Rhymania is an old affliction with me. I am told told we learn to rhyme much before we manage to deliver sophisticated prose. There is no good reason to disbelieve the axiom, if I were to go by personal example. With yet another calender year approaching, and the prospects of my becoming famous or notorious remaining equally dim, I propose to inflict you with some more self-indulgence, as if you are not saturated already. Here goes an eight line summary of my life and attitude. Happy new year in advance everyone. May you all make yourselves happy and smiling the way you want others to make you happy and smiling.
Here's another song in my clumsy translation. This one is slighltly more untranslatable than the earlier two. That is for the simple reason that this is a Chandrabindu song. I have been living out of Bengal for far too long to sense properly their popularity but I must confess right away that these guys write great lyrics. All their lyrics are witty and sensitive at the same time, a combination I started to feel the Bengalis had lost forever before I came across Chandrabindu a year and a half ago. In terms of tunes alone, they are not the best thing to have happened to Bengali music in the last century. When it comes to lyrics,however, they are right up there with the very best. This particular piece is a soft, lilting ballad called Eita Tomar Gaan or This is your song. You will get many versions of this song all over the net. Therefore, I have not bothered to attach a link. The following is my translated version. As usual, I'll feel good if you like it. If you don't, I'll try again or wait for your translation. Better still, we'll both enjoy the lyrics anyway.
Your song
This one’s for you dear, you skim in Like moonbeams during power cuts, in the din, like dollops of sunny rays bathing my room I open windows, just out of a fever, you loom.
Waters deep down, crystal clear, of the lake over there, Reflecting the happy rays, On lazy Holidays, sparkles so calming, I gift you this soft, little leaf, Wrapped so tenderly by this red sheaf, This scrapbook of mine, here.
This one’s for you, you the tender Ache on lips only just unlocked, you are The lone little bird, lost in thought, Before the deep-unfurling waters, caught Unawares; Let me gift you the warmth Of caressing this romance of leisure
This is your song, for I send you mate smell of your sari whipping the rainlashes wet, thirsty cloudlets suckling in pleasure, I stand satiated, no more tunes to set.
Tagore is therapeutic to most Bengalis and I am no exception. I have been listening to many Tagore songs lately, and they help me cope in general. This particular one, and I am attaching the link below, I have been very carefully listening for the past few days and trying to understand. Needless to say, each session is opening out new heights and depths. I think this is the best possible version of the song and I suppose you'd like it too, in case you have not heard this version already.
As has become my wont in recent months, I diffidently attempted a translation. There are a few versions available on the net but they are all uniformly verbose. I am aware of the Sahitya Academy trnslations but have not read them. I am sure they are going to be less syrupy than these amateur versions on the net. Anyway, here goes my version. Read if you like. Or skip if it does not interest you. I had fun doing it and that is good enough for me.
Shudhu Jaoa Asa
Merely keeping to the flow, Back and forth, Day and night, In happiness and sorrow.
Merely a glance, Or a caress, a warm embrace, That last, craving look, Eyes moist, that trance, Then lets off the hook More daring wishes, Leaving by the wayside, This one little chance.
Dreams so many, but with wings Clipped, even sincere efforts see ends undercut. A broken, lone, boat Amid the vast sea float, Emotions voices seek, attempt, struggle, turn meek.
Hearts, with tales still untold, The tryst not climaxed yet, Grope, in fear and anticipation old, For hope; love only in half they get.
I must begin with a disaclaimer. Searing honsety and absolute fealty to truth under all circuamstances are not my forte. I go by the axiom that rules must be followed unless you see others breaking them blantantly, and truth must be ahhered to unless it seriously impedes a positive and desirable outcome, individually as well as collectively. That is why I find myself somewhat uncomfortable with the moral position, far too often taken in public debates, that you cannot criticize anyone if you yourself have once committed anologous mistakes. I think this is a hideously arrogant ploy on the part of opinion leaders to maintain their monopoly, and deny new, more robust voices an adequate platform. Therefore, I begin with thanking the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who once famously said that every saint has a past and every sinner a future. The following is a story of an encounter between me and a couple of other men I met yesterday at New Delhi Railway station. I begin with a description of the circumstances under which we met and then proceed to raise some questions and conclude with a reaffirmation of my faith in the system. I believe that if the system has not worked to our satisfaction, it his because we have failed to make it work. Correspondingly, if it is to work successfully, it is us who must come forward and contribute our bit, faithfully and regularly.
