Visitors at the Frankfurt Book Fair (AFP)

The waves never know the depth of/The sea...

The banks never know the length of/The river...

The blood never knows where lives/The heart...

With spring hailed into its embrace,

Winter lives on with a tiredness/Forever...

— Void by Megan Kachari

New Delhi, Nov. 1: When Ulfa publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary wove emotions into words in the confines of Guwahati jail, little did he imagine that they would be read in Europe.

Mithinga Daimary

In Melodies and Guns, edited and released by writer Mamoni Raisom Goswami at the Frankfurt Book Fair last month, 24 poems of the jailed rebel took his message of pain and loss across the seas as the words of Megan Kachari.

Goswami helped publish Daimary’s poems, drawing flak from some quarters and kudos from others. At the fair, Goswami presented the book to German writers and a few European publishers.

“Daimary is a young boy with pain and talent. So why not promote his poems? Now it is time for him and his organisation to return from guns to melodies,” she said.

The writer, who has been in touch with Ulfa commander-in-chief Paresh Barua, has met the family members of many of the rebels.

If the fresh efforts to restore peace in Assam succeed, the “void” may be filled and a likely reprieve from the “winter” could be achieved.

Goswami and fellow-mediator Rebati Phukan, who are trying to get the stalled peace process back on track, are scheduled to meet national security adviser M.K. Narayanan this week.

It will be Goswami’s first meeting with a government official after the Frankfurt visit. While the writer is respected for her erudition, her involvement in Daimary’s literary debut has ruffled a few feathers in the establishment.

“Many asked why a militant’s book should be released at an international event when I went there as an Indian representative,” Goswami said.

The people as well as the government should be sensitive to what a militant thinks, she said. Some of the poems, the writer felt, are extremely sensitive — a far cry from Daimary’s life as a militant.

His poems emerge from a background of social, political and personal turmoil and contain strong metaphors of freedom, pain and pessimism. In many of them, he talks of losing his family to the gun and the volatility of his native land.

As A Dream, translated from Assamese by Manjit Baruah, goes: A wildfire,...and the forest’s at stake/Tired birds will flap, in pain, into the air/And be vagabonds, once again...And the evil fire/Will devour the creepers/Nothing left green anymore./All’s over....

The UBS Publishers collection, translated jointly by Baruah and Pradeep Acharya and illustrated by Manik Pathak, has already hit bookshelves.