Sabarmati Sunset

Sunset from my Balcony on River Sabarmati

Amalendu Nag

Phoolda to the entire family of Nags from the little town of Barodi in erstwhile East Bengal, grew up in Rajshahi, was proud of his teacher P.K. De Sircar.

I have no idea why today is designated as Fathers’ Day, but as I loved mine and he loved me like nobody ever has, I wanted to write this post.

He liked to be up to date. He never was late for anything, if it was due to start at 8 a.m., he would be there by 7:45 a.m. Ready for life at all times – that was who my daddy was. No, I did not inherit this quality, merely the feeling that I should be like that and every time am late I feel disturbed, thinking am failing him in some way…

He liked to do what he did, well. “I don’t care if you choose not to do it, but if you must, then do it well or not at all”. He detested shoddiness. I do too. In this sense am his daughter.

Sometimes – no,  in fact, a lot of times before I became old, when I was a girl, he made me feel embarrassed – he seemed impossibly like an incorrigible little boy. He was always doing things I had to ‘fix’ I would feel. He never seemed to be serious about anything at all! Always laughing, always joking when we felt he should be angry and protesting.

The taxi driver comes late, daddy misses his  flight, his explanation: “He (the taximn) probably doesn’t know that watches need winding every day”. The paperman leaves the garden gate open, the neighbour’s goat eats all our blooming marigolds from the head,  buds and all. “That goat (paperman) is hard of hearing and his brother (the real goat) is smart, so what do you expect (you cant blame one because he is deaf, the other one did what any intelligent being would, so why fret) ?”

He made us laugh – but we would quickly stop  so we could sulk some more when things turned out wrong. This Pieces however was never shaken.

When the rain flooded the garden he would make us fishing rods, and we would be seen in the back steps using them – full of hope of catching something, while he coolly shut his eyes soaking in the glorious sound of  Sachin Dev Barman’s   inimitable voice belting out Bengali folk songs on our Panasonic stereo that the family used to be so proud of. I still have it, it was the latest model then.

Daddy liked to dress well, he was stylish, never looked unkempt (the way I tend to do), had fifty pairs of shoes. His shoes irritated mum when she had to clean the closet. I loved them.

He liked beauty and harmony around him, he hated it when I left home without brushing my shoes. I did it often, so,  he would sit on many Sunday afternoons while I slept,  tired from play or studying or grading classwork, cleaning all our shoes – my brother’s, mum’s, mine, his own. It was a ritual.

Some days I would also sit down to it with him.  It was a sight to see with the two of us sitting on the front or back porch, depending on what season it was, with the shoes arranged in a neat semi circle in front of us. Then when it was 4:30 p.m. mum would wake up from her siesta or just leave her paper (we read the newspaper in the morning before leaving for school or work, since mum stayed home, she read the paper, later) or her book, make tea and carry it out, to us,  where we sat.  She would pull a cane stool called “mora” and sit down to watch us. I would show her her shoes, ask her if she could ever shine it the way I or daddy could. She would laugh, “Nope” and shake her head – “that is why I got you”.

“What?!”

I would throw the brush and stomp off  inside to wash. “Put these away and go, Mithi”, my daddy would call after me. I would come back and pick stuff  up then – what was left that is, most of it he would already have put away.

My daddy recited poems when he had fever. When he fell sick, became bedridden, he would start reciting poems aloud one after the other – he never recited them when he was well. I thought he only could remember them when daddy had fever. And my daddy hated going out on his holidays. You could not drag him out for anything. We used to fight so much about this, “When we grow up,  there would be no ‘we-went-here-with-our-father’  stories for our children!”  Well, I  didnt get children. So it is fine I guess.

Daddy loved sweets, never complained if food got burned but he exploded if his rice stuck to the pan – after he retired,  he had taken it upon himself to cook  rice  when he was at home. Perfect it wouldbe,  everytime.  During exams,  when we had to wake up early,  to study, it would be my daddy that would get up before all of us to make coffee for me. All my life – till the time he passed away, I never got a chance to beat him at it. Ever.

And during his exams we had to read his stuff out for him, that is the only way he could remember. I picked up this habit.

There was not much I could ever do for my daddy except buy him stuff.  All that love, thought, that he showered upon us, I now try to give back to my children and all that I interact with – he loved people, had a kind word for everyone, people loved to do things for him, and they had flocked to the house when they heard he was gone.

Everyone came,  from the rickshaw-wallah to his eighty year old walking pratner and the dog he fed, didnt eat or leave its place in front of the front door for three days. It just sat there with his head burried in his paws waiting for daddy to call him for a game or his meal…one rainy day daddy had carried his mother in his pocket, when she was a tiny pup shivering in the sand pit near our house. He had said later to us that when he saw her, he had stopped, the little pup had slowly walked up to him and he had asked if she wanted to come home, she had wagged her little tail so he had put his hand out for her and when she had climbed up on it, he had put her in his great rain coat pocket and brought her home. Chickoo is her son. They are street dogs. They are family and mum always counted them for all meals.  She still does.

