The Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi Award winning Konkani novelist Domodar Mauzo’s Jeev Divum Kai Chya Marum is translated into English as Boy, Unloved by the acclaimed writer, Jerry Pinto. The translation succeeds in offering an immersive experience to the reader, especially of the life, sights and cuisine redolent of a Goan village in the backdrop. Although a reader, in the absence of knowledge of Konkani and hence the original work, may not be able to gather the nuances often difficult to translate.
This novel is a bildungsroman which follows the life of its protagonist, Vipin Parob, born into a loveless marriage in a serene village in Goa. It navigates his lonely formative years and explores his friendships in teenage years. While the exploration of his growing up years as a kid wrenches the heart of a reader, those of his later pre-adult years leaves one with an unsettling feeling. And that makes a reader wonder at what went amiss…
At the outset, the harrowing circumstances within the family of five-year-old Vipin are revealed. His house, with its closed windows and doors, restricts his body and mind. He becomes lonesome, finds solace in books and has difficulty making friends at school. In an environment which stifles him both physically and emotionally, he adheres to reclusiveness to cope with his ruthless father and careless mother. An unloved child of a bitter and broken wedlock, Vipin’s plight, as stunningly portrayed by the author, wrings the reader’s core. Mauzo’s incisive insight into the complexities around childhood trauma emerges in his portrayal of Vipin’s manners. His submissiveness in front of his parents, because of the treatment meted out to him perhaps, indicates how distress during childhood years may affect a person’s sense of self-worth. In fact, when his brilliance in academics makes his father’s relation with him transactional, where he is favoured because his father believes he can become a doctor, Vipin lets go off his own desire to study the subject he likes.
During his time in junior college, Vipin comes across people he befriends. Martin Sir, his English teacher from school, is the first person who understands and mentors him. Subsequently, although reluctantly at first, he manages to forge meaningful connections with Chitra and Fatima from his college. Krishna (initially a house help), and Amanda (the nurse caring for his mother later) also become people he can relate to. However, a narrative inconsistency appears in the depiction of the dynamics among teenagers, Vipin, Chitra and Fatima who despite becoming very close to each other, grapple with unnecessary confusions. Where Vipin’s character appears reliable, the characters of both Chitra and Fatima come off as unreliable. Perhaps because they are not fully explored and much appears unsaid in terms of their backgrounds and their mannerisms.
Regardless of the lack of love and care in his familial relationships, when it falls upon Vipin to take care of his ailing parents during their respective illnesses, he does it with a sense of responsibility and concern, if not love. It is something that also comes forth in his relationships with others, whether it is helping Krishna to study further, helping him financially or protecting Amanda from his cousin.
Mauzo, very strikingly captures the quagmire which makes a vulnerable, unloved child grow up to become a young adult who fiercely feels protective towards people close to him. However, Vipin’s journey of exploration of his self and subsequently of his aim in life, wrestle with disparities thrown at him by circumstances. The loneliness of his heart swells to consume the ties he forged in hope of love, leaving an emptiness he finds difficult to conquer. For the invested reader, it renders a disconcerting mark.
Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .
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The title plunges us into the sacrality of resonant words, the Nadistuti sukta being a hymn in the Rigveda in praise of rivers. Poet, novelist and translator Lakshmi-Kaaveri equates the flow of the waters with ‘the flow of poetry’, the quiet mingling of streams of remembrance and phrases that shape into lines of verse. Her book is dedicated to Jayanta Mahapatra ‘who lives on’ and an exordium titled ‘Naman’ offers gentle tribute to H.K. Kaul, who was among the founders of the Poetry Society of India and passed away during the recent pandemic. Nadistuti is a brilliant and thought-provoking collection of poems that charts the timeless continuums while being aware of the fragility of human existence.
The book begins with a prayer to the River Narmada (meaning ‘the giver of pleasure’), which divides the north from the south of India. Yet the rippling waters have no boundary—a philosophical observation that I find marks much of this remarkable volume. Remembering Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada, Sindhu, Kaaveri, devotees recite the shloka[1] at their morning bath seeking the blessings of the rivers. Though such rituals are mostly forgotten in modern times, the climate crisis should remind us of the consequences of such amnesia. The invisible Saraswati is possibly a metaphor for such “forgetting” simply because of her partial invisibility. Lakshmi Kannan’s vibrant lines recall the disappearance of the river as also of Saraswati’s appearance in another form as a revered Goddess invoked by “students, writers, musicians, dancers, painters”. From the Nadistuti I learned the word— ‘potomologist’—the study of rivers, but the book is far greater than an academic enquiry—it’s a recognition of the civilisational bloodline that is linked to the ancient rivers which were the earliest cradles of humankind.
Some extraordinary and innovative aspects Lakshmi’s book deserve special mention. First, the remarkable prose- poem called ‘Ponni Looks Back’ which stretches the boundaries of imagination in a charming manner. Ponni is the name of the river Kaaveri in classical Tamil Literature. It flows through Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and is always perceived as a woman. Lakshmi tracks Ponni’s autobiography as though writing a Bildungsroman, the education and growing up of an innocent girl and her experiences along the way. Therefore, Ponni is born as a small unobtrusive stream on the Mysore-Coorg border. Then she becomes prominent and significant, and a vital witness to history—the Hoysala kingdom, the classical arts of Belur, Halibid, Somnathpur, then carrying on further to wrap around the islands of Srirangapatnam and Srirangam and so on. I enjoyed the autobiographical voice of Ponni reveling in her centuries of testimony to all the changes she has observed and imbibed—till we come to the new politics that is destroying rivers and society today. Ponni says, “One day I heard different voices floating over my waters…they sit around tables, shout at each other and refer to me dryly as the Kaaveri dispute, wrenching my waters apart”. Like yet another goddess, Sita, she chooses to end her journey. Ponni merges with her mother, the Bay of Bengal —her love and amity having completed what tasks she could undertake towards humanitarian goals. The world of manmade disasters is a chapter River Kaaveri would rather not participate in.