I had to drop a friend to the New Delhi station in time for him to board the Howrah Rajdhani express which leaves at five in the evening. We left campus at three thrity and by regular standrads would have reached the station by fifteen past four. I know these calculations well because I have myself boarded this particular train several times in the recent past.
Yesterday, however, turned out to be an irregular day. It was the birthday of Indira Gandhi, one of our former Prime Ministers, and since the party to which she belonged is in power now, many of her devotees who also happen to be important minsiters, fanned out in all directions to garland her statues and sing her praises in public all over the city. These leaders must not be faulted, for the constutitution of almost all political parties in India is such that if they don't do this, they stand to lose their power and authority. Now since these eminences cannot travel alone as their lives as ministers are deemed more valuable than yours or mine. They are therefore protected round the clock by a mighty entourage of vehicles and armed personnel of various levels of competence. A solitary entourage of this sort is good enough to block the traffic of all the roads it travels through for several minutes and yesterday we have had several of them on the road, all along the day, non stop. Together, they nearly brought the city to halt, and kept it that way.
If that was not bad enough, some other political leaders, ones who belong to other parties, had chosen to organize their own party. They had felt that the present government has not been doing much to improve the lot of peasants, especially the sugarcane farmers. They called upon the sugarcane farmers from various corners of the country to descend upon the streets of the capital and shout slogans, in order possibly to make their resentments pierce the eardrums of the deaf government. It is appropriate, these opposition leaders worked out, that such a grand show of their strength is staged on the birth anniversary of the second tallest leader ever of the ruling party.
There we ordinary mortals were then, sandwitched between the devil and the deep sea. Mercifully, we had hired the services of a most spirited youthful autorickshaw driver. He said he had been driving autos for the past twelve years, ever since he wrote his school final examinations at fifteen, and swore that he would somehow take us to the station by five. He moved in and out of several alleys and bylanes, braved at least eight roadblocks, and somehow made it to the station with exactly five minutes to spare.
Now Howrah Rajdhani departs from platform number eleven and the heroic autorickshaw driver had dropped us at the entrance of the Ajmeri Gate side of the station. Those familiar with the architecture of the station would know that we still had at least three to four minutes of full fledged running ahead of us, apart from the climb up the stairs. This was, in short, an emergency, and between three of us, we had to carry four reasonably heavy suitcases and travelbags.
We did make it to the right compartment, with only about twenty odd seconds left for the train to whistle off. It is on our way back that we, that is, a junior and I, were intercepted by these two gentlemen. More on the meeting will follow.
This is going to be a note partly on popular history and partly on popular politics. Let me correct myself at the outset and replace the term popular with populist. I shall present an incident that has happened yesterday and present, through making some observations on its coverage in the media, a critique of both populist history and populist politics in as practiced in india today. Broadly speaking, it is also a commentary on the irresponsibility of the media, both print and electronic.
Earlier this morning I had been listening to a programme in the most popular FM radio channel in New Delhi. This programme, to give the devil his due, generally airs good songs, interspersed by mostly mindless remarks by its two presenters. It so happened today that they flew into a rage about the hijacking of a Delhi bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani express by a band of bow and arrow wielding traibals near Jhargram in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, admittedly a stronghold of Maoists.
They compared this episode with the Kakory conspiracy case, where Bhagat Singh and his associates waylaid a train carrying huge amounts of money collected from people as revenues to the state, and made off with a few iron chests conatining substantial cash. They said that this latter act was one of great patriotism and must not be confused with the dastardly conduct of these unpatriotic tribals who persecute their own people. They kept harping on this diffrenece, invoking 'nationalism' and 'patriotism' to sanctify and distinguish one robbery from another. I was struck by this simple equation of nationalism and patriotism. Even in Hindi they have two separate words for these two terms-jatiyatawad/rashtriyatawad and deshbhakti respectively. I know for a fact that practically all decent schoolteachers do spell out the conceptual difference between them with care. May be you go to a different school to become the most popular deejays in Delhi. I wonder how you can annoint Gandhi the father of your nation and in the same breath rationalize a violent train robbery. More importantly, how do you call one train robbery a protest and another a robbery, especially when both are admittedly targetted against the perceived atrocities of an arguably arbitrary state? Is the so called analytical difference then tethered only to the seats of power and authority? If you happen to belong to the ruling class, then protesters are train robbers and if you do not belong to the ruling class, then train robbers are protesters. Are we going to ask our people to consume this simple a potion?