Life feels a little off centered with this man gone, who was really like a little boy.  Playing with us while making the bed. We pretended we were birds when we jumped off the bed and dived into the heavy quilt on the floor. We would hide mummy’s stuff together and tease her.  When he lost all his life’s savings at one stage,  in a chit fund, he had grinned and tried to console mummy with, “O but see how everybody’s house is getting robbed, so much money gone is so much percent of your worries diminished too, you could sleep with your windows open now “. It didn’t convince mum of course….

He never did seem like a father until he died and left this huge void in our sky, it either rains all the time now or heats up with the blazing sun.

The house became so very quiet that it feels eerie there.  Anyway, I try to trust, be nice to people because that is what he wanted us to be – nice people that were nice to people. It is hard being daddy’s girl, but  I try.

Audacious Thinking

“Let us Teach them to be Audacious” Kiranbir Sethi

Why we teach our children to be audacious thinkers? Because a look at human history reveals how it has always been the outrageously audacious thinking that made all the difference.

Gandhi, who believed he could topple, defeat the most powerful empire with the power of persuasion and love! They overpowered the Mighty British forcing them  to retreat with just what?  Words and the  power of non-violent resistence.

Look at the audacity of thought and determination and faith in the idea, a legacy that the whole world recognized as valuable and worth preserving.

What about that first explorer that defied resistance of conventional knowledge, audaciously set off to find the Indies,  discovered the shores of the America?

Or that man who decided to wipe off six million people just because he thought he was right? The population of the neighbouring country Bhutan is about a million…so effectively, this man kills the Bhutanese population six times over, so to speak… offsetting massive,  lasting changes in the political, social, economic history of the world as we know today.

Then this man that had been telling everyone that would listen how plants breathe, have life of their won – and how people laughed from the inside of their jail-celled  existence. Bose.

And this other one told the world, “O but it is all relative, depends on where you stand”, sweeping whole philosophies onto a different course altogether.  Einstein.

The Bard of England showed the world what it meant to have grammar serve hands and foot at your service, turning every idea of right or wrong about language use on its head. It is a tool, for God’s sake, make it serve art and stop being a slave to Rules, Shakespeare  seemed to say with his writings.

We realize that Robinson Crusoe and numerous others that may be called survivors in the true sense, all learned to live audaciously, thinking in ways that nobody dared, is why they lived in the end.

Creative thinking is at the root of all successful problem solving strategies.

Every single idea that rocked the world, whether in good or bad ways, was audacious, outrageous aspirations of the human capacity to think beyond – imaginatively reach out over the lines and boundaries of convention, established norms.

It makes good sense to rewrite curriculum after all that India has experienced in the past two decades and change teaching learning focus. I am glad we are doing it finally. We are awake and responding to changes in the world around us.

This post is a celebration of the difficult and exciting journey we have embarked upon.

Hope we do the best by our children, that they are less helpless, more empowered,  by the time they step into the world of adults.

Post Script: On the eve of launching into the Give India Design Thinking Contest, the children were at a circle time closing loop with their campaign plan. Ideas of Giving flew back and forth. Suddenly, Simran, spit out, “O but giving this and giving that and what we do not use is so cliched, why can’t we think beyond? Giving can be other ways too, if we do something like teaching or…Let us think of an audacious idea of giving!”

Coming from a Grade 9 child… it is working already!

my father

I watched my father die in my dream this morning. I experienced his death all over again  – woke up scared, disturbed.

I saw him lying on his side, his face very dark. He was alive at this moment. The way he lay, the way his face looked  made me weep in my dream.  I saw me talking, heard me say, “Why is his face like this, Maa, my father’s face  was so beautiful, how did it become like this?”

He was alive when I spoke. Next minute he was gone. He hadn’t answered.

And then I saw the empty house, my mother changing into a white saree.

It was very vivid. I woke up. Could not think, or do anything. I turned picked up the phone, sms-ed a person I hadn’t thought of in months or met ever.

I sms-ed what I had seen, how I felt. Then came the tears and I found me crying like I just lost him.

I have just shifted to a new house. all my colleagues came to visit me – they said it is such a happy place, please stay here, do not change. and I had a good day at school this morning. am not ill or hungry.

I don’t understand why I saw my father again this way. I didn’t know dreams could be a “all-five-senses” experience. Wish I could do something to reach out.

I don’t really know why I wrote reach out. I know my father is just not there anymore. Maybe my mind is debilitating, disintegrating. I am aging, or going mad.

