Rebel with a Pause

What is ULFA leader Mithinga Daimary8217;s poetry doing at the India-focused Frankfurt Book Fair?

WHAT does a senior ULFA leader like Mithinga Daimary do when he is not toting his gun or drafting media releases as the central publicity secretary of the underground outfit? Well, he writes poetry.

That may not be unusual by itself: After all, protest and poetry are known to be comfortable bed-fellows. But in possibly a first, the underground rebel8217;s poetry will be available this October at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where India happens to be the 8216;Guest of Honour8217; country for special focus on Indian literature and books on and from India.

Daimary8217;s real name is Dipak Das. But when he sits down to pen his poetry, he transforms into Megon Kachari, an alias that has already won some recognition in Assam8217;s poetry circles over about a decade. Despite being on the run over the past two decades, he has had two anthologies of Assamese language poetry8212;Memsahib Prithivi and Rupor Naakphool Sonar Kharu8212;published; his poetry also appears occasionally in magazines and literary supplements of local papers.

Daimary, 43, who has been the central publicity secretary for the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam since 1992, has been in jail ever since the Royal Bhutanese Army handed him over to the Indian authorities following Operation All-Clear in December 2003, when it flushed out Indian militants from the Himalayan country.

HE has the makings of a poet. But more important is that he is sincere in his feelings and protest,8221; says Pradip Acharya, well-known critic, writer and translator, who has translated most of the poems into English in this collection titled Melodies and the Guns..

Consider, for example, this poem, which originally appeared in Memsahib Prithivi: 8220;O8217; you king8217;s men, O8217; you loyal servants/Flog me as much as you can/ But I will continue to speak/It is very difficult to bear such insult.8221;

Some of the tragedy that emanates from the poet8217;s pen has roots in a ghastly incident in which unidentified assassins gunned down Mithinga8217;s brother, sister, sister-in-law and mother in August 2000. The slaughter definitely affected him very deeply.

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The poet in Daimary is definitely inborn, says journalist Dileep Chandan, pointing out that his elder brother Dharanidhar Das was also a person with literary bent and was secretary of the Assam Sahitya Sabha8217;s Nalbari district unit.

Melodies and the Guns is being published by UBSPD, a well-known Delhi-based publishing house, while renowned Assamese author and Jnanpith awardee Indira Goswami is writing an introduction for the collection. Goswami met Daimary in the Guwahati jail during her efforts to bring the ULFA and the government closer to negotiations, and it was then that she was struck by the wonderful poetry that he wrote.

8220;I was deeply moved by his imagination, expression as well as the selection of words,8221; says Goswami, who is herself working on a novel spun around the ULFA. 8220;Mithinga8217;s poems are very different. They bear the smell of the gunpowder but, at the same time, express great love for humanity. They certainly evoke a strange feeling.8221;