been interviewed by some enthusiastic Scholars and Editors; published in magazines, websites and books. He has travelled across some important countries of Asia, Europe, North America and Africa. Many of his travelogues cover them. 

The Adivasi

The adventurers from Europe, with greed
For gold flashing in their eyes, swooped with guns
And swords like human hawks on unknown lands.
Columbus, ignorant of the earth�s size
Named them Indians, the Caribbeans, so they
Became, North and South Americans.
Columbus with Bahama Arawaks
And other tribes of Caribbean islands,
Cortes in Peru with the Incus,
The English settlers in America
With many tribes including the Pequots
And with many others in Australia
Following James Cook�s visit in the year
1770, so savagely
Behaved with all the unarmed innocent
Adivasis of the foreign lands who welcomed them,
That made them ride the rough roller coasters
To embrace sudden death and devastation.
Original Americans were pushed
From eastern Atlantic to the western
Pacific for burial in the ocean.
A �Creek� man of more than 100 years old
With deep sigh about colonizers told
In about 1829-
�When he first came over the wide waters
he was but a little man . . . . His legs were cramped
by sitting long in his big boat and he
begged for a little land to light his fire on . . . .
But when the white man had [so] warmed himself
before the Indian�s fire and filled himself
with their hominy, [he] became very large.�
A chief of �Black Hawk� tribe delivered speech
In 1832 while surrendering-
�They poisoned us by their touch . . . . we lived in
danger. We were becoming like them, liars
and hypocrites, adulterous, lazy
drones, all takers and no workers.�

Not only all wealth of the land besides gold
They besieged, African humans they sold
Who survived after the immense torture
As slave, to be branded with on breast bare
Red-hot iron, imprinting the owner�s sign.
Before colonizers sucked Indian wealth
Barbarous invaders massacred it.
All such indigenous human beings
Who were so devastated, sold and killed
Were cultured and civilized, lived fulfilled.

It was time for aggression and settlement,
For crude and scientific development.
All such broils overlooked, turmoil forgotten,
In air-conditioned room with push-button
Comfort, secured by atomic weapons
Surrounded by all high walled constructions
A soft-spoken sophisticated man sits;
He is the epitome of high culture.
In an age of tense globalization
All are concerned about prosperity
Forgetting all past political feud
How over the corpses of tribes wealth made
In socialist, capitalist countries-
But still some misguided terrorists shine
To be handled properly and quelled in time.

Nothing has stopped, nothing goes unhindered
Old world of exploitation marches on-
Extracting wealth from the bowl of earth, sea
And sky for prosperity, industry;
The old incorrigible, superstitious
Adivasis are still reluctant to
Be evicted. They remain misguided.
They do not yield even after threatening,
Conversion and brainwashing: The Rotters.
But they had their civilization, they
Have culture and tradition, they defy
Globalization: their war rages throughout
The globe; Oil-Timber-War around Peru,
Amazonian Rainforest, Niger-Delta;
Mine-War spreads in Papua-Indonesia,
Phillipines, Niyamagiri hills, India-
In Chhatisgarh, Jungle Mahal, Anantapur
There, in Yanomami land, Brazil and
Manywhere. It seems a desperate strike
By organized forces is imminent
The sons of the soils to eliminate-
From the face of the earth, water and sky.

They are really helpless, misguided, they
Hold on to any discredited lot
Take to arms to survive in their plight.

A recent photograph in a newspaper-
Body of a young girl, died in combat
Carried in a bamboo pole by killers-
Inspired a similar scene to get flashed
In memory- it was the corpse of a
Wild boar hunted for community feast.
It is ugly to ogle at jarawas,
Oldest Andamanese , like beast in cage.
To declare �International Day of
World�s Indigenous people� by the highest
World-body is nothing but puffed up farce.

It is a clash between civilisations:
Industrial-technological, man-made
Against agricultural, forest-bred.
Globalization cannot destroy all;
Environment, ecology, human.
None can evict them, throw them into sea
What has happened is a stain on human glory.
People regret now as the last speaker of
�Bo� language dies or rejoice when a
New-born is added to Onge tribe.

Advasis were the first born on earth
They have the first claim on it before us,
Modern civilized. They live in Nature-
Forest and hills, rivers and animals.
Everything cannot be exploited, used.
If they must be removed for any project
They must agree, must be compensated.
Be aware man, awake; Honour Nature
To be honoured by it, to live better.

� Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2010

The Uncivilised

Uighur, a nomadic pastoral tribe
of Turkish origin in Xinjiang,
find it difficult to survive
squeezed out by the Han Chinese
introduced just for this
as was shifted the Ethnic Chinese
to kill the culture, depopulate, destabilise
the peaceful Tibetan Buddhist race;
this was the technique of red-rebellion
of killing and degrading men by brewing poison
of jealousy, hatred and strife among them.

Creating tourism and villa in the land of Jarawas
leads to the extinction of the aboriginals
for they cannot survive the touch of the civilians-
so keen they are to sip only their cup of tea
destroying others� dignity.

Wherever minerals, oil or woodland treasures are found
the greedy run to acquire the wealth profound
extinguishing the pristine flora and fauna
and the indigenous people, Nature-bound;
in Amazonian, Peruvian forests, hilly belts in India
in Indonesia, Philippines, Canada and Africa.

Moving into galaxies, to the north and south poles
plundering the reserves of the earth and heaven
men feel victorious but the soil they stand on shifts
for their pollutive role in human lives;
that men become pollutants, we are not surprised
that civilised people are the most uncivilised.

� Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2009

What Peace is Like

Peace is like the early rays of the Sun,
slightly auburn, spreading on the eastern sky.
Peace is like the mild setting Sun, sure of its return,
splashing colours on the western sky.
Peace is like the rising full moon, bright in its orb,
from above the rows of giant palm trees.
Peace is like the resting of the elephants
in a sward before the promised sunrise.
Peace is like the birth of an arc-rainbow
after the gale and copious rain.
Peace is like a sleeping pregnant cat
on top of the hay stacked in a burn.
Peace is like the child�s sucking sound
from the round breast of its mother.
Peace is like the deep silence of the wood
pregnant with promises near.
Peace is like the concurrent rain
spreading across the vale and dale.
Peace is like the trustful pacing of the child
holding his father�s finger top with nail.
Peace is love, Peace is smile
Peace is fragrance of the flower.
Peace is faithful surrender to the Divine
Peace is enchanting shower.
Peace has its last resort away from the earthly bower
in the Nirvanic void;
beyond the domain of science, history or logic
even as it baffles the ideas of Freud.
Peace is love, Peace is smile
Let the true Peace spread
Let this not be fragile.

� Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2008

At the river bank

And quiet flows the river
without a ripple or shiver
trees stand windless
not even a whiff in space
no leaf shakes, no sound;
fishes are sleeping
sweating fishermen around
have lost all zeal
in the act of rowing;
their boats stand still.
Stilled water looks like a mirror
naked boy in it looks at his figure.
The world without a name
halts at the bank of the river
no one knows when it came
none knows if it was there.

� Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2009
8, Cheir Lodi Street, Pondicherry-605001
ajum24@gmail.com and

Stars in Space

Aren't we on earth
floating in a multiverse
in space infinite
with stars in oodles numbers?
Look within!
Stars are blooming and dying-
constantly.

� Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2008

Structural Violence

Ten proud faces beamed
in the slave media:
World's richest chairmen of companies-
all worth several billion $
arranged in descending order.
The same media on the same day
while the Sun shines to make hay,
published stories
of the bizarre mud cookies
doing the rounds among the poor kiddies
and others, desperate to stave off hunger in Haiti:
'when my mother does not cook any thing',
says a poor sibling,
'I eat them 3 times a day.'
Rickety, they die in hundreds
as in Africa, exploited for years, degraded.

In a computerized world
with a technological hype and commercial fair
with explicit understanding among the players
to exclusively exploit the market share,
to speculate in the share market;
degrading the earth, water and sky
enjoying the resources everywhere
the successful ones are always victorious.

Is it not a structural violence
against the na�ve, innocent children of the earth?
Shall we offer hurrah to the rich for their mirth?
Beg on behalf of the poor for their munificence?
Does the whole structure not require
overhauling or demolition with fire
to rebuild a new structure for all?

� Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2008

biografia:

Aju Mukhopadhyay, the poet, author and critic, is a bilingual writer of fiction and essays too. He has written 12 books in Bangla and 14 in English. He has received several poetry awards besides other honours.
His works have been recognized by various national and international institutions. Many of his works have been translated in other languages and anthologised. He is a regular contributor of Haiku, Tanka and related works to various magazines and e-zines in India and elsewhere.
Conservation of Nature and Environment is the watchword of his life.

ajum24@gmail.com