At school this morning I had said the more we know about our past, our heritage, legacy, the history of how conflicts were resolved, the more we know about how we became who we are today, the stronger we become, the easier it would be for our children to cope with forces that mangle their tender, clean trusting minds later.

I am not thinking of, but  living experiences, trying to connect with people that are just not there. Things inside my mind are probably coming apart. Life is slipping away I think.

I cannot sleep anymore.

It never hurt so very much to see the night end And watch the morning seep in through the chinks in the doors aand ventillators. And I do not wish to understand or rationalize, pretend to be allright, or normal – right now it seems dirty, ugly, unclean and dishonest and unbecoming of my father’s daughter to be so.

Strategies to Slow Down Population Explosion

Recently,  in this forum  here this headline caught my attention:

^{Billionaires Meet in Secret to Discuss Population Reduction Strategies – “Don’t Want to be Seen as a Global Cabal”}

The report said that Bill Gates initiated a meeting between billionaires like David Rockefeller Jr, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey,  Sir Paul  Nurse, a British Nobel Laureate (Bio Chemist) and Michael Bloomberg to discuss strategies to  slow down population growth.

aldhelm 1 pointif(reddit) reddit.vl['t1_c09tifo'] = ['0 points', '1 point', '2 points' ]; 5 minutes ago[+] (0 children)

Numbers do matter. Affects every aspect of life, distribution to welfare to governance to nurture to sustenance.

The key to it all probably is education and awareness and empowerment of women.

If this news be true and these guys are really interested in doing something about SLOWING down the population growth, I wish they would:

CHANGE NATURE OF FUNDING. FUND EMPOWERMENT. STOP CHARITY.

It pushes a country  deeper into hell of  shit: never ending debt and corruption.

• Stop rural funding in countries like India. It has led to severe  corruption and scams.  Where it  benefitted, it has benefitted only a very few in superficial ways.

• Fund and nurture private enterprise.

• Start funding education in countries like India, China, Africa systematically.

• Fund private curriculum development projects that would empower its citizens to get actively involved in developmental work.

• AggressivelyMonitor Progress, audit fund management at the receiver’s end.  Get involved.  The Bill Gates Foundation had funded computer literacy in a school in Kolkata 7 years back.  Did anyone go check what happened and why?

• Fund projects that initiate Women’s empowerment, her social rights to Health, to Reproductive choices, to Financial independence, to Wage equality and Resistance to abuse. Often a woman in India is forced to continue until she produces a male child

• Fund support groups to engage women in developmental work.

• Help build/ sustain Women Empowerment bodies that would help protect women that choose to stay single in countries like India Indian situation was just not designed to sustain single women  or even single men.

The real drivers of social developement are WOMEN.  Let’s face this : these  creatures  create and then  rear children that run the country one day.  No matter how good a school is,  if the child has been mothered badly, there usually is little hope of getting a high quality man with high quality brains and a heart to run things well.

In  countries like India  it is the mother that does most of the critical parenting – she is the one that instills  and builds the value system that would run the individual’s learning, development from then on. What the mum did would have become the primary operating system. Scripting.

Men rarely participate in child rearing in ordinary middle class homes.  They merely are content to play the supervisory  and the role  of principal bread earner.

Educating and empowering  one half- educated,  resistant urban Indian housewife  would help 2o women through her and  5 men and  2 future citizens.  Roughly  27 people.

Fund  one  Teacher and -  you help 200 future decision makers through him/her.

• Support Gay Marriage. Gay marriage would lead to lifestyle changes that might curb rate of reproduction, cause more adoptions, bring down divorce rates.

• Support single parenthood.   Support adoption.

• Fund initiative to curb teenage pregnancy in developed countries.

• Fund literacy programs, language teaching enterprise  (that is the key to inseminating  information about rights, know hows to stoke population control behavior) R&D in this field,  content creation.

More than money, in countries like India, what is more essential is skill-building efforts:  Management skills,  project development skills, entrepreneurship skills,  campaigning skills,  outreach program manning  skills,  administrating skills.

Here in India,  half the  brainy middle class able population is left out of quality skill building education systems because every selection here is marks/score based.  Most failing in academic examinations have no other way but to drop out of every training, education program forever.

One  could continue to  make money:  NOT through drug or weapon sale  or scams and engineering economic disasters.

If the quality of population improves  and the numbers  stabilize,  one could make money  through sale of  SAFER  stuff – that are safer for the rich and the poor alike.

See, everyone knows and has seen that  if the rich sell a gun, the poor  might use it to destroy them.

Instead, if they had enough and were less angry,  they might want to buy more  cars or iPods or software or services perhaps and land in the moon too.

But of course  this is far more complex and  till the time the idea of “resource” is equated to power and control,  development  would always be about money.  Never about people or real social development perhaps.