This is a rhetorical question, but one whose time has come. My question therefore is how we are going to resolve this central methodological contradiction of Indian nation state sponsored nationalism. It appears as though this debate has already been decided by everyone except yokels like yours truly. Don't just think about it, the preachers appear to scream, aren't we paid to teach you the right thing after all?
The deejays then proceeded, I think rightly so, to an impromptu quiz question, asking the audience to name the place where this great train robbery took place. As a clue, they said that a certain kind of kebabs are named after this place. I was very closely attending to their intersting chitchats, and trying to follow the kind of popular nationalist narrative that they were evidently trying to construct and wanted their their listeners to consume.
What is this narrative like? It implies, to exapnd on the point I made above, that robbing a train is good if it is carrying money to be used for the benefit of foreigners in a narrowly ethnic sense. Correspondigly, it demands that no means of public transport, least of all Rajdhani expresses and aeroplanes, may be halted for any reason whatsoever as long as it carries people belonging to the same nation-state as the protesters.
It is time to spoil this juvenile party now. What exactly does this uncritical and uninformed celebration of ethnic nationalism mean to communicate to its peddlers and consumers? This idea of nationalism is precisely what the ruling classes of the post independence Indian nation state wish its 'citizens' to obey without question. Do please read Indivar Kamtekar's wonderfully penetrating piece 'the Fables of Nationalism' if you want to know more. I have neither his elegant language nor his disarming candour and so would stop short of giving you a summary unless you have failed to locate the piece.
To everyone who bothers to read nonsensewares, I have a simple request. Please take some time out to think about this issue. It is an issue that has profound implications on the ongoing debate about the role of history in our life and conduct. Of late I have been observing an alrming trend among our youths to pay no heed to history. They think history is a chain with which we are handcuffed, as Salman Rushdie memorably wrote long ago. In this confusion some clerver people and commentators have spotted an opportunity to make quick bucks, posing as readymade retailers of populist history. The two smart rjays are probably unwitting victims of this lifestyle disease but its more glamourous victims include some of the most famous and readable contemporary non fiction prose writers in this country. These latter write more often for popular media, dishing out wonderfully uncomplicated versions of what they ordain as history. They can afford to do so, for they write lucid prose, lit up by smart metaphors and even smarter turns of phrase.I admire their prose, spellbound by its ironic blend of linguistic mastery and average scholarship. In this day and age of packaging, substance has been forced to take a backseat, if not altogether unseated. I live with the hope that this too shall pass, and I shall live to see a brighter tomorrow.
Anger and hatred do not come to me very easily. This is one of the major reasons of whatever little good I have done in life and also of the failures that I have successfully accomplished. I believe anger makes one lose one's sense of proportion and commit mistakes. Since I cannot handle anger, I normally stay away from it.
Anger, like atom bomb, is more effective when it is a potential. Others must somehow be made to see that you might just get angry someday. It is the threat that even a quiet chap can sometime fly off the handle that brings people around. But this resource must not be abused, and used very very sparingly. What is the need to burst up in flames when a firm stare or a wave of hand can do?
It worked today. A senior who normally works under another senior got a chance to officiate for a while. This officiting senior promptly got down to showing everybody who the new boss is, for the time being, that is. I was instructed, in the name of a very senior official, to carry out a task that is normally reserved for some other, specific, individuals, none of whom was absent. In response, I tried to reason but was repreatedly told that the instruction came from this other senior person.
Now till a year or two ago I used to take all this lying down since I had this fear of losing such as losing money, losing face and so on. These days I have stopped bothering about such profound things since I know that these things are only partly determined by my actions, no matter how much sincerity I invest in performing them.
Things have changed since. Once I saw that reasoning with this person won't take me very far, I decided to the next logical thing. This was a bit of a bold decision because this other senior is pretty high up in the pecking order. Fortunately, I had no problem in reching this senior's office and securing an appointment. This was in itself a matter of some chance but the lady luck was in my favour this time. On being asked politely whether my senior was directed by by him to ask me to do someone else's job, he flatly replied that he had no knowldge of this fiat and that he would be fine if I continued doing the jobs normally allotted to me. He was in fact generous enough to offer to give my immediate senior a piece of his mind on this issue. But I had no intention to pick up a fight with anyone, least of all with an immediate senior.
