In Praise
of Calcutta and Bengali maiden
My Readers, this has been more than a
year and Calcutta Summer is back again. Those of who has suffered Calcutta Summer and Calcutta are poised
to undergo another humid summer. My anniversary at Calcutta, by some magical calculations was
destined to be memorable due to a visitation – from further East. The true sons of Calcutta, in spite of their
individual peculiarities share something very basic and that is not only love
for fish and adda, gossiping and party-bazi , living and swaying in the jhulla, suspended by the dual ropes of
equally irrational self-love and self-pity. Even an outsider like me, after a
few months could sense it. Admiration
for womanly beauty and a romantic softness in speech, custom and manners was
imbibed by Bengalis, directly from the European ideas and that made a clean
break for him/her from the ancient Hindu for whom – Puthrarthe Kriyate Varya. In this break it was women of Bengal who were more creative, more
enduring and could sense the historical direction more easily. For example, the
Muslim Rule of Bengal could barely touch a Bengali women’s mind as well as her
taste regarding her garments. But European clothes and shoes, the long sleeve
blouse, the socks, wearing the saree in the traditional style with a chemise
made a complete change in her looks and personality. Shakespeare, Shelley, Milton and Byron could
easily enter her inner psyche; she could sense with an unerring insight that
ideological regime of Europe will not make her husband a less constant husband compared
to the ancient regime. She was right.
Reading of European Literature has made Bengali young men susceptible to beauty
that invites both on sensual and aesthetic plane and a creative synthesis of
both is divinely gratifying. It is in the nature of man that if he could once
taste and feel a higher pleasure, his intelligence guides his energies in that
path where he could discover the cause and inner causes of this higher
pleasure. As soon as love or its verbal or artistic image entered a Bengali’s
Life, it first burst into holiness and grace in Bengali Literature, never
before and I don’t know when again. The language of Mr. Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee, in spite of its Gothic form in architectural terms was having that
quality of holiness and that what Mathew Arnold called high seriousness; he brought discipline and chastity in language
and if Bengali Literature has dared to experiment with fritations in form,
content and style, if it has announced and proved its ambition of being capable
of being the vehicle of most subtle and noble inner feelings with Tagore, then
it was the giant who has chastised her and then allowed to let her go. Bengali Literature, even though it’s primary
architects were mostly men, but behind those men were always those Bengali
wife, sister, sister-in-law, mother, neighbor-girl, lover that guided the
development. Even ladies of foreign
origin. The most prodigal genius of Bengali literature, Mr. Madhusudan Dutt was
a chosen one and his wife Heneritta’s contribution to Bengali Literature has
been unsung yet. No Literature of Contemporary Times could raise its claim of
such a level of growth in such a lesser span than Bengali and this miracle
could only happen because the growth was in resonance with the character of Bengal, it got support from its women, and
the landscape sanctioned it. If History is unforgiving to those who manipulates
it, if last seventy five years of Bengal has been a continuous sadness in
comparison, if Sic transit Gloria Mundis
is really a fact, then in this world of relative glory, a thousand years hence,
Bengal’s greatest achievement will be honorably remembered as her literature
because here and here alone, she is true, here in the a-kshar, she has chosen to tell
her timeless story.
If someone asks me what is the most
wonderful thing of my childhood – it was roaming in the College Street, with massive Colleges and Schools
by both the sides of the road and the rows and rows of Book Stalls – the Boi-Para. It was somewhere in the early
eighties and I was fascinated by the sights of which I read in books and lo
they were printed here – in this North Calcutta heart. I used to rummage through the books and there
I got the first sight of the Folio of Rise and Fall of Roman Empire, Loney’s
Trigonometry, Huxley’s Brave New World.
One evening, my father took me near Presidency College, pointed his finger to the
staircase and told that this was the place where Subhas Chandra Bose allegedly
manhandled Mr. Oten. College Street, to my boyhood days was a
El
Dorado – the air itself was intoxicating – of the massive buildings with
datelines back some one hundred fifty years, of books and volumes, the students
and that inexpressible air of easy-ness
and intimacy. It was in those book
shops, I met a bookseller whose love for book was contagious. Calcutta of
Eighties was still having rare specimen of the remnant radioactive trace of Rennessaince
where you could meet a man, otherwise inconspicuous, not exuberantly dressed,
not having nor aspiring to have a great fortune and material wealth but an
empire in his passion for literature, knowledge and expression. He could speak
with you over the tea in bhar for
hours together. Not anymore. Little I knew, boy as I was then that the ground
is loosening, Calcutta and Bengal was
entering a phase of halting in all
spheres where urban excitement will be slowly replaced by a memory-less
fatigue.
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. Readers
may like to read a one page Calcutta guide written by me, for two provincials
like me who came here for a week’s stay. The citizens of Calcutta, the first citizen of modern India in its European sense was given
rare chance by History to observe hour by hour of a process which is
manifesting now as Halting of
Civilizations. Globalization, in
this way of interpretation is bound to be related to a process where local
histories and traditions are spiraling into a helical cylinder whose boundary
is global but periphery unknown. Before I narrate my personal experience of the
solemn visitation from East, I would like to remember that the Civilizations
that believe in finite philosophies are finite in their duration. 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 women. Except
Malabar (in 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-part 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 Vrindavan) –
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 a 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 isotropically. These gave rise to a variety of desi born foreign dressed women who looked
as comical outside and as tragic while contemplated. 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 growth, vigor 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 present decadence of Bengal. But one way, it is the same women
who have saved the community from a social catastrophe to which we will return
soon.
It is my intention and I have been tracing around an expanding work on these themes in the form of an intimate history of Bengal, first three drafts of which can be read here. It will remain a long-term assignment for me to study this very dear subject - Cultural History of Bengal.