Behalaey shedin

A Lazy Weekend at Home

this is particularly about nothing in particular. just a journal entry about a lazy summer afternoon spent at home.

family gathering at Thakurpukur

I met a long lost sister and brother in law on Friday. I cried the previous night before I actually met them, when I did, it was a happy tearless union. Bro-in-law cooked a delectable lunch and we ate together with another friend called Nini, on the bed with rain drenched afternoon sunlight bathing the space with light and good cheer. Maybe the good cheer and light actually flowed from our hearts. But then the other half of the great room looked so dark, we had to arrange to eat near the window on the bed. No Bengali in their right minds would ever allow rice to be eaten on the bed.

But we decided to break some rules that day. Like everybody started drinking right after 11 a.m. I was given my pineapple sherbet. But I put it back in the fridge as I was talking so much. I had it later with lunch while they had by then switched to rum.   After they have had vodka, which is what didi prefers. (Me, my mum and Anupam do not drink, most others in the family do).

That, and chilled sweet fresh summer Himshagor mangoes. I like to have sweet fruits with my rice and dal and fish curry. As usual Bapida’s dal was fragrant – I nearly always manage to kill the fragrance of the masala (spices while saute-ing, he always does it right). Many of their twenty six cats and kittens are dead.

There are seventeen now excluding the two tiny ones that are minuscule in size and doesn’t leave the wedge in the sofa where their mum hides them from the house-tease Khatash. They are about five days old. The house filled up with nauseating fish smell when five kilos of fish got cooked in large pressure cookers that are used only to cook their meal. And then Bapida had the bright idea to lift the lid to let it cool so the army could eat first.

This is the only household I know where cats get preference over human guests. Bapida Sutapadidi rock, Nini…

It has been a long time. Everybody said it at least twice. Including Nini who is otherwise Prof  Nivedita in her college where she teaches Bangla with one of my nephews. She said she had heard all the stories about me in the course of the morning, before I arrived around mid-day. How long now? Four and a half years since I left town.

Later, they filled me up with news about how Abraham Majumdar and Ranjan Ghoshal organized the Mohin after Thirty Three Years show without Bapida who used to be the singer in all of their old EPs and one the very first three original members of the group. He is very hurt. While we were eating this girl from the TOI called and he almost turned her down. We frowned in unison.

I suggested he follow his friends’ advise and meet The Times of India girl to clear things up. He finally relented and the appointment was fixed up.

Stuck

The whole morning I spent hours on the net trying to figure out a way to get out of Kolkata to my workplace. All trains are booked to limit till June 6th! I looked up all possible break journey routes: via New Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai. No luck.

The Director called up and said, fly out, she would loan me the money. Well, wish I could. But I have too much baggage. I wish to carry some of my stuff this time, books, utensils, clothes. And a stove. When I went there, I had gone there with a backpack. And stayed on for over two years. Cant come again soon as it takes two nights and a day for a one way trip in an express train. Nearly four hours on a plane. Agents are no help.

Partha suggested I but some ticket and later he would see if he can get it approved under the VIP quota, provided no VIP is travelling that day. Am not sure I like the idea. What if someone does? I will not be allowed to board and I forfeit refund, lose money, as it is one cannot cancel a Tatkal ticket. The extra 300 bucks you pay for that would also be wasted….. would try again tomorrow…..

Missing Link and Prachir

Tonight I watched young Shubho of Lokkhichhara interview these two bands on his Star Jalsha Gaan Bhalobeshey Gaan. The title by the way is a line from an album of the band Chandrabindoo. I had known Missing Link in it’s formative stage five years back. Later, they made waves winning the Bandemataram contest. This evening listening to the rendition of their songs I could not make out why they had won back then, the songs were that vague and sugar sweet and so totally unlike what they are known to do on stage.

Prachir surprisingly seemed more open to ideas and all the three songs including Bharatbarsho indicated considerable thought. I liked the sound of and lyrics of the song “Deher khonjey, Dhangshostoopey, Raatri naamey“.

However,  rolling the R too much isn’t the way Bengalis speak. Also, as they spoke while answering Shubho’’s questions,  their English influenced stilted, corrupted,  broken Bangla shocked me.

Shoumya Prachir in Star Jalsha with Shubho in blue in the BG

A song is never truly of a language and culture unless you also capture the cadence of that language and stay true to the typical diction in your verses. If you wish to be angry you cannot use the English diction and mixx it up with Bangla.

Speak Bangla the way Bongs do for Gossake! What the kids ought to realize is Bongs do get angry and they laugh and cry. It all can be done in Bangla using the rhythm and tone and pitch and modulation that Bongs would typically use.

