B is for...Blood...Bengali...n...Bhasha andolon - the language movement

First off, here's Mousumi Bhowmick with her surreal rendition of Ami sunechhi sedin tumi (I heard the other day you..) an anthem to isolation and loneliness with what the Bengalis would call great Bhaab (expression)...

And for a different mood altogether, the band Bhoomi (Land/Earth) with their uber popular Barandaye Roddur  (Sunlight on the balcony)...

Here's another number from a Kolkata band called Blood...again a different genre and mood - Tumi thakbe ki? will you be there?

And finally, here's Bay of Bengal from Bangladesh, with Je Shohore  Ami Nei...the city where I am not present. Enjoy!

  

Bengali Blood and Blood for Bengali

One Bengali is a poet, two Bengalis is a film society,

Three Bengalis is a political party, four Bengalis is two political parties.

~ Old hat meme, but sums up Bengalis’ love for their language, arts & politics!

14^th August midnight, 1947.  Pakistan was born, a new country carved out of previous British India, its two wings - West Pakistan and East Pakistan, separated by linguistic, ethnic, and vast geographical distances, united by a common religion.  

At independence, East Pakistanis (overwhelmingly Bengali speakers) represented roughly 56% of the total Pakistani population, i.e. the majority. The capital of the new country was Islamabad and the national language was Urdu, the language in which all government business was conducted. East Pakistanis wanted equal status for Bengali, the demand being tabled by a Bengali opposition legislator in early 1948. It was shot down. The Pakistani Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan was outraged.

A month later, Jinnah, the architect and the leader of Pakistan, visited Dhaka. At a gathering at the University, he made it clear that Urdu would remain the national language. Dhaka University students erupted in strikes and protests.

Credit

Jinnah died later that year, leaving behind a fractured country. The Pakistani leadership remained adamant on the official status of Urdu for all Pakistan, but so were the East Pakistanis on their demand for equality for Bengali. There was an attempt to introduce Arabic as the script for Bengali, creating more resistance.  The Easterners were increasingly politically marginalised, while East Pakistan continued to be economically underdeveloped, further escalating tensions. Support for the Muslim League, Jinnah’s party, which had so successfully negotiated a homeland for the Muslims, began eroding. The Awami Muslim League was formed in 1949 in East Pakistan.

Things spiralled out of control in 1952. A general strike was called on 21^st February - a procession planned to take the demand for Bengali to the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly. The authorities banned demonstrations and prohibited a gathering of more than four people. Students, however, gathered in large numbers at the Dhaka University grounds, a group attempted to get to the nearby Assembly building. The police promptly opened fire. Several injuries resulted, five deaths, including a child. The first blood had been spilt for the Bengali cause. Dhaka, and the wider province, exploded in fury.

Credit

The rage coalesced around the date – 21^st February, Ekushe Phebruyari, which became a rallying cry across East Pakistan and changed its political landscape forever. In the next elections, the Muslim League lost heavily to a coalition of parties called the United Front, the Awami League being a prominent player in it and bringing in more than 50% of their total seats. Foremost among the UF’s programme was the demand for Bengali to be recognised as a state language. It would be almost twenty years before the East Pakistanis got what they wanted, but only after a life and death struggle in which unconscionably huge numbers of people lost their lives. Bangladesh became a nation in 1971 following a genocide and a bloody war, and Bengali was proclaimed its national language.

Ekushe, the 21^st, is marked with due solemnity in many ways in Bangladesh. It was of course the inspiration for much nationalistic/patriotic poetry and songs, one among them famous across the world – Amar bhaiyer rokte rangano Ekushe Phebruyari, ami ki bhulite pari? How can I forget 21^st February painted red with my brother’s blood? There is a civilian medal called Ekushe Podok in Bangladesh, the Martyr’s Monument is dedicated to Ekushe, and in 1999 UNESCO announced Ekushe as the International Mother Language Day.  

The Bengali speakers of Bangladesh have had to sacrifice an entire generation for the right to speak their language – not many nations can claim this distinction. Here is a documentary from Bangladesh outlining the story of Ekushe, but unfortunately it has no subtitles so can be appreciated only by those who follow Bengali.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2019 

A is for....April... A-Z... n... Aarombho...the beginning

Ashoon, aarombho kori...bangaliana'r porikroma....which means - Come, let's begin...the tour of Bengaliana... The suffix 'ana' in Bengali is different from Latin. It can loosely be equated to 'dom' as in fandom...the universe of some given quality, in this case, Bengaliness. Or you can interpret it in terms of the Latin too - Bengaliana, it still makes sense as the theme. Welcome to the A-Z Challenge 2019, which is in its tenth year and I'm participating for the sixth time. 