Clear in my head and no longer angry at receiving an arbitrary order from someone who I think does not know how to handle authority very well, I politely approached the colleagues who normally handle the job concerened, suggesting them to conitnue with the present arrangemnt till further orders from above.
I strongly feel my immediate senior should not have dragged this super senior official into such a small affair as asking a junior to do a job that's slightly unfit for him. Does this mean that this senior actually knew that the idea was not exactly above board? May be that is why it was felt necessary to invoke the authority of a super senior, to preempt any protest from my side, that is. I am not writing this to show the public my fiery conscience and all that. Rubbish. I know who I am and I don't want public support or opprobrium, thank you very much. But I liked the way I was able to channelize my anger into the something not so deplorable, if not constructive. I have to thank my immediate colleagues who sensed at once that I was getting disoriented and took me out for a cup of tea and spoke to me softly, quietining me down. They have never seen me angry and they did not like what they saw. I know only too well that I cannot manage anger. That is why I just dread it. It unsettles you majorly. Today, however, I learnt a crucial lesson. If people around you offer a little help and you are able to channelize it into the right directions, anger often proves productive in very interesting ways.
A good friend of mine, who researches sports culture, had been asking me, for the past few weeks, to translate a rather famous Bengali song for him. He intends to use the translated version in one of his forthcoming papers. This is one friend who has known me since I was a lanky middle school student in the very late eighties and very early nineties, barring a gap of about eight years in between. Therefore, he is fully aware of my procrastinating nature and patiently persisted with me. The idea of translating this small lyric into English remained in my mind, as all ideas I work with do, waiting for the right moment to push other ideas to the background and shove itself forward, so as to get itself an appropriate expression at an appropriate moment. It so turned out that this morning I suddenly felt an urge to complete this pending task. I am satisfied with the end product to the extent I should be. Students of translation would know that it is not an easy job. I am not given to self trumpeting as a matter of course but do like to share my work those whose opinion I value. Since I know for sure that very few actually read this blog and I personally know most of them, I do not mind submitting this little piece to their judgement. Do please read the Bengali original first and then my translation that will follow. The song is far too well known to the Bengalis for me to introduce it to them again. The non-Bengalis, on the other hand, should first read the translation without any introduction. If the translation is good, they will certainly sense the cultural capital invested into this particular song and will themselves find out more about it. Read on.
Bangalir Football
Gnutognuti Rugby noi, Taas Bidi Kheye Somoy Katano noi,
E Khelai nei gynarakol,
Sob Khelar Sera Bangalir Tumi Football!
Aha Ki Modhu ache oi tomar namete bawa Football!
Aha Ki Modhu ache oi tomar namete aha Football!
Tomake lathai roj boot pora koto pa,
Eto lathi khao tobu mukhe kichu bolo na,
Pude maro roddure, kaadaa maakho boroshai,
Tobu phule phnepe thaako awbichawl,
Sob khelar sera Bangalir tumi Football,
Jibone Marane paye paye achho football.
Adhaisho Bochhorer jamidari Ghuche giye
desh chhere paliyeche ingrej,
nokh daant bhanga ek briddho singho se je,
nei tar jari juri nei tej,
tobu maante to badha nei, sei to sekhalo ei football,
tari daulate naam amar hoeyeche Mohun Bagan East Bengal.
Aha ki modhu ache oi tomar namete bawa football!
Aha ki Modhu ache oi tomar namete aha Football!
Sob khelar sera Bangalir tumi Football.
Jaar goal e jao tumi tar buke pore baaj,
Jaar hoye goal koro se je hoi moharaaj,
Rock-e rock-e jhawgra, ghore ghore divorce,
Ilishe ghoti-te Rosatol,
Sob khelar sera Bangalir tumi Football.
The Bengali’s Football
Not brawling as in Rugby,
nor wasting time as in cards or smoking,
There’s no baseness involved in this noble sport,
in this real thing.
Oh the lord of all sports, you the Bengali’s Football,
How your very name spreads sweetness to one and all!
So many booted legs kick you around,
so hard, everyday,
Such heavy pain you suffer, duty bound,
Without having a say.
Comes heat in summer, and slush in the rains,
Yet you remain the same, rolly polly, oh dear Football!