Till that happens,  you are not rocking in Bangla, kidos. But good to know Star is now interested. Bangla alternative music is at last getting the attention that has been long due to it, I guess.

raining here in Kolkata

summer rain, vacation time, am at my own table, with my favourite old computer blogsurfing. the window was open so the wet wind could play with my hair and I could see the trees swaying lightly and the street below

here it is

Summer Rain in Kolkata - beginnning

Rains harder now, the street lights are on

Thats on my right side

While I waited for the pictures to upload, this is what I was reading:

3. Marc S. Lewis, clinical psychology professor, University of Texas Austin, 2000.

There are times when you are going to do well, and times when you’re going to fail. But neither the doing well, nor the failure is the measure of success. The measure of success is what you think about what you’ve done. Let me put that another way: The way to be happy is to like yourself and the way to like yourself is to do only things that make you proud.

I thought you might like it.

spooky stats, unreliable stats or meddling?

This is about stats on this blog. Am not an avid blogger. And am not that concerned about statistics either. Generally I do not even notice the counter to check the number of hits this site gets.

But today, because I had written something that I had reason to believe is controversial, I had checked when I opened my browser window. Usually with Firefox you have the option of saving tabs as they are when you log off and are closing the window. Next time you log in it opens exactly at the same page and state that you left it earlier.

So what I had seen at first was the hit counter showing a number that was like 9743 or  9763.

Suddenly when I went to a different page of the blog and came back the number had changed to 9277! 500 short of what there was almost.

I have a vague impression that I had seen this at other times but because I had never consciously wanted to know is why I always thought it must be my mistake and in any case what does it matter?

But tonight I had checked and therefore was surprised to see this aberration.

It is spooky – is someone playing tricks with this site? I often a huge number of bad spam written in bad Russian which is also quite surprising. Never anything else but that.

It is eerie, scary. Disturbing. I hope am wrong and everything is fine and that this would stop.

O even as I finished this went back and see the 9277 is gone and it is back where it was 9747 in the hit counter….this is scary…..

Donald Trump, Ms California Carrie Prejean and her comments on Gay Marriage

Trump says Miss California USA can retain crown By Marcus Franklin, AP, Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Now then, why did she win in the first place? What was the contest about, the one in which Ms Prejean won a crown at? From the furrore at first I thought must have been a contest about upholding social values, rational thought and great minds… it was just a beauty pageant for God’s sake not a contest for the Booker Prize or a Magsaysay! So what the hell?!

Seriously, though, let us see why she won that crown in the first place. She won it for physical beauty: sex appeal, and a nice face and figure (or at least a physical form, a shape, colour, texture, weight etc that according to some people, most people might think to be appealing and therefore can be used to sell products or campaign for causes or whatever).

Who deserves the crown? She does. Along with her though, her creators do too,  by which I mean both God and her biological parents, and then her creators would the ones that gave her the look and her dresses – make up artists, dress designers, her mentors… and perhaps the JUDGES,  who gave her a chance, they might have chosen not to … there are hundreds of thousands of pretty faces out there after all.

So when you take away her crown do you realize it is not just she who loses it, it is all of you who made it possible in the first place – in terms of the idea behind, the process,the method, the entire system.

Ms Prejean did not create the system, she didn’t ask to be photographed in the nude, she would not be the one to enjoy her own nude photos, she doesn’t have an investment in the industry, she was just fortunately born with a body and a face that make people want to see her in the nude. Period.

So why should she lose her crown?

She wasn’t competing for the Nobel or the Pulitzer – it is just a Beauty contest the very premise of it is far from anything intellectual – the very premise of that is sex appeal, the body, the body, the body and nothing else at all.

So if she has been naturally endowed with one that is considered d3esirable, why can’t she use that as she pleases? Why can’t she show off – ALL of it if it doesn’t bother HER sense of propriety?

She feeds it, clothes it, takes care of it, works hard to keep it in shape, she wins a prize for showing glimpses of it to the world and she can’t show ALL of it if it pleases her or if it brings her some money?

Why? Because we decided to sell her – we are the powerful corporate with the guns and the money and therefore exclusive rights?

It is absolutely funny that this controversy should be happening in the West where it is OK to kiss in the streets, lie naked on the beach, hold hands in public. And to think we look up to them for being progressive! And rational and sensible and individual’s right conscious.

I think this is pretentious and absurd.

If anyone should lose that crown it should be the people who created the Pageant in the first place, people who designed sophisticated ways of dealing in the human flesh, playing God in other people’s lives, exploiting beautiful women in the name of giving them something.

Double standards are hateful. Lack of respect for her is abominable.

…it had launched a new advertisement against gay marriage featuring footage of her at the pageant. The ad also features video of Hilton referring to Prejean with a profanity.

So who is taking advantage of whom? Who is right here and who is wrong – is it so hard to see? Is Ms Prejean responsible how other people use what she holds to be her private view?

