it was about eleven at night
on the last train from calcutta to shantipur,
a rare weekend off from work, going to visit my ma

a railway carriage not unlike like this.

wind free tunneling into the compartment,
increasing with speed through the windows and doors,
the metal and glass panels long vandalised leaving gaps on the outer shell

on one such doorway stood a boy, with windswept hair and ragged clothes
he was about ten or eleven.
on of many such children
who sang for money
hitching rides
on trains.

two pieces of broken slate
held between the fingers of his left hand and
cleverly struck with the thumb and fingers of his right
his own clickety clickety free percussion – easy to carry easy, easily replaced

leaning onto the vertical pole of the doorway, one leg wrapped around it for safety
he was singing a pitch perfect version of this song

Original song: Jaare – jaare ude jaare paakhi ( … go, go fly away bird … )
Sung by: Lata Mangeshkar | Music: Salil Choudhury]

Jaare – jare ude jare paakhi
go – go fly away bird

Furalo praner mela – shesh hoye elo bela
this life’s festival is finishing – the day is coming to an end
Ar kyano michey tore bendhay rakhi – jaare …
why then, for no reason, do I keep you tied – so go …

akashe akashe feeray – ja feeray apono neeray
go from sky to sky – go return to your own home
shymol mathir bonochaye
in the dark shades of the woods

shudhoo, monay monay tore daaki
only, just in my mind do I call you
chahina khelite khela, shesh hoye elo bela
I no longer wish to play any games – the day is coming to an end
Ar kyano michey tore bendhay rakhi – jaare …
why then, for no reason, do I keep you tied – so go …

aamari shopon hoye – koto kichu je gyacho koye
becoming my own dream – you had said so many things
hridaye pinjoray boshiya
sitting within the cage of my heart

jaani – shobi roye gyalo baaki
I do know – everything will remain unfinished
ebaray bhashabo bhela – shesh hoye elo bela
now i’ll float out the raft – the day is coming to an end
Ar kyano michey tore bendhay rakhi – jaare …
why then, for no reason, do I keep you tied – so go …

(I have tried my best to keep the translation as close to the original words of the song)

with three more stations to go
it was just two of us left in the compartment,
he couldn’t have been singing for money, he was singing to himself
no longer at ‘work’, he was singing just for the love of it

the end of maybe a long day – at last happy to be free, to be going home
perhaps to his mum.

like I was

child singersbengal

and not necessarily by the different religions

A traveller in her blog had stated:

india india

so here i am finally again. india india. somehow i feel like home but same time this feels a big chaos. or well landing in mumbai after peaceful and nice christmas holiday in finland…it can be a big change. and not much to say about mumbai but that i really did not like it. i love kolkata which is big and noisy but something there still makes me love it. in mumbai i did not see anything worth to stay more than 1 night.

This is a blog of a visitor writing of her own experiences.

One would assume that we would
acknowledge her capability to judge for her ownself
and respect her the right to decide as to what she likes and loves.

Not,
if Indians can help it.
Not if they dribble hatred
towards a community or city referred
and all the more vitriolic if it is about “the bengalis”.

So why wasn’t I surprised to read this first comment to the blog.

melbas said:

January 11, 2008 at 9:05 am

In Mumbai people actually do work.
It’s the commercial capital and contributes 25% of India GDP.
The bengali’s of Kolkata like to spend their time contradicting everything the central government says and then some years later doing what it had spent years arguing against and congratulating itself heartily for being such a progressive city.
Kolkata… yikes!

So this melbas has to poison the blogger’s mind.

Not only is his logic out of context to what the lady had written,
in his effort to malign a city he generalises a whole community – “the bengalis”.

That too, if his argument had any truth.

The government central government,
the government that is clinging to power
by forming a coalition with the same hated bengalis,
shamelessly holding hands with their sworn enemies the bengali communists.

The same government that turned a blind eye to the communists atrocities
in Nandigram
all in the name of holding onto power
and be able to twist the communist’s arm to accept the 123 agreement.

Hypocrisy so blatantly defined .

But this individual is not finished, yet.

melbas said

January 11, 2008 at 2:34 pm

I can’t tell whether you’re being sarcastic, but any people who radiate the hypocrisy and foolishness that the residents of that city do, deserve to be hated.
Not only must the Good be celebrated but the Bad must be put down.

