A poem Not To Forget…
Love and separation, both are painful. The long wait, the hope that keeps you alive. The purity of one’s love reflected in every gesture. The body and mind given up to that one person.
Nakshi Kanthar Math or The Field Of The Embroidered Quilt is a poem written in verse explaining the love and separation of two young hearts. Born in Bengal, I am proud to claim that my land has forever been a home of poets. From Rabindra Nath Tagore to many others have brought Bengal in the book of the world. Nakshi Kanthar Math is a tragic poem and is considered one of the most tragic verse in bengal’s history of poems.
The verse speaks the story of a young poor peasant named Rupai and the daughter of another peasant from neighboring village Saju. They fall in the ocean of endless love, breaks all hurdles of life and eventually gets married. But as it is always said that every fairytale does not have a happy ending. Their too did not. Happy in their tremendous love yet separated in the end.
Due to a terrible quarrel and fight with the peasants from another village Rupai had to flee from the place. Saju, his young wife was left all alone. She kept waiting for her husband. Days passed by, he did not return. She does not know whether the love of her life is alive or dead. Still she keeps waiting. Time passes, he returns not. Saju is tired. All her hopes fall apart. Maybe Rupai will no longer return to his beloved. Maybe he is there no more. Maybe she has to live with all the memories left behind of their happy times. She does so. She starts weaving a quilt, weaving all her grief in the cloth. There she writes all the sad incidents and tragedies. Gradually the quilt or the “Nakshi Kantha” becomes the story of their love and separation. It reflects her pain. It contains their memories. Rupai may not return anymore, but he will stay immortal through her story.
More days pass by, Rupai is still not back. There is no hope left for his return. In the end Saju dies. But before she leaves forever, she asks her mother to cover her grave with the quilt which speaks the story of her love. Her mother does accordingly and since then the field gets it’s name “Nakshi Kanthar Math” or The Field Of The Embroidered Quilt.
Tragic though the end might be, it touches the hearts of all. Their story could not be completed but stays forever in her Nakshi Kantha. Rupai and Saju becomes immortal through the verse of the story. Their immortal love could not be destroyed even generations after their separation and death. Rupai did not return. He probably had died but stays within Saju forever.
A Beginner's Dream 