Ms Prejean is entitled to her views whether you like it or not, she didn’t contest for the sagacity of her views regarding social norms. If she THINKS Gay marriage is something she doesn’t approve of – so be it. What bloody hell does it matter? I support Gay marriage. So there is someone who does, therefore it is ok if another one doesn’t – why put her on the stake ? She is too young, under exposed to the realities of life at her age anyway to know what is what. The young lady is only twenty something!!!

Trump should stay firm and not give in to dogmatic pressure and persecution of the poor girl. If she had violated clauses in her contract which says after win she can’t do certain things, then at least there would have been a case. But even then letting someone feel she is beautiful, having her show herself to win the prize and then telling her she can only show this much is hypocrisy.

As long as she isn’t harming anyone, stealing, cheating, being adulterous (even then it is still her choice, her body, her life, her responsibility) or a bigot, she has the right to her title and her hard earned crown. The US is not India so let US be the US and not turn retro. Please.

If we are really so concerned about “highest ethical and moral standards” we should not be having such pageants in the first place. 1) It undermines the importance of one’s mind, celebrates the flesh. 2) In effect such pageant says, all those of you other women out there, you are not beautiful by these standards, you should ASPIRE to be like THIS! O yes,  the subversive message is precisely that.

Women are beautiful, sexually desirable to men and women, and equally importantly conscious of their own sexual beings – it is ok if she decides to be her self at all times.  As good citizens that love our fellow beings, we need to learn to respect and revere that.

Pic sourced from the site that is linked here.

Love for Sale

Dilruba Dilnashin is a song that Ahmedabad FM broadcasts all the time.

watch?v=MCWTpLJZkJw

It reminds me of home, of Kolkata every time I listen to it.

The reason is –  the tune in a part of this song resembles one of my favourite Bangla songs.

The song is called Bhabtey Badha Nei* (translated in English it could either mean: As You Like It or You Could think Anything).

It was written, composed, set to tune by the Bangla Band ABHILASHA.

The “Tera Mera Pyar Jo Hain, Pyar yeh Zordar Hain” part of the song Dilruba Dilnashin from film Namastey London,  bears exact resemblance to the Bangla song I mentioned.

Manish Gajjar, BBC Film Correspondent, in his review writes, “Himmesh Reshamiya’s music in the movie is truly excellent”. The movie he refers to is Namastey London.

It  was directed by Vipul Shah. Music in the movie was directed by Himmesh Reshamiya. The song title is : Dilruba Dilnashin. Singers : Zubin Garg, Alisha Chinai

I have no idea whether Himesh had a chance to interact with Bangla musicians at any point in his life, whether they introduced him to the band culture.

However, considering that he listens to variety of music and looks everywhere for inspiration, he may have heard it somewhere.

The lyricist of the band Sumit Samadder has had a very brief stint at working in Mumbai.

Now, Mumbai music stores are extremely limited in their stock of pan India contemporary music. Even Planet M Mumbai or Crossword Mumbai or Landmark Mumbai is actually quite impoverished in this matter. But Sumit has been in Mumbai, maybe his music travelled too somehow.

Sumit continues to write for the band although it has now been regrouped with only the original singer Kutty still remaining in the band. Sumit writes music for other singers (than his own band ABHILASHA), jingles, scripts for TV shows, ad copies etc for a living. He is well known also for his TV show “Pathher Panchali”  in Bangla. He has worked extensively with Debojyoti Misra, one of the ace Music Directors of Kolkata.

Point of mentioning the song here is to drive home the point that artists are free to adapt and adopt. It is their prerogative.

But are they also not responsible for upholding each other’s interests and talents? Aren’t music and arts people expected to be more than salesmen with high standards of ethics and morality? Can they afford to be ordinary baniyas when society looka up to them for upholding values that nurture, enable, empower the community?

Sumit Samadder lyricist of Abhilasha, writer of Bhabtey Badha Nei

*Wanted to upload the song,  it is in my computer but as a cda file, if someone tells me how to do it, I would.

I could not Vote

it was polling day today at Kolkata for the general elections this year. It happens every five years in this country if things are fine.

I traveled a thousand km to cast my vote, exercise my right. Was I able to?No.

My name was on the voters’ list, my mum’s name too and my dead father’s name and my brother’s. My mum stood right beside me and so many others that have lived as neighbours for twenty years of our lives in this neighbourhood.

I had the Ration Card issued by the State government to prove I reside in this State (how else did my name show up on their list anyway?)

I did not flash my PAN card. I forgot to bring it with me to Kolkata it is somewhere in Ahmedabad where I have been for the last two years for work.
I also didn’t get my passport as it has Gujarat address on it. I could have shown them my bank debit card which had a picture of me. But I didn’t.