Anti-Indians, or should I say anti-hindus like the Bengalis, ultimately paint themselves into a corner, because their beliefs are based on jealously opposing a better and nicer people.

He now has to label all residents of the city (surely referring to bengalis only)
as hypocrites and foolish and Bad, to justify his hatred,
and to declare they be put down.

Bengalis are anti-Indians, and being hindus themselves they are anti-hindus.
And all non-bengalis are better and nicer people.

A delusion of grandeur.

Not content with the above, it returns again to spew some more venom.

melbas said,

January 11, 2008 at 11:13 pmThe truth if the matter is that people don’t derogate Kolkata. They will complain about the poverty, slums, beggars and crime elsewhere, but refuse to mention any of these when discussing Kolkata. These things are actually cheered on. The propaganda that has been spread over the decades, makes it “cool” to derogate all other cities except Kolkata.

And all this because a lady had blogged to say she loved Kolkata.

Propaganda!
This individual doesn’t begin to understand the meaning of it.

This, sadly, is the reality of regional hatred and the true communalism in India.

I am glad that this commenter himself/herself is not a bengali ,
I would hate to think there are any such morons amongst the bengalis.

The “melbas”es of India will carry on living with unreal beliefs,
in an unreal world, rotting away inside with hatred.

India, you may be shining,
but deep in your heart there is only hatred.

Who needs to play politics with religion to fragment India into bits,
when there are poisonous minds like these burning with hatred, day after day.

First they banned her book
but the ban was overturned in a Court of Law.

Then they forced her out of the state,
at the rioting of Islamic extremists and marxist sympathisers.
And refused to let her return, or give her the refuge she had requested.

And all so conveniently timed to divert attention from the Nandigram massacres.

Now,
following the victory for ideology
the defeat of pseudo-secular hypocrisy
Gujarat, has abraded the apathetic eyes of the nation.

We have woken up, at last.
Hopefully some of us.

Questions will be asked, policies examined, manifestos scrutinised.
Where is our freedom of thoughts and expression?
Who robbed us of our basic human rights?

The Marxist politburo is unable to go back on their arrogant stance.
Like cowards they stayed hidden, instead
their 93 years old ex leader made the humiliating turnaround.
“If she wants to return to Kolkata or elsewhere in West Bengal, she is welcome.
But the Centre will have to ensure her security,” Mr Basu told reporters.

It is us Bengalees, who have failed
if not Ms Nasrin,
but surely the rights of every human being, to free thoughts, speech and expression.

Most of all we failed to give safe refuge to one
who today is homeless for her courage to speak out against injustice and prejudice.
The shame is on us.

For freedom of expression

by Taslima Nasreen: November 12, 1999

Taslima Nasreen took the floor during Commission V of UNESCO’s General Conference,
as a delegate of the NGO “International Humanist and Ethical Union” (I.H.E.U.).

This is the full text of Ms Nasreen’s declaration, from Webworld:

“I was threatened by the religious fundamentalists in my country Bangladesh. They have decreed a fatwa against me and set a price on my head. Not only that, I am a criminal according to the government of my country too. The government there has banned my book, and issued an arrest warrant against me for committing blasphemy. I was forced to leave my country. Since 6 years I have been living in exile.

I was born in a Muslim family, but I became an atheist. In course of my training in science, I developed the powers of observation, experiment, analysis, and reasoning. Without reasoning, I found, nothing should be accepted as fact. I have been fighting against injustice, unreason, and prejudice. I exposed the crimes of religion, particularly the injustice and oppression against women.

It makes me surprised that some Western states have declared the protection of human rights to be one of their supreme objectives, but then they patronized fundamentalism both overtly and covertly. Democratic governments recognize military dictatorships for short-run political interests. Secular states make friends with autocracies as well as theocracies. They even tolerate the completely inhuman behavior of their own fundamentalists. Such double standards practiced by so-called democratic and secular states at home and abroad give the fundamentalists a sort of legitimacy. Governments then have to succumb to the fundamentalists’ pressure and proscribe books and make arrangements to send its writers and authors to prison.

Some Westerners argue that not all the customs in the third world countries are harmful for women. They find a sort of stability and social peace in the oriental world. It is nonsense. For me, there can be no difference in the concept of human rights between the East and the West. If the veil is bad for Western women, then it is bad for their oriental sisters as well. If patriarchy is to be fought against in the West, it should be equally fought against in the East. The fight, in fact, is more urgent there because most of the women have neither any education nor any economic independence. If modern secular education is good for Western women, why should the Eastern women be deprived of it!