At the legs of life and death, you stand, the Bengali’s Football.
Two hundred and fifty years’ zamindari over, the English,
Left this land for good, an old lion, its roar and tricks all gone,
No harm admitting today that they taught us football, taught this
Mighty sport that made immortal East Bengal and Mohun Bagan.
Calamity strikes the one who happens to concede a goal,
And the one who scores runs the world as a whole!!
Passion runs wild as the Bengali sits down to talk about you,
Husbands divorce wife, fight in your name like children do.
Ghotis and Bangals bring the earth down, emotion their wherewithall,
Your, dear, the lord of all sports, you the Bengali’s football.
Thank you, dear reader, for your attention and patience. You may not know but this is my first successful attempt at translation. My lack of focus always comes in the way of persisting with things. But these days I realize that things have to be done, and it does not matter when you begin. For instance, I started participating in debates only last week and had great fun doing it. I will post that speech the next time. The secret of doing things, I now realize, is in having fun, in enjoying them, without bothering about consequences. You would be surprised to know that this approach often results in excellence as well.
If there is one place in India which has made me what I am, it is Bangalore. Period. I never wanted to go there, did not know till about a week before I landed that I was actually going and I am not going to settle there for it has no future to offer to my kind of professionals. Ironically though, I am certain that I would be a far lesser person and professional had I not spent half a decade in Bangalore. Bangalore has a way of bringing out the best in you, and letting you go fully secure in the belief that you are going to keep coming back. This is what mentoring is all about.
I don't even have to close my eyes, to recall what I looked like twenty years ago; my mother will always tell me it was nice, in all fairness, I probably looked so and so.
But if you were to ask me how she looked then, and how she does now, I see someone tired, somewhat relieved, but very unfit and uncertain, having done so much, having run so very hard.
She's taking a bow, tomorrow. A string of ailments, sacrifices galore, often in vein, happiness always elusive, depleting resources in tow, dear mom, you've been nice, time to pass the rein.
We'll follow up the exclusion story some other time. For some time now, I have been feeling that the less we talk about exclusion, the better. And I have been feeling nostalgic, missing many people and many pasts. Am I getting old, or just bold enough to admit it in public? These things do not really matter, for I realize at the same time that I have never felt so bullish about myself. This lovely feeling that it does not matter comes at a price, often a rather steep one. I daresay I rather like it. Let's hear from Gurudeb:
Ache Dukkho Ache Mrityu, biraho dahana lage/tobuo shanti, tobu anonodo, tobu ananta jage/Tobu prana Nitya dhra, ase surjo Chandra tara/Basanta nikunje ase bichitro rage/ Taranga milaye jai, taranga uthe/Kusum Jhariya pade, Kusuma phute/ Nakhi Khya, nahi sesha, nahi nahi Doinyo Besha/sei Purnotaaro paye mono sthano Maange.
I am sorry, dear reader, if you are not a Bengali. Even otherwise you must be familiar with that famous verse of Ishoponishada--Purnamada Purnamidam....--which I am sure at least partly inspired Tagore when he had been working on this particular piece. You'll clrealy see much from the Geeta and various Upanishadas walking into the song in a rather seamless process. There is a wonderful collection of the Upanishadas by Dr. Radhakrishnan in English for you to begin with and to keep going back to, like many of us. Do listen to this Tagore song nonetheless, especially in Debabrata Biswas' voice. I have tremendous, boundless joy everytime I listen to this track, especially when I am down for one reason or another. No not the rapturous, orgasmic kind of eruptive joy, although that is no less significant, but a rather calm, accepting kind of a reassuring joy that I get to learn so much everyday. I do not know if I belive in God but I am grateful, and do hereby offer my shraddha (respects) to whoever or whatever it is that orders us all, one way or another. Interesting isn't it, the spelling in Sanskrit (and thereby Hindi and many oher Indian languages) for respect and funerary ceremonies (Shraddha again) is the same, that is, they are homonyms? It's only this exchange of place between aa and oo (as in the sound) that makes all the difference. Frankly, I do not think it is a matter of phonetics alone. It is only after you ceremonially get rid of your own self that you respect others. Trust me it is true. Try it and you'll realize. May Goddess Durga bless you all. May you all get what you really want.
