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The Unbearable Nineties
Nirad C Chauhdhri died, bitter sweet and ripe, breathing the air of England and a very interesting connection between Kishoreganj and Oxford. Amartaya Sen honored, Saurav Ganguly led India quite successfully, Buddhadev Bhattacharya inherited a tradition that also is suffering from bouts of amnesia, Annadashankar Ray died and it was a bereavement for Bengali Literature, Indian Army stood at border, Global Terror did not fail to touch Calcutta, Processions, Meetings and Bandh entertained everybody, Metro Rail gave a breath of fresh air and speed to the commuters, Local Elections reminded a contemporary Bengali poet of Greek Tragedies, lots of hi-end hotels grew up, A cabinet rank Minister is beaten up by a mob quite known to readers of Shakespeare, lots of rape, outrage and unrest that provided the pre-view of Times ahead perhaps, FM had a welcome, Calcutta’s theatre slowly passed into history, Calcutta-Speak even was invaded, a very distinct Babu species which knew that there is only one Square in the world called Shyambazar, one airport Called Dumdum and one railway called Howrah went extinct as Bengalis left for South and West, realizing too quickly of the changed world of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.
In their finest hour, Calcutta’s one of the noblest son spoke of a synthesis without a shred of native complex where the Civilization of Greeks is meeting the Civilization of Hindus over the peripheral activity of British Empire. A hundred years past the mahasamadhi of Swami Vivekananda, another Trans-Atlantic Culture is in imminent crisis and along with the whole world, Bengal is in a historically enviable position to re-examine its past. She is historically best equipped, her subtlety has been benchmarked by history and in this re-examination lies not only a better understanding of Bengal but of the world itself. Brothers and Sisters of Bengal, the door has been opened once more; the distant horizon has become visible once more.
One soft-hearted maiden from further East, ethnically a Bengali came over in one May morning and landed right into the heart of Calcutta and later, into the heart of this wordsmith. Calcutta greeted her first with heat wave and in one late evening as we were in one of the Eastern Parks of the city under a heavily perfumed gulaich-flower grooves, the whole sky came tumbling down. Within seconds, the blessed rain made our clothes wet, the air was full of the perfume of flower and that strange womanly smell of soil hungrily soaking the water. It went darker and darker and a wind brought the temperature some degrees below within minutes. She came near me (or I went near her – is a matter of relativity) as the sky danced and sang, blew and whistled and it was smell of Bengal, of her hair, of her skin, of her lips and it was as if the whole landscape was concentrated, personified into that close-eyed statue who has suddenly immobilized into my arms. Early morning, surrounded by a crowd of morning-walkers, laughing-club members and exercising men and women, sat at the Victorian benches of the Victoria as Lord Bentinck looked on. I was wondering how this piece of architecture could mingle with this landscape of Bengal. Sitting at the bench and lazily looking onto the Entry in the front we looked at the buildings of Chowranghee and what a contrast it was. You see rows and rows of buildings and business towers that could be easily used for the set of a disaster movie. Or just imagine the Indian Museum and its geometrical symmetry and a water tank just over the road. I told her how on earth a people accustomed to such architecture could parade a mocking display of the degradation of taste! As a May sun was strengthening each minute, we sat silently with her head softly placed on my shoulder and just like any young lover I felt a great sadness that the City she is going to share has so much of past to speak and so little of present. This can only happen in Calcutta and only a Bengali maiden is capable of understanding it.
An average Calcutta born and settled Bengali is most likely to be ignorant of Bengal proper, by which I mean her countryside, her rivers, her paddy-fields, her pilgrim centres, her seasons and her feminine essence. Except Malabar (now Kerala) nowhere the landscape has been so prominent and so inescapable in the women as in this land. My explanation is simply this that the landscape of both the places has been feminine – soft, fluid, humid and fertile. It is said that Indian women, unlike her Western counter-parts have got a kind of calmness in her eyes, a sad gravitas mingled with a womanly grace and when this reaches its peak, we get a face and form like Suchitra Sen of which I remember a fancy line I heard, I presume in some conversation of Holmes and Watson – “My friend, her face was like something for which a man may die for.” The equivalent of a Venus de Milo in Bengal is none and cannot be. One line of Tagore captured her essence while he was narrating the homecoming of a man to his village from West (may mean anywhere from Venaras to London) –
Buk bhara Madhu Banger Badhu Jal laye jay ghare
Ma bolite pran are anchan Chokhe Ashe jal bhore
[A housewife, kind and sweet hearted going home carrying water from the river / The heart is pounding to call Mother, eyes are full of water]
It was this Bengal in her womanly personification that produced Jibananda Das’s poetry in his volume Rupahsi Bangla, a major advance in Bengali poetry after Tagore. Post-Jibananada Bengali poetry, other than few independent workmanship is the story of enchantment, seduction and struggle with the strange, chiaroscuro and individualistic voice he forged. After that, women had an exile from Bengali literature. Bengalis got convinced and quite strongly that one of the reasons why Lord has said “Let there be Word” was to create some other world, charted nicely in some finite Manifesto. In those schemes of things, where literature’s primary duty was commanded to bring change or to support the changed order, feelings as told previously could not have much role to play. An average Bengali, whose mother or wife has repeated the sentence, word by word for almost thirty years – “Oh, he does not even know how to pour water from the pitcher” and lovingly tolerated this incompetence, went so far as to change, build and run another order itself. The result has been part tragic and part comic. The tragedy is this: Bengali women, her inner psyche could not comprehend it and argument with a Bengali is as dangerous as a religious war because it will go nowhere and will stop nowhere. She went silent and along with stopped all real supply of energy to the fire-breathing revolutionaries. The Fate of the Project for all practical purposes was insignificance, in long term evaluation. The comedy is more terrible to bear: Nature, in her hatred for vacuum offered choices before the women of Bengal. A trash culture of West first received at the West of India, Bombay and later downsized and customized and then re-transmitted isotropic ally. This process continued and gave rise to a tragic-comical situation. In short, women of Bengal were not there, their heart was not there in it, her mythical aura did not shine in the social stream and the stream was there, it was having all the functional aspects but missed all signs of true growth, vigour and joie de vivre.
It is my view and even though I am crippled as a scholar to justify myself, I will not move away from this intuitive feeling that it is the women who or rather whose lack of true presence lies at this presents decadence of Bengal. But one way, it is the same women who have saved the community from a social catastrophe to which we have to return somewhere else.
A visitor in Calcutta during 1998-2007 and our friend – Deepak, kindly left this with us. A permanent property of Wordsmith Content Vault. editor@pentasect.com