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.
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...