As with the last couple years, I'm starting off with some music. Aj kothao by AlienZ an indie Bangla band from Kolkata...have a listen.

Here's another number Alo o AaNdhar (Light and darkness) this time from a Bangladeshi band called Aurthoheen (Meaningless). Enjoy!

If we are talking about A and Music, I've got to tell you about Srikanto Acharya, a vastly popular singer from Kolkata, singing in various genres - from Rabindrasangeet (Tagore songs) to devotionals to Adhunik (Modern). Listen to him sing the title Ami khola janala (I'm an open window) from the late 90's.

And finally, here's Artcell a super popular band from Bangladesh with Amar Poth Chola (My Walking the Road)

Arrivals and Antecedents 

There are roughly 270 million native speakers of Bengali, the 7th most spoken language in the world. Another 15 million or so speak Bengali as a second language. So, who are the Bengalis and where did they come from? How long has Bengal been settled? And how far back does this civilisation go?

in bengal A=Amazing Art n Architecture...

Current theories hold that early humans migrated out of Africa along the coast of Arabia and into Asia about 50-60,000 years ago.  These dates are forever being jostled backwards and forwards due to new archaeological discoveries being made. Recently the first migration out of Africa has been pushed back a few thousand years. So has the date when they arrived in India.

Forget the exact date, let’s take a shufti at their route instead. Ancestral humans moved along the coastline of peninsular India from the west to east, ultimately peopling the vast Ganges delta region which is Bengal. I use Bengal here in a broader sense –  not just Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Bengal is larger than the sum of its parts – it spans bits to the east and west of it, parts of Bihar and Assam and the Indian states further to the east. Bengali speaking peoples make up significant populations in all of them, part of their demographics since ages past. Bengal was large enough, significant enough to have an entire stretch of the Indian Ocean named after itself - the Bay of Bengal.

...both Ancient ...

There is evidence of stone age shelters in the region dated to around 100,000 years ago (Paisra, Bihar). A recent discovery of a cache of stone tools near Murshidabad in West Bengal has been dated to 20,000 years ago. Unfortunately, torrid heat coupled with moving waters and shifting mud do not leave many traces of organic matter. But there is no doubt that Bengal has been inhabited since prehistoric times.

n modern

Mythological references in the Indian epic Mahabharata tell us that “Vanga,” from which Banga and ultimately Bangal (anglicised to Bengal) derives, was already in existence when the epic was composed around 1500 BCE.  Ancient Bengal was an entrepot of the Silk Road, it established colonies on Indian Ocean islands and maintained close trade links with Arabia, Persia and the Mediterranean.  Civilisation here goes back some 4000 years.

The first historical reference comes from the Greeks who mention the Delta peoples as Gangaridae, a warrior-like race. Alexander, in 326 BCE, is held to have turned back because his armies were inadequate in morale and materiel to take them on. Bengal by then was part of the powerful Nanda Empire.

Bengal was subsequently ruled by the Gupta empire (240-550CE) before it gave way to regional kingdoms of Gauda,  Pala, Sena and  others. By late 16^th century Bengal had come under the Mughal Empire. Under the Mughals, Bengal grew to be one of the richest regions. It generated nearly 50% of the Mughal GDP, and 12% of that of the entire world, playing a monumental role in the global trade of textiles. Its skills in shipbuilding were legendary, its gold- silver- and coppersmiths created magic with metals, its potters and swordmakers and a whole heap of artisans underpinning an industrially well-developed region where a range of refined goods were available.

As the Mughal Empire declined, independent rulers (styled Nawab) came to power in Bengal. The British had their eyes on Bengal for a long time and made their move. The last independent Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, was defeated by Robert Clive who plotted with the Nawab’s traitorous military chief Mir Zafar in 1757. The British East India Company assumed control. For two hundred years, Bengal’s trajectory reversed under colonial rule, as the British repatriated all the revenues to Britain. Bengal was gradually deindustrialised and stripped of its riches.

The British left India in 1947, their parting shot was to partition Bengal into two along religious lines – West Bengal went to Hindu-majority India, and East Bengal became Muslim majority East Pakistan. West Pakistan and Islamabad, the capital of that newly formed country, were a thousand miles away from Dhaka, separated by vast tracts of Indian lands. Not just lands, but more importantly language, history, customs, a whole culture.  

When the Bengali-speakers of East Pakistan wanted Bengali made into an official language, the leaders of West Pakistan refused to entertain the idea. The East Pakistanis were not amused. From the 50’s onwards their struggle to get their mother tongue its rightful voice led to a bitter war of liberation and finally to the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. But that is another story and a post for another letter.