I felt hurt and rather like an outcast – after all I did for this city…I didn’t even get to vote.

Is it my fault they failed to issue my voter’s ID card? In our family in 1995 we all went together for the pictures and only my mother’s arrived later with her name spelled wrongly as “Nug” instead of “Nag”. She was wise and did not send it for correction – so she has the VID, she could vote, I could not!

All because they thought only if I showed a photo they could be sure it was me. The fact that I had produced another document that Banks would accept to open an account for you in this country, was not enough.

It has been years since I submitted my photo, documents etc to get my voter’s ID card. Did they apologize for not being able to issue my card on time for me to be able to vote? No.

Strange times.

The greatest gift a Teacher can give and an American Paradoxical situation

Teacher at Capistrano Valley High School. A federal judge ruled recently that (Jim) Corbett violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause by disparaging Creationism.

Over 2,000 years ago Socrates faced a court for refusing to recognize the gods acknowledged by the state, importing strange divinities and corrupting the young. The judges sent Socrates to his death. He accepted the sentence of the court and committed suicide by drinking a cup of hemlock…

Challenging myths is dangerous, but it is the essence of getting students to think for themselves. The Athenian judges, like some parents today, would have students accept myth without question, because myth is the foundation of their parental, political and/or religious authority…

Questioning may make students and parents uncomfortable, but students have a right to think for themselves. It is not “bullying” to demand that students think….

Ms. Farnan also objected to my challenge of another national myth, that the United States was founded as a “Christian” nation. There is some truth to that notion, but embracing that myth and excluding other views can be used to unfairly gain political advantage….

There is no greater gift teachers can give to students than to teach them to think. Don’t sue them for it. Try taking them to the Pyrataneum for dinner, conversation and a cup of coffee, no hemlock.

It is amazing and frightening that this controversy is happening in America!

What does this attitude of citizens reflect upon who we are as people, as responsible adults?

Why do we need to make an issue out of this without paying heed to or respecting what the Teacher is saying about what he did, meant to do or not do? By continuing with the Law suit are we not showing disregard for the defendant’s statement?

Are we not setting fear in the heart of weaker teachers? As it is teachers are these days scared the world over, underpaid, and repressed. Would this incident not further harm the Teacher’s position in society?

What good are we doing to our children with this REALLY? If we really cared about our children, would we threaten and insult his Teachers?!!!

Sexy South India

Lake Kookal in the Range with the same name, Tamil Nadu, India

Rummaging through old files during my summer vacation at Kolkata, I found this picture.

This is a very rare and beautiful place hidden in the midst of the Shola Forests of the Nilgiris – the Blue Mountains in India. If you shoudl ever visit Tamil Nadu, and have a taste for not so touristy places you could climb up to this little hamlet up in the hills.

It would be roughly 12 km trek from where the government bus would drop you. There is one single forest bunglow where you would want to put up the permit for which you need to bring from Kodaikanal itself. The place is very very quiet.

They practice jhoom here and step farming. The views are gorgeous.

The lake may have been a crater that got filled up over the years or could be a natural Lake – I don’t know but bang in the middle of hills it was a treasure to find. This lake is the source of water for the entire village. It stays filled up perennially.

The colours here are predominantly blue green, dark green and emerald green with bright dots of red from the clothes people wear.

the Kolkata Rockers’ political agenda

Part 3

So who else Rocks in Kolkata?

Quite a few in fact, groups like, Lokkichhara, SHANDHAN, DHUMKETU, STRINGER, ARKA to name a few. There are scores of others in the suburbs around Kolkata, across the coastal state West Bengal and beyond the borders in Bangladesh.

They haven’t got a subversive political agenda. They are not here to change the world. “We know we cannot do it” is all they have to say about this subject. They are indeed far from being any organized force yet. They have no unions to look after their interests. they hardly have time to ponder over the distance they have covered. They are simply busy keeping their acts alive at this juncture. Survival is more important.

They do however proudly project themselves as the flag bearers of Bangla Alternative Music. They want the world to know that it is not accidental.  Their music do successfully reflect how this generation feels, thinks about life around them, their vulnerability and angst and disillusionment and dreams and aspirations, typical urbane problems and issues.

Ways of loving and living that are typical of their times. Sex is no longer a taboo, you can sing about it if it concerns you in any serious way.

There is less pretension in their music.

Most of the musicians are professionals – doctors, engineers, teachers, ad-men, journos, and university blues and know their way around the intellectual and philosophical terrain.

They have managed to capture the essence of urbane contemporary life, within an urbane contemporary format. Their presentation is designed to reaffirm the vigour and vitality of the angst ridden GEN X and GEN Y.  Their medium of expression is contemporary Bangla of campuses and tea stalls (roadside chai kitlis), uninhibited, free flowing, spontaneous musical expression, where grammar gracefully takes second seat while rocking emotions take the first.