PS-I hope you see, dear reader, that I am referring merely to the question of transcription, and not even moving as far up as translation. Fact is we cannot ever understand each other completely, but that is no reason why we should not try. Even a partial understanding is better than no understanding. Now if you were to suggest that no understanding is better than misunderstanding, I would listen and introspect and keep quiet. These verbal juggleries no longer move me that much for I firmly believe in communication. It's just that we have to work out the right medium. Such as silence.
In PVR Priya they think well dressed young women cannot be suicide bombers and modestly dressed slightly older young men can. The other day I went to watch this new movie there with my laptop bag slung on my shoulder. I was promptly advised to leave my bag out of the auditorium premises. Appreciting their keen attention to the security of the patrons, I asked them where they have the baggage counter where you deposit your bags for the duration of the show and get it back after you walk out of the auditorium. This is a common practice and a desirable one too. I am familar with it, especially when I visit libraries and shops of various descrirptions, institutions that put in place such mechanisms to keep kelptomanics at bay.
But I was wrong in this case. It is not kleptomaniacs but potential suicide bombers that these plush seats of entertainment worry about. Therefore, they just don't want your bags to be around in the first place. I was directed to a paan bidi shop nearby, the owner of which had been doing precisely what I expected the PVR authorities to do--keeping your bags for the duration of the show, at a price of course.
In other words, PVR authorities are devoted only to the secutiry of their own premises and and to yours too only when you are physically within their premises. The physical bit is taken very literally, for if you happen to carry a bag and a laptop, it will be assumed to be potential bomb and you will be forced to deposit it with that upwardly mobile paanwala. The uniformed secutiry men did not heed my repeated requests to subject the bag to a metal detector test and, if found harmless, let me carry it in. Only purse, they as well as their boss, an older young man like me but slightly better bulit and 'tie'd, said like robots, is allowed in. I will return to matters relating to their idea of purse later. In the meantime, I tried to reason, then demanded to meet the manager who I was told was too big a shot to meet an occassional oddball and then, proceeded to the ticket counter and asked for a refund since I was no longer in a mood to enjoy their hospitality. These sites of entertainment of course do not entertain any concept of refund. I was free to sell my ticket to any interested customer but the chap at the box office dismissive stared at me as if I was a beggar who has to bother about the measly sum of 75 Rs. His gaze having fixed me as a beggar of a certain kind, my middle class instincts prompted me to behave like one and and I went over to the paanwala and deposited my bag with him. No I was not carrying my laptop on that given morning.
It's here that the twist in the tale comes in. But I am going to bring that in tomorrow or whenever I am going to return gain.
Some sights and sounds stay with with you long after you have seen or heard them. They are rare and special and call for minute powers of observation. Birds' twitter, dews' diamond like glint on green grass, fan's whirr, ladies earrings' dangle, gusts of wild wind pregnant with rains with the coconut leaves swaying violently, shuffling pages of yellowing old books, cows burping after a fulfilling lunch--I suddenly find myself all eyes and ears. I will not enlarge this list any further for fear of losing my way in the beauty and simplicity of such small joys of life. Let's just admit I love to soak them all in. Today I just want to share with you a sound that I hold very dear, ones that make me feel things are alright with my world after all, notwithstanding my best efforts to turn them upside down.
There is this apartment block somewhere in South Delhi I have to visit at least once in virtually every week. I normally use gate numbe two possibly because this is the shortest distance to the apartment if you are walking in. a little up this way, on my right, there is an apartment where someone plays mandolin. I do not know s/he is, nor do I wish to. But everytime I walk past this place, by some starnge coincidence the anonymous mandolin player practices some haunting tune or the other. I have occassionally heard tabla and guitars too, and I suspect they probably are trying to set up a band or some such musical ensemble. But it's the robust sound of Mandolin that I always look forward to listening. Mandolin, as you would know, is not an Indian instrument and U.Srinivas is the only Indian who is known to have integrated it with the intricacies of Indian classical music. But of course, there must be many not so well known musicians experimenting with this instrument, including this anonymous friend of mine.
I am always drawn to the sound of mandolin, and I have no clue why. It may be because it is at the same time robust yet plaintive. This is also the reason why Salil Chowdhury's music appeals to me so much, this effortless tonal fluidity breaking down the traditional distinction between happy sounds and sad sounds. This is not the Wordsworthian dictum of sweetest songs telling of saddest thoughts. On the contrary, here is a sound that can be alternately read as wildly celebratory and equally, if not more, as arising from depths of utter despair. It is at once schizophrenic and non-dual, black and white, rapturous and remoreseful, or just plain two in one, if you will. Well, not really. I have always found so many shades of gray as well.