Posted for the A-Z Challenge 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.

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 

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?

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?

News from Nowhere V

You know, news, like a bullet, ricochets

and reaches me with a lag when it’s spent;

I believe it’s really not that different

for you. For those who stay still at one place.

Some edge, angle’s lost due to the delays

though if I so choose, it can be real time -

know them at their freshest – blast, rape, war crime;

the leaf skeletons of petty prejudice

showcased, as though nothing was amiss.

But I avoid the WiFis in cafés.

Better by far, my love, out in the desert

where the dust is timeless, and the moon phase

the sole cycle eternal, nothing to raise
except small pegs and tents, no red alert. 

This concludes the series of experimental love sonnets I've been writing/posting this month to celebrate everyday loving as opposed to drama queen loving. Love is a tidal wave in the sea, sure, but it is also the ordinary water from the faucet.  I see the sea once or twice a week, dip my toes in sometimes, infrequently, but those faucets I use everyday. Couldn't do without them in fact. The sea is good to have, but I've lived inland too, without it.

I'm travelling this week, back in Kolkata again, so will catch up with you when I get back. Meanwhile, stay well.

Write...Edit...Publish...+IWSG: Welcome to 2019 and another year of fun Challenges!

Welcome to the first Write...Edit...Publish...+IWSG Challenge of 2019! 

The prompt for this Challenge has been picked as winner from among a host of  IWSG member generated ideas. The winning prompt is from long time WEP/IWSG member Toi Thomas. Nifty!

I'm coming in with something I've never tried at WEP before - a photo essay. Last summer I took a trip to UK, and finally learnt to use my camera phone. I have used a 28-day period  for my entry - based on the holiday and the pre-holiday prep and excitement mode, from 7th July to 3rd August 2018.  I hope you'll enjoy it.

News from Nowhere IV

You know, I left my raincoat on the hook

because I wouldn’t need it on the road –

three hundred suns per year, promises made good,

and at a pinch the sheet wrapped like a cloak.

Does it hang there still? Do you sometimes look

in passing in its pockets for a note?

a memory? - perhaps remnants of some mute,

faded smells of rain and cigarette smoke.

It drizzled here today but it was brief.

I went walking without a waterproof –

the rain was like your fingers on my face.

But all rain feels the same in every place,

wherever I go, however far I move –

some strange fluttering bliss akin to grief.

Well, V-Day has come and gone, and as in most other years, I'm continuing with my own version of love poems to mark the month. Because love is kind of an everyday thing around here, in addition to being a many splendoured thing of course.  Love is the dressing in life's salad bowl, it holds the salad together, makes the greens glisten and adds the zing, but you don't really talk about it much. It's made everyday without a fixed recipe, which was really a list of ingredients scribbled down somewhere on the stub of a ticket or something. Gone missing for years now, but it doesn't matter because it's a conditioned reflex anyways, if you know what I mean. 

On a more sombre note, the news out of India was terrible on the 14th, 44 jawans killed in the most atrocious and audacious suicide bomb attack in Kashmir. Or maybe not so audacious, given that we never seem to learn anything from our mistakes. Not one single thing! Terrorists can storm our parliament, besiege an entire Indian city, massacre security personnel at our border posts at will, kill dozens of them on the most heavily guarded road. Just like that. It turns my brain inside out to even think of it. 

Respect and thoughts for the soldiers and their families. 

News from Nowhere III

You know, I stop sometimes at an unknown town

and every market place and every street,

the parking lots, the concrete ramps sloping down,

the face of every stranger I chance to meet,

the sudden lunge of a voice by a window,

the rising noise of an approaching bus,

its windshield gleaming, mirror worked leaf shadows –

they are all you, all of it's about us.

The lampposts blink in the dark – power’s out,

the stars too blink and gulp in unison,

a blind busker tap-taps to the roundabout.

And even though I’m far from the river mouth,

I’m still with you, and still with our horizons,

however far east or west, north or south.

As in most other years, I'm doing my own version of love poems to mark the month, though I'm not a big believer in V-day.  But I'm perfectly fine with anyone celebrating V-day, love and let love is the general policy around here. And who wants to argue about getting more chocolate, right? It's all good, whichever way it's celebrated. Love can run deep in an aquifer, or it can be a gushing hot spring, or a steady-serene, glassy surfaced lake. If you want to splash out, splash out, and if you want to be free, be free. 

To paraphrase another great - there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the beloved. Just keep the knees flexible. 

Happy Valentine's.

