Tuesday 26 March 2019

Don't know...


জানিনা কেন পাসপোর্ট লাগে তোমাদের বাড়ি যেতে,
জানিনা কেন  ভোরের  আকাশ  ধার কাঁটা তারে ঘেরা।
জানিনা সবাই কেন চুলচেরা হিসেব নিয়ে মেতে -
কোন ভারটা আমার, কোনটা তোমার, আর নিক্তিটি কার সেরা।

জানিনা কেন মাঝদরিয়ায়  টানা আছে সীমারেখা,
জানিনা  অঙ্ক কি ভাবে কষলে ভাগ হয় নদীর জল।
জানিনা কেন দিগন্ত জুড়ে নিষেধাজ্ঞা লেখা,
কি উদ্দেশ্যে ও কারা পরায় প্রবাহে দড়ি শেকল?

জানিনা কেন বিনা অপরাধে  দ্বিধা কোঁকড়ানো মন,
জানিনা কেন অপরের ভুলে আমরা গুনি মাসুল -?
জানিনা এ গোনা শেষ হবে কিনা, হয়তো বাকি জীবন
এভাবেই  যাবে অপেক্ষারত, মিলবে না ওই কূল। 



I don't know why a passport's required to get to your home
don't know why the dawn sky is fenced with razor wire.
Don't know why everyone is busy splitting hairs
about what part is mine, and yours, and who's got the best scales.

Monday 18 March 2019

A-Z Challenge 2019 : Theme Reveal





Hello A-Zers, Bloggers, Netizens! Lend me your...um...attention for a few seconds. Today is the pre-bash of the main event starting April, the A-Z Theme Reveal. And I am here to tell you what you can expect here on M-i-V all of next month as I participate in this marathon blog event. A-Z celebrates its tenth year in April...what? you don't know what the A-Z Blog Challenge is? shhh...shhh...don't say that too loudly, go here and find out. 


As I was saying, A-Z completes a decade next month, and first off, thanks and credit are due where they are - no mean feat to co-ordinate a blogfest this large and keep it going year after year.  I love that they actively seek feedback and build it in and keep the event fun and challenging. So kudos and thank yous to the A-Z team for the hard work they do. Here's to the next ten. 


As anyone visiting here will know, I am from West Bengal, which is on the eastern shores of India. I was born there, but was swiftly carted out to another part of the country and then outside it. So that I have spent less than a couple terms of my school life at my birthplace. I speak and read and write Bengali fluently but I have never sat an exam in the language, never had to prove any degree of proficiency in it. I didn't spend childhood nights learning the abstruse conjoint consonant clusters used in Bengali or its complicated grammar rules. 


I learnt to read Bengali because I needed to do so to get at the stories. I learnt to write it because I had to write to my grandmother back home who didn't read any other language.  I never got to know Bengal through its formal school curricula in strict classrooms, parsing Tagore's writing, memorising the names of kings and dynasties, regurgitating dates and battles, nope, not me. I went back to live in Bengal only as a working adult.
Credit


So when I got to know Bengal it was softly, softly, through her stories - in books, in films, in theatre and ballads; through the small, delicate folds of family histories. I got to know her out in her small towns and paddy fields and tea gardens and forests and mountains and beaches, out on assignments for a job, or back on home leave. I learnt her history through her architecture and her literature, her geography through her roads and rivers and railways, her cultural riches through her festivals and poetry and songs. Growing up, I spent all my summer holidays in Calcutta, always an outsider, angsty and inadequate because I didn't know all the nuances inside out and back to front, always scared of putting my foot in it every time I opened my mouth, being the butt of 'westerner' and 'westernised' jokes. It has taken me the longest time to realise that this too is a gift - being a stranger in one's own land. Being an outsider everywhere I go. It's a perspective few get to have. And bonus! - it breeds its own heady adventure. 


If you haven't guessed it yet, my theme for this year's A-Z is...tadaa...

~ Bengaliana ~


As with my previous series, I will section things off for ease of consumption, start and stop where you like, as you like. Read as deep or as light as you prefer. There will be a smorgasbord of Bengali music, architecture, personalities, culture and landmark events to choose from.


Come with me once again, as you have in the past two years, this time to my verdant birthplace. Come with me, to a land whose history goes back deep into antiquity to a time when time itself had no measure. Come with me, as I explore my heritage of literature and handicrafts and history from the outside in and inside out. 

Come with me, to the broad sweep of rivers, to the narrow, unpaved pathways lurking round every corner, serene and fragrant with the smells of ripening mangoes and jack-fruit. To cities which are teeming with millions, yet if you happen upon some difficulty, there will be ten strange hands proffered immediately for help. Come with me to a land that is defined by its waters and has in turn given its name to the oceans. Come with me on this addictive adventure that is Bengal...




Posted for the A-Z Theme Reveal 2019 

Sunday 10 March 2019

Overthink




Time is just a heartbeat and crumbling bread,
stop the clocks in their tracks inside your head.
It thins out like coffee smoke as it sits,
there’ll be time if you don’t think too much of it.
Stop the ticks and tocks, turn the lock on countdowns,
shut them up and pack them off out of town
beyond red lines and deadlines and remits -
there’ll be time if you don’t think too much on it.
Time is the weight of a feather and of lead
and pink champagne! - don’t let it get to your head,
it’s a busy port, quiet crossroads, and transit,
there’s enough, just don’t think too much on it.



This is sort of like a mongrel that can't let go its own tail, I can tell you I'd be better off working out some sort of a draft for my A-Z posts instead of writing poetry on time management. But...things happen when they happen...what can one do?






Monday 4 March 2019

Nested




Maybe you’re no longer interested,
reading tea leaves, smoke signals in exhausts,
blind, groping roads and high ropeways to lost,
there’s nothing above the clouds once they’re crested.
Stand by, stand firm on this patch you’ve wrested -
there will be time later to count the costs,
the stuff to keep apart, the stuff to be tossed,
the decades, like matryoshka dolls, are nested.






I'm back and in all the hullabaloo of travelling I'd forgotten about the A-Z, the sign up opened on the 1st. It's a landmark year,  ten years for a blog event is quite epic by any standard. Have to record my admiration and appreciation for the team. Signed up  but not even halfway there - so far,2019 hasn't been one serene retreat let's say. Am beginning to panic. Just a little. But that's all part of the A-Z. Who else will be there I wonder?