May the mysterious mandolin player go from strength to strength. I am so grateful that s/he is around. S/he turned so many bad days of mine into bright cheerful evenings, and lovely, dreamy nights, without knowing it herself of course. I guess that's what music does to you, soothe your tout nerves and put you to sleep when the world gets too much, and motivate you to wake up and have another go just when you would have thought you have been sleeping a tad too long.
I thought cross conncetions were a thing of the past, and was rather unplesantly surprised on tuesday last, when someone rang my mobile number, wondering if I was not Pappu the plumber.
Myself Mr. Natwarlal, did you not know? Thundered I, you cad, you *** now off you go, I plumb the depths of human past, and read rusty files, It's not for me to repair sick taps and scoop out slimy tiles.
The poor chap spoke in rustic Hindi and mumbled something about him being Radhe the childhood friend, I, the city slicker, paid him no heed, for stumbled was my work in the middle, with too much to attend.
Later in the evening, from nowhere, radhe's vioce got hold of my leisure, as if I was listening to appeals untold, of a friend who's missing someone very close and wants to talk to him, to chat, to propose....
That they become friends again as before, that the distance that separates them, melt with their warm hearts coming ashore, that together they ignite tomorrow's flame.
Too naive, jerked I back to my senses, too maudlin, Who's to account for the lost threads, the struggle, the din of the city that Pappu would have survived alone, unaided? Is he still around, his tender feelings not yet fully dead?
Who am I to judge? Radhe? Pappu? or both? Ask I to myself, taking yet another oath, not ever to play a role of someone else in vein and cause myself some more avoidable pain, not again.
Let's see how much or how little can be scribbled in fifteen minutes flat. Yeah a note ot two of on observing one's own self. Narcissistic most ceratinly but useful in very unexpected ways. Take for instance the find that placing your head on one side of the bed rather than the other helps get better sleep. Sounds easy? Yes all trial and error methods are.
In the mean time, for sake of silly rhyme
let's leave out the reasonable stuff
let's not pretend it's the greatest crime
to try to calm down and have a laugh.
Finsihed in eleven minutes flat, four minutes before my time is up. Like Gurubhai, time to claim some baniyahood for myself. Amazing there's hope yet. Redemption song yahoo!
Good to be back from hibernation and all that. Let's start with a couple of things I spotted in the newspaper this morning. Today, I see, begins the Madhyamik (i.e.Secondary exams under West Bengal Board of Secondary Education) and in the two districts of Midnapore alone, over a lakh of examinees are taking the tests. If this is the statistic from two largish districts, even a conservative estimate would peg the total rather close to a million or more. Given that everyone who crosses the tenth standard has to necessarily undergo some form of standardized school leaving test or the other, I too, aeons ago, suffered this grand rite of academic passage. I did everything possible to escape, including divorcing my textbooks in the long run and embracing a formidable couple of physical maladies. However, my mother somehow made sure I sleepwalked through the ordeal, and the examiners were careless enough to award me pass marks.
I do not really believe these tests comprehensively establish one's academic competence or foretell her future propects, but they do test one's adaptability to a given system of evaluation. In hindsight, I believe this is eminently possible if one cares to try hard enough. But I refuse to pontificate further on such weighty issues for I have weightier issues to attend to. Question paper leaks, for instance, is one such and I have--tangentially speaking--had at least one close encounter with the phenonmenon. The following account is pretty accurate barring a chronological detail. My batchmates will work that out anyway, and it is of no great import to the rest.
The day before our English test, one of my friends accosted me to the house of one of his friends where I found quite an assembly my batchmates. These were all backbenchers, like me, who took great pleasure in taking studies for a ride. One of them, I was told, had procured from somewhere a particular newspaper report on the runaway elephants of the Dalma hills. I was called upon to decipher the contents of the piece in a manner intelligible to this bunch. They had been suggested that this particular passage would reappear in the question paper in the form of a compreension test. Comprehension tests carried close to twenty five marks, only five less than the minimum pass marks. In other words, if you scored full marks in that part of the question, you almost scraped through, with some guesswork thrown in for good measure here and there. I did as I was told. Frankly, I did not take the whole thing very seriously.