News from nowhere II

You know, it is my job to love the road

as much as loving you. As what’s called home,

wherever that may be – without postcodes

or doorsills, bricks and mortar, steel and chrome,

walls that can hem things in. This elbow room

for neuroses, identity’s fuzzy cloud,

no pillow-talk, sheets of dusty perfume,

solitude, waxing and waning in the crowd.

Years of tarmac taken up to realise,

to give up the yearnings for residual,

to straddle two halves of the same whole.

Home’s the fringe of your lashes, pensive eyes,

patient lids. Home's also this burning fuel.

The slope, the bank, the turn, and the rare pothole.

As in most other years, I'm doing my own version of love poems to mark the month, though I'm not a big believer in V-day. Because love is the biggest deal of all but it is all in the day's work, month in and month out. It is the only work with any kind of job satisfaction guaranteed imo. You don't have to count the miles, you don't have to count the eggs, never mind the chickens, before or after they hatch. Everything, every little thing, counts, and nothing has to be counted. How super awesome is that?

And yeah, I'm getting there, I'm getting there, at my own pace, just like you. Sooner or later, the job will get done. And it just might not be over even then. How awesome too, is that?

News from nowhere

You know, I can’t say exactly where I am

but here the skies at night are bright with stars,

the earth is deep and cold against my scars

and though I’ve lost the map, I’m far from home –

the tents glow in the dark like low burning flames

flickering small in alabaster lamps.

You can call it a milestone, this lonely camp

or just another pit stop on the way,

a different northern route to get back someday

and I’ll go back to you, from where I came.

Everything will have utterly changed meanwhile

and yet everything will still be the same –
faded handprints on our walls and doorframes.

My feet on the flagstones. The thrill of your smile.

Well, I'm so glad January is over, it's been rough. Not just for me personally, but also for a lot of people I know, online and off. Relieved to get through without any major damage. 

As in most other years, I'll be doing my own version of love poems to mark the month, though I'm not a big believer in V-day. Love is kind of an everyday thing around here, if you know what I mean. Like a low grade fever. You're not in bed flailing around focussed on being delirious and blind, being plied assiduously with chicken soup and ginger tea. Nope. Just that your eyes are glittery and/or swimmy, your pulse is a tad faster, your entire perspective a bit heightened. But you're going about filing documents and filling up the fuel tanks just as usual. 

It's a nonstop party inside even when the mask looks stern and the hands are smeared with some nameless gunk.  Because the heart is nearly always festooned with tinsel and with those fairy lights which won't stop twinkling. It too, is like a candle behind impassive, translucent stone, for the want of a better analogy.  The glow of love and gratitude and amazement doesn't always show up from outside, but I assure you, it's always there.

Happy February!

On being sent a photo of a Nepali woman baking clay pots

Clay’s useful only when it’s hollowed out,

fired in unbearable kilns and hardened;

the base level, the shape even throughout,

but it’s fragile still, it'll crack in the end.
The potter breaks, though later than the pot,

and once they’ve broken - difficult to mend -

they could be stuck back, sure, but you cannot

unsee the cracks, the fault lines that’ve opened.



Slowly getting back on track, onward with the teeny-tiny and long titles. Or maybe I should have just called it 'Crackpot' :) 

Will be round to catch up on the reading soon.  Can't believe January's nearly over! Hope 2019 is treating you well.

Empty Waters

The airport is already swankier. Clicketty-click polished granite floors where the carpeting does not deaden footsteps, the concourse wider, an enlarged duty-free, shops glittering with souvenirs – costume jewellery, camels, miniature coffee pots. Sleek kiosks of global brands. Rows of backlit signages, lights reflected off all surfaces like some kind of weird visual echo chamber.

Shaken, not stirred

Over familiar, she leans close, and whispers

as the steam rises from my cup,

‘You babble a lot about death and winters

but sometimes you’re forced to shut up.’

Early morning in the park the crowd is thin

just she and I at my old bench,

the clank of garbage vats, the year’s beginning

with the same noise and urban stench.

‘You can write it lofty when it is just you,’

she smirks, though her lips remain grim,

‘all immortal bravado- what will you do

when it’s not you but it is him?’

The coffee goes cold, and the day, between us.

Overhead a birdsong shrills, a branch shivers.

A rocky start to my 2019 - first a medical emergency in India with my mum on Christmas Day for which I had to travel back, then upon return, another visit to the ER here in Bahrain on account of my husband- scared totally witless! 

Both parties out of hospitals now and recovering at home. Truly grateful for the outcomes and the timely interventions, prayers and support from friends and wider family. 

Hope to be a little more regular with blogging and online life once the offline one teeters back to (the new) normal.  The cup may have gone cold for the moment, but thankfully, I'm being allowed the option of reheating. Staying positive and writing it as it comes, when I can.