Prothom Alo at 18

Prothom Alo is 18 today (Friday, 4 November 2016) and we celebrate the spirit of the age, of youth, and of all that is new. Perhaps no one could quite capture this spirit as did Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharaya in his poem Atharo Bochhor Boyosh, presented here in translation:

The Age of Eighteen

Sukanta Bhattacharya

The age of eighteen, with amazing audacity

Dares to rise up to the skies,

It’s at eighteen with such alacrity

The fearsome fearless ever rise.

The age of eighteen knows no fears

Crushing stone walls beneath its feet,

The age of eighteen knows no tears -

Never bowing down in defeat.

Of blood’s pure sanctity, this age is aware,

Caught in the vortex of death and life,

Like a vessel speeding in a burst of air,

Committing its soul amid this strife.

The age of eighteen is all so daunting

Fresh young lives brimming with pain,

Life at this age is intense and haunting

And suffering is its constant refrain.

The age of eighteen is daring and deadly

Stirring up storms wherever it goes,

It’s a struggle to keep stable and steady,

Inflicting lives with wounds and woes.

The age of eighteen hurts everywhere

The sufferings always accumulating,

This age is sated with sighs of despair,

This age with pain is pulsating.

Yet at eighteen I hear victory’s call,

It lives on in tempest and storms,

In danger it comes ahead of all,

Grasping the new, beyond the norms.

This is not an age of fright or fear

It never pauses in trepidation,

Bereft of cowardice it is present here,

Let eighteen descend upon this nation.

The poem is translated by Ayesha Kabir