What about the great Rocking tradition of challenging the status quo? CACTUS  Siddartha looks bored. ABHILASHA Kutty shrugs, “We abhor the disintegration that is happening all around us, we simply want people to stop waging wars and live peacefully, each one doing his own stuff.” Rupam says, “No one was listening. I realized I was lonely, with something to say to the world, so I decided to breathe in and scream.”

You don’t need to sit properly, dress properly to attend a Rock show. Anything goes, you could be anybody, they are the intellectual democrats – your age, sex, colour, creed is no bar as long as you are willing to give yourself up to their music and jive along, be alive and conscious of life around you, for their music is about here and now.

The established order is slow, the people diffident, but they won’t let go, so pitch in, fasten your seat belts and hold on to whatever while giving it a loud shout, let the angst explode, the strobes blaze…

“Jibon ar cholchhey na shoja pothhey”, roars Rupam in one of his songs ( meaning, life isn’t exactly straight”). Life is constantly changing and we get caught in the vortex at times. There is no skirting the process or getting out of it, one is driven, so let it be, jump into the Band wagon and have fun. Let physics, and nature and economics take control and evolution take its own course.

II who Rocks in Kolkata?

Part 2 Bangla Band and Advertisement

“Bishakto Manush” (The Poisonous Man), Nemesis or even Hashnuhana poignantly captures this generation’s fears and insecurities.

So does Halud Pakhi (The Yellow Bird), Katha Chhilo (The Tryst We had) and Amra Bhishon Aka (We are All So Lonely).

Just these three songs are enough to drive the crowd at any CACTUS show to frenzy. The entire Nazrul Mancha crowd (where they usually hold college fests and is filled with college students) and sizeable portion of Sadan (Rabindra Sadan for the more elite crowd comprising of different kinds of people, not just college students) can be heard singing along. They seem to know the whole song by heart. Sometimes the singing duo of Siddhartha and ‘Pata’ Abhijeet appear to stand perplexed on stage while the crowd carry the song forward. The guitar wails, Baji meditatively drums along.

One would suppose this essentially is what Rock is about in Kolkata. Or is there more to it? What about the degree and range of musical innovation that Rock brought about in the West?

Anindyo Chatterji, who, at the time I had spoken to him, was anchoring the DD Metro show called Parampara besides juggling numerous shows of their own band CHANDRABINDOO, pointed out matter-of-factly, “Gaan bendhey othatai baro katha akhon” ( “it is more important to write or be able to compose the lyric of your songs at this stage) .

The kind of informed audience and technology, training and exposure necessary for this genre to grow was still not a reality back then.  That is what Prabudha Banerjee (music director of Bhalo Theko) and Dhrubada of erstwhile band Nagor Philomel, feel.

These interviews were taken five years back in 2004.

A few years back, he recorded a jingle for Thums Up with the three lead singers of FOSSILS, CACTUS and ABHILASHA.  All three are considered to be major Rock bands of Kolkata.  Why pick on them?

Prabuddho Banerjee said that Bates wanted a kind of upcountry sound and one that their target market segment could easily relate to and were already familiar with. And he hadn’t wanted to work with one band – so he had all three working together.

So to what extent does the Thums Up generation identify with Bangla Rock or the Rockers?

Rupam Islam of FOSSILS, the youngest member of the Trio said, “Oh they turn up at shows dressed like me sometimes. If they really like our music they would copy our hairstyle. But mostly, they pick up the lines, the lingo. But you must remember we are not mainstream, we do alternative stuff, so there cannot be any credible index of yet. Rock in the West is mainstream, like Hindi Film music is mainstream here in India.”

Did you feel comfortable with the idiom of this particular jingle, did it sound like your stuff?

Rupam, “Well, yes, the language was pretty much what we would have done; the music however is midway, a sweetened version of the real stuff you would hear at the Bangla Rock shows.”

Evidently, Bangla Rock Bands have managed to establish a distinctive identity of their own in terms of the sound and perhaps even in terms of the use of Language. It is branded and can be sold and bought and used to sell your stuff!

In somewhat vague way, perhaps these people represent the same cutura force that spawned poets and writers like Jibonanando Das, Shakti, Sunil Gangopadhyay and later Joy Goswami, Joydeb Basu, Mandakranta. Somehow, one cannot but feel that they have done for the music industry here, what those other people have done for poetry.

But isn’t their kind of music ‘desi maal in a videshi morok’ meaning ‘local stuff in Western package’? Look at the assortment of electric guitars and metal drums and synthesizers in their ensemble.

Well, the sound is as Western as instant coffee is Western or the suit you might wear or the car you drive or even the chairs you sit upon while you read this stuff. The sentiment is all Bangla, so is the medium of expression.