The fundamentalists cannot be countered without a relentless and uncompromising fight. The struggle should be both theoretical and tactical. Democracy and secularism should be applied in practice and not remain a mere play of words.

Fundamentalism is an ideology that diverts people from the path of natural development of consciousness and undermines their personal rights. Fundamentalists do not believe in individualism, liberty of personal choice, or plurality of thought. Moreover, as they are believers in a particular faith, they believe only in propagating their own ideas as autocrats generally do . They do not encourage or entertain free debate, they deny others the right to express their own views freely, and they cannot tolerate anything which they perceive as going against their faith.

I believe in fundamental rights of human beings to express themselves orally or in their writings; in equal rights for women in every sphere of life; and in constructing a society in which everybody gets a fair deal. We all should work for it. Media is helpful for spreading the ideas of human rights. And for media to work, the state has to be secular, the religious laws has to be abolished to create uniform civil code in which women get equalities. Education, of course secular education is important for women to get the knowledge about their rights. Religious education and politics based on religion must be banned to save the mankind. As they are not banned in my country, and the country is not secular, I, as a writer and journalist, once worked in media, was prevented to express my ideas and thoughts. It is impossible to have coexistence of religion and freedom of expression.”

It is never too late to make amends.
We need to stop fighting amongst ourselves
and for once, just once, stand up to say, enough is enough.

We are entitled to our rights, we are entitled to know the truth.

Bengalmarxismislamnegationismpseudo secularismhuman rights

Photo: Wikipedia

As I write today, in Bengal, it is Mahalaya.
The counting down to a major festival, the Durga Pujo, has started.

Pinning the new moon for reference,
it marks the beginning of a new lunar phase,
the seventh to the tenth day being the four days of the Pujo.

Early in the morning, All India Radio will broadcast a reading from a sacred text,
just as it has done for the last 80 years or so, the same recording,
the same lines, the same songs and the very same voice
of Birendra Krishna Bhadra.

Ever since I can remember, it would seem a magical time,
we would be up almost the whole night not wanting to miss a second of it.
We didn’t have a radio, relied on our neighbour to turn up the volume of his.
Later, when we proudly had one we too turned our sets up for others to listen.

Never a year, when the recitation failed to reverberate the exciting anticipation
of the coming pujodays, of new clothes, visiting relatives, and total freedom.

The programme was timed to end with the first lights of dawn.
Being autumn, the air would be cool, the grey sky freshly washed with layers of pink.

The clay modellers have worked feverishly in their workshops to create images
of Goddess Durga, out of smooth alluvial clay of the Ganges; and
on this Mahalaya day, they will paint the idols’ eyes.

The image of the goddess traditionally shows her in battle,
a weapon in each of her 10 arms.
10!!? yes.
She is also called Dashobhuja, the One with 10 arms.

When very young, somehow I never questioned it.
She was a goddess, everything was accepted without questioning.

And every passing year, the whole ritual repeated,
the annual visit of Ma Durga with 10 arms became part of our lives.

But with time, I realised ten arms was bio-mechanically impossible,
Ma Durga and her ten arms got pushed into the realms of mythology.
Only of late I have started to believe that most of our God and Goddesses
were infact aliens from far off galaxies with unimaginably advanced technology.

It set me thinking, some of these god(dess)s have 4 arms, whiles Durga has 10.
What if the narrators of ancients, in their writing of events long ago
used multiple arms as a way of comparing their strengths?
And Goddess Durga, who came to earth to fight a battle
was the most powerful of them all, the perfect 10?

Photograph: Baptist Mission Press Calcutta.

After all, I do not see the 149 horses pulling my car,
even though the manual states it has a pull of that many horse power!
What if the authors had simply tried to tell us that she had ten kinds of weapons?
With every writing the texts got changed bit by bit, to a very different interpretation.

It is possible.

I have drifted away from home religion and gods, but I miss that atmosphere
and I miss the sweet hot tea, with freshly fried singaras and warm jilipis.

Oh! to be in Kolkata, once again for a Mahalaya morning,

My memoriesKolkataIndiaDurga pujoAlien astronautsMahalaya