As it turned out, the passage indeed appeared in the question paper the next morning, albeit in a simpler form. In addition, there was a short essay on a family picnic which too formed part of last afternoon's inputs. Many of us, most if I remember correctly, thus crossed the river of 'English' fire, as it were.
Did we deserve to pass? Was it not unfair on the students who did not know that some of us knew? Was I right in being part of what, strictly speaking, was an unfair conspiracy? I have some tentative answers but honestly I am not very sure. To start with, I did not particularly need the help. Second, I did not solicit it either. Third, I was not averse to helping some of these boys who I knew would not take up serious academics anyway, but did need that pass certificate badly. Fourth, I deduced that we were just lucky and that surely many students benefit from similar leaks every year. Finally, I think all systems of evaluation are loaded in favour of some examinees by default and that is inevitable. In other words, some participants always begin with some special advantages, and it so happens purely by chance. This is true about every test in life in that we are all programmed to perform better in some tests and not in others. No standardized test can ever be so designed, in a manner of speaking. All tests, in other words, are about our capacity to adapt to their particular formats. Some of us adapt better, some do not, some wish to and yet others just let go. Life is never fair in an absolute sense, but it offers us all enough scope to try and overcome our limitations and be at par with the best, if only we choose to. Not so simple, though. Some structures are often irreversibly loaded against some participants and so on. I do not have any more defence to offer and I do not regret what I did.
Nishiniloy is ostensibly a new Bengali word coined by the copy editors of Anandabazar Patrika. I read it in today's edition of the Patrika, deployed as a Bengali synonym for pub. There was this editorial--ABP editorials always appear in purportedly Sadhu bhasha--deploring, correctly I may add, a fiat by some local politicians in the Salt Lake area of Calcutta to shut down swimming pools in residential areas because they thought ladies wearing swimsuits do not make for ideally dressed Bhartiya Nari. I greatly enjoyed the title of the piece--cultural dinosaurs--but my smooth progress along the piece was jarred by this new word Nishiniloy. The word was used as an adjective, describing the young girls of Mangalore roughed up a few weeks ago by some ruffians on the same pretext of reportedly sullying our great 'Indian' culture.
I want to dwell a bit more on this word. Now I am game for new coinages and I do appreciate one must not close one's mind to linguistic innovations but this one really beats me. I thought Nishi in Bengali meant night and Niloy a house. I would have thought their juxtaposition creates Dwanda Samas of the very literal sort, the kind that actually conjures up a meaning very far from the intended one. Nishiniloy would be far more proximate to a house of disrepute--a brothel, that is--than to a pub and is thus a linguistic incongruity of the first order. Wait a minute pal--I am not imputing any value to going to a brothel but only trying to clarify a common Bengali usage.
I remember reading a Sunday HT column by Indrajit Hazra the other day lamenting the lack of pub culture in India. He was not calling out for drunken orgies, but rather referring to the English paractice of the countryfolk-even cityfolk- gathering around the pub for a quiet drink and catching up of all sorts after a hard day's work, hanging out, as it were. I am only suggesting that Bengali language never had a word for pub precisely because the stuff did not quite exist in our imagination or practice. Paanshalaor Madhushala do not quite fit the bill, for both willy nilly envisage drinking as an extraordinary practice--either as a vice, or virtue of a delivering kind. Shunrikhana--oops, could could you please find a more value-laden word?
I wonder why must we rush to Translate every single thing that comes our way. Pubbing, like drinking, dining, studying or earning money or falling (!?) in love or painting or singing or dancing, is neither a virtue nor a vice, unless one goes for an overkill. At any rate, it is ceratinly not the same as visiting sex workers. Why must the girls going into a pub for a fun evening be translated as Nishiniloygami Taruniborgo and not just Pubgami Taruniborgo? Do the average pubs boast of rooms for nightstay? Must all foreign words be purged from our Tatsama tongue in order to parade its Sanskrit roots? Ironical, isn't it, this falling back on a language whose name literally means the reformed?
Time will of course tell. I will look forward to following the development of this particular word, and my hunch is it will soon recede into disuse. I am afraid Bangla has more to fear from its overzealous adherents than from its perceived threats. To these great minds and hearts soldiering for the survival and prosperity of the Bengali language, I dedicate poet Shubho Dasgupta's 'Bankubabur Bangla Priti'--a little gem of a rhyme in chaste Bengali.
