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After
completing her MA in English Literature from Jadavpur
University,Trina Nileena Banerjee proceeded to complete a
Masters of Studies (M St.) in
English at the University of Oxford on a Felix Scholarship. Her
specializations were Postcolonial Literature, British Modernism
and Feminism.
Writers Workshop published Trina's first book of poems *Inside A
Blue Corridor* in 2001.
She has been a freelance journalist since 2000, having written
for *The Statesman*, *The Asian Age* and *The Telegraph*. She
has written about theatre and performance theory for these
papers, as well as done numerous campus theatre reviews.
She also conceived and co-edited a fortnightly column called
*The Beat* for *The Statesman* about alternative artistic
expression about young people in the city, which ran for more
than a year (2002-2003). In 2006, she was invited to write for
the Sexuality issue of Infochange Agenda(India), where she wrote
on performance and the woman's body(published March, 2006).
She is currently a Doctoral Fellow at CSSS, Kolkata. Her thesis
title is: Performance,Autonomy and the Politics of the Marginal:
Women in the Group Theatre Movement in India (1950-2005).*
Trina is also a theatre performer and director, having worked
for more than ten years with Theatron; also performing in
plays staged by the Jadavpur University English Department and
other prominent Calcutta theatre groups. In 2003, she directed
her first production Tom Stoppard's *Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead (produced by Theatron). Here she explored
contemporary issues of identity, sexuality and the open market.
A production of Tennessee Williams' plays followed in early
2006. In August 2007, she directed Vijay Tendulkar's Mitrachi
Goshta in Bengali, once again for Theatron.
*
In 2005, her first film *Nisshabd* (directed by Jahar Kanungo,
where she plays the female lead) was screened at the 7th Osian
Film Festival in Delhi. Here she won the Best Actress Award in
the Indian Competition. *Nisshabd*has gone on to achieve wide
international acclaim - having been screened (or scheduled for
screening in the near future) at festivals in Pusan, Turkey,
Thailand, Dubai, Denver and other places*. Nisshabd* was also
screened at the Kolkata International Film Festival in November,
2005. Trina was invited as a delegate to the Dubai International
Film Festival in 2005 and to the Karachi International Film
Festival in 2006. In 2007, *Chinese Whispers* a
film by Raka Dutta, in which Trina played a rag-picker, was
selected as the only official Indian entry to the Cannes Film
Festival. This film also went to the Lisbon Film Festival in the
same year.
Before Morning,
Box after box of the sky filled the window.
Piled high, one upon the other, the stars shrivelled juiceless
Into the papered, quivering horizon.
They tore up her skin and found no
Vein to drive blood-love into.
No opening to the heart's arteries.
Even the longest way, up her circular lovehole,
Was plugged up.
There were mangoes, half eaten, on the table.
She made no bones about her hunger. One might even
Call her brave. To the end,
She held her vein-less wrist tightly with finger and thumb,
Hoping to find the source of the lost blood; and why black
Her juices flowed from the cavities and scattered stem-less
Roses of her body. In the midst
Of all this, you walked in
With a new box for the sky and plastered, smiling
Limbs for her walls. Her fingers trembled a little
While.
She would have told you it was too late
But the stars had shrivelled her voice.
Leaving
the Water
erasing what moment would mean
a white sound for this window pane
and light would fill what utter harmonious morning
when music meant we understood each other perfectly
every line i write you think 'there, that's about me'
she lives for me if she died she did did did for me
sometimes i turn my back to the window
and sit laughing with the wind on my neck
the wind is delicate soundless enveloping
severity and sharpness alike unlike so unlike
the grasping egotism of you *imagining understanding*
so full so clear so sparring bright lightly springing
with truth and evergreen with politics but really
really dear do you imagine do you imagine
do you imagine you touched what lies blooming
so hard and full between the walls the life made
and given every cycle of the moon that which i shed like
a garment from me and weave again every month red lips taut
against the texture of this skin the clarity of swarming
stillness
of quiet summer nights what have you understood
what *did you* understand i sit laughing amongst imaginary
daisies facing the window that sees me leaving the water
water that twists around the sand in my thighs
trying to keep me in keep me keep me intact
as a dream in your solitary room
limits my dearest thing are always fraught
meant to be stepped over crossed obliterated
erased made irrelevant forgotten like unetched stone
time sweetheart does it best
life is a limit like leaving the surface of some strange water
into decent clarity like the air like the delicate silent
laughing wind
at my throat wind that travels down my spine like quicksilver
and pauses quite suddenly at the base of some distant
mossed wall where unfamiliar insects crawl with life
severe
In the Toilet
Something's not right about the plumbing in this house,
something is not right. The cleaners stick and stick their
instruments into the clogged drains; but the pipes still
weep and sputter all night, choking
on something. I have crouched in the dark,
with my ear to the mossed surfaces, waiting
for something to burst. But even as the shower laughs
all over my breasts in the midnight heat, nothing happens
to brown the water. *But you can tell, you can tell *- even as
you stick your chin to your shoulder to keep the water
from laughing harder, *you can tell* there is that waiting
muck at the other end of the pores; that green and soft-bright
mossy longing that will not be digested. Murmurs like
the closed water of ancient childhood tubs at five,
at six, at seven and eight; in the dark bathing room
with the little light where you almost drowned
at seven and eight and nine and twelve with your little
breasts and your tiny new hair. Drowned, *really drowned,*
without breathing or hope; or you wouldn't have been
here today, fighting the cool shower's clear and
incessantly brittle sorry laughter.
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