The Golden Jubilee: Natapulu Debendra Smriti Vidyapith (Sonnet Sequence) Poem by Dipankar Sadhukhan

Sonnet I

In Nadia's fields, where emerald mornings lie,
A village woke to bells and birds in tune;
Green dawns would stoop to kiss the grasses dry,
While school-bells named each sparrow, leaf, and noon.
There stood a modest house of hope and chalk,
Where silence learned to speak through eager breath;
The earth itself would pause to hear us walk,
As youth rehearsed the alphabet of faith.
No marble crowned its gates, no banners flew,
Yet time itself grew literate inside;
Each dawn returned, instructed what to do,
And roots of thought sank deeper far and wide.
Thus learning bloomed where nature kept her trust,
A shrine built not of stone, but soil and dust.

Sonnet II

Once I and that young school stood side by side,
Two saplings leaning toward uncertain skies;
Our roots were tender, barely learned to bide,
Our faith a thin green thread of whispered tries.
The ledger called my name before the rest,
As dawn writes first upon the eastern page;
Straight as a vow, my presence there confessed
A boy apprenticed to his opening age.
We shared one soil, one sun, one fragile year,
The same shy wind that taught us how to stand;
Hope trembled in us both, yet held us near,
Two lives held fast by one believing land.
So youth and walls grew upward, leaf by leaf,
In mutual trust, unarmed against all grief.

Sonnet III

Now I have grown a tree with widened arms,
Instructed by the storms I could not flee;
I learned to offer shade, to shoulder harms,
To stand unmoved when lightning challenged me.
I lead another school, where futures rise,
Yet still that humble house my shadow keeps;
For it, now fifty years in measured sighs,
Breathes history where memory never sleeps.
Its corridors are veins where time has run,
Its blackboards moons where vanished seasons write;
What once was small now measures out the sun,
A breathing archive clothed in dust and light.
Thus teacher and taught exchange their roles,
And one shared root still nourishes two souls.

Sonnet IV

On January's twenty-eighth, behold—
Two thousand twenty-six shall softly ring
With golden years, where counted time is told
In leaves of joy that round the heart like spring.
Applause will loose the dust of childhood days,
As feet remember rhythms long at rest;
Song, dance, and voice shall raise their woven praise,
And memory ascend the listening chest.
Each clap a footstep back to vanished ground,
Each note a door flung open in the mind;
The past shall breathe again through living sound,
And find the present tender, not unkind.
This is no feast of noise, nor hollow cheer,
But time made flesh, and gratitude made clear.

Sonnet V

How many minds first flowered in that yard,
How many names learned courage as their aim;
Teachers and students, village, field, and bird
Together fed the wick of learning's flame.
No single hand sustained that growing fire,
But many palms arranged in patient trust;
The soil itself became a silent scribe,
Recording dreams in monsoon, chalk, and dust.
From this green forge emerged the tempered will,
That walked toward success with humble pace;
Each triumph bore the mark of shared goodwill,
Each path retained the village in its face.
Thus growth was plural, nourished by the whole,
A harvest sown in every seeking soul.

Sonnet VI

Some voices sleep beyond return or call,
Their echoes thinned into the air we breathe;
Yet absence teaches presence best of all,
And loss instructs the heart in how to grieve.
Others remain, their hair now winter-white,
Yet sunlight lingers in their tempered gaze;
Their silence holds a long remembered light,
Their words still lift the untrained weight of days.
Time does not steal—he only changes form,
What once was sound becomes enduring sense;
The vanished live wherever minds are warm,
And memory defies all final fence.
Thus those who taught us never wholly leave,
They walk with us wherever we believe.

Sonnet VII

O Gita Raha Halder—gentle guide,
Whose counsel aged into enduring law;
Though rest is earned, your wisdom does not hide,
But walks beside me, steady, clear, and raw.
You taught that life must keep its backbone straight,
That storms respect the spine that does not bow;
Your voice still shapes the measure of my gait,
Still asks of me the truth of 'why' and 'how.'
A teacher's work is never truly done,
For minds once lit continue bearing flame;
Your lessons travel farther than the sun,
Unbound by chalk, or time, or years, or name.
Wherever I stand firm against the gale,
Your unseen hand secures me without fail.

Sonnet VIII — The Leaving

Three and thirty years since last I went away,
Yet still that school refuses my farewell;
Its rooms convene within my thoughts each day,
Where green-built walls forever seem to dwell.
The windows open inward, not to past,
But to a present schooled by what has been;
Those classrooms still instruct me, holding fast
The grammar of becoming what I mean.
One never leaves the place that taught him sight,
Nor exits doors that shaped his earliest tread;
The mind keeps school long after final light
Has rung dismissal through the years we've fled.
Thus parting proves a fiction we invent—
The roots remain, though bodies are all sent.

Sonnet IX — Jubilee Defined

A jubilee is more than festive sound,
More than bright cloth and ceremonial cheer;
It is the child rediscovered, found
Reflected in a friend's remembered tear.
It is first error, bravely understood,
First courage tested on unsteady ground;
A second birth into remembered good,
Where lost beginnings circle back, unbound.
The mirror turns—old faces meet the young,
Time loosens knots it once appeared to tie;
What once was silent finds a grateful tongue,
And youth and age in one another lie.
This feast is time confessing what it gave,
And thanking those who taught it how to save.

Sonnet X — The Lesson

O Natapuli Debendra—sacred name,
You taught me how to walk through adverse days;
To meet resistance not with fear or blame,
But steady steps and forward-facing gaze.
You trained my will to read the darker text,
Where loss and doubt revise the soul's design;
You showed me how to ask the stubborn 'next, '
When hope seemed footnoted in smaller line.
The world grows harsh, but still your lesson stands:
That growth requires the courage to endure;
The strongest roots are shaped by unseen hands,
And storms refine the will they can't obscure.
Thus every trial becomes a further school,
And pain, when faced, an unexpected tool.

Sonnet XI

They shall arrive from near and distant lands,
Drawn by the gravity of faithful years;
Each face a witness time still understands,
Each voice a keeper of remembered tears.
In song they honor years once shared with care,
And read the ledgers time has softly kept;
Old vows awake, long lifted from thin air,
From promises that history has slept.
The ground attends as waiting feet stand still,
Recalling steps that ran where now they pause;
All paths converge by one instructed will,
And trace their source to learning's primal cause.
So gathering proves roots outlast all roam,
And every road remembers where is home.

Sonnet XII

Perhaps they too shall feel what I now know:
That coming here is learning how to start;
They'll stand as saplings where the shadows grow,
Beneath the banyan's wide, forgiving heart.
I, once a child, now shelter what I was,
A ring within the tree that time has grown;
The past stands living, not because it was,
But because care has made it still our own.
O school, receive this offering of years,
This gratitude distilled from leaf and bark;
May future roots drink wisdom without fears,
And stretch toward suns we cannot yet remark.
So growth continues, faithful, slow, and true—
The tree, the child, the school, forever new.

By Dipankar Sadhukhan
Kolkata, India
Copyrights@January23,2026.