My question here is: “Do poetry and politics merge?… Can poets continue to be as Shelley called them ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world’?” This brings me to another significant aspect of Nadistuti: Lakshmi’s brand of subtle feminism. Predictably, I am drawn to the poems that argue against son-preference, challenge gender stereotypes, and poke gentle barbs at unenlightened men.
Second, I cite a longish poem called “Snake Woman” from the section titled Chamundi, because it combines rituals, dream imagery, gender prejudice and the paradox of son preference. The ritual is called Nagapuja and has strict rules of abstinence from certain foods like snake gourd, and it entails hours of prayer—the chant being:
Please grant me a male child Oh, King of Cobras I will name him Nagaraja In your honour.
Something strange started happening that the pregnant woman could never dare reveal to the world. She dreamt every night of a female baby cobra wearing jhumkies (long earrings) and a jeweled girdle and sporting a red dot on her forehead. Well, the baby born was female—and the happy mother, though a little fearful, called her Nagalakshmi. The mother-in-law showed acute displeasure: “She can have any name. Who cares!”
Another pregnancy, again the rituals of Nagapuja—more stringent than before. No dreams this time. And an eagerly welcomed boy-child is born, enthusiastically named Nagaraja. And guess what? As he grows up, he ‘hissed at is mother’, ‘bared his fangs at his father’ and ‘spewed venom on his sister’. These are poet Lakshmi Kannan’s vivid vocabulary for the revered son! And the snake woman sister, what happened to her? She sloughed off her skin seasonally, grew strong, capable and emerged as a “lustrous one”.
I selected this poem for more than just Lakshmi’s clever reversal of gender prejudice. Snakes have a central place in the folktales and folklore of India. The word used, “theriomorphic”, denotes situations, where animals and human beings interchange bodies and identities. Snakes are not evil—they are often the progenitors of good deeds and the shapeshifting happens for many commendable reasons. The figuration of the snake as exclusively evil does not derive from Indian mythology. Lakshmi’s poem, this one and several others, tread this beautiful territory of humans and non-humans sharing a common abode, the Earth, and there is an implied lament that we have ignored this vital connectivity.
And finally, I am delving into the emotive, personal poems that end the collection. Called ‘Fireside’, it invites memories of WB Yeats’ classic lines:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book…
Lakshmi addresses many members of her family; they are named, thanked and remembered for their acts of love and compassion. Because Lakshmi believes in history and continuities, as we have seen in ‘Ponni Looks Back’, and the Nagalakshmi reference, these too are poems about lineage, heritage, respect and love—the attributes that make life worthwhile. Lakshmi’s mother (addressed in the poems as Amma) was Sharada Devi, an acclaimed painter in Mysore and Bangalore whom the daughter remembers with her easel-mounted canvas gently acquiring colours, the landscapes emerging from the contours of her imagination. Today, Lakshmi Kannan, the poet of Nadistuti, looks at a blank sheet of paper and compares that to her Amma’s canvas—the words will surely incarnate. Another poem has a redolent title ‘In Search of Father’s Gardens’, upturning African American writer Alice Walker’s book In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens, but for me it’s a tale reminiscent of Lakshmi’s early novel Going Home that I had reviewed decades ago. It was a book about ancestral homes and families breaking up. In the reconfigurations over time, Nadistuti’s final section presents poems to members of Lakshmi’s immediate family, named, but not too personalised, making this an exemplary template for those who hesitate to present the private in public poetry. With beauty, grace, gratitude, humour, irony—each person emerges as a tributary in the flow of the poet and writer we know and love as Lakshmi- Kaaveri. The last poem ‘If You Want to Visit’ is deeply poignant. It’s not a farewell poem—instead it’s an invitation to an eternal companionship:
Come Visit me now I’ll not have a word of complaint I’ll gather all of these and leave with you.
Here is the confluence of all that Nadistuti says: the day’s prayer in the morning, the Ponni River encapsulating history, the rituals that pass through many generations, and the legacy of a poet’s words embedded in the annals of time. An exquisite and meaningful collection of poems, Lakshmi has introduced concepts of poetic writing that are evocative of the ancient Rigveda and equally provide the guiding lamps for modern choices.
Malashri Lal, Former Professor in the English Department, University of Delhi, has published twenty one books of which Mandalas of Time: Poems, and Treasures of Lakshmi: The Goddess Who Gives are the most recent. Lal has received several research and writing fellowships. She is currently Convener, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi.
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It was dark outside but for a faint yellow glow hanging like a cobweb around the gate lamp. She saw two figures moving stealthily, sneaking up the verandah. They were coming in her direction. As they approached the façade of the house they scanned the wall, and then the pillars.
The two men came right up to where she was hidden behind the window, and one was pointing above their heads at the exterior wall. He was well-built, about six feet, and wore a long raincoat speckled with rain and a cap with a chinstrap. He had something in his hand which looked like a crowbar for jimmying locks. The other man, much shorter, had a thickset brutish face, and he had such a cruel look in his eyes that Sujata gasped when she saw him standing so close. He was carrying a jerrycan. This guy had a vermilion streak on his forehead, and his bucktooth was shining in the faint light.
Will they try to break in? She could call out for help with the hope that someone would hear. But the nearest house belonged to a private school, and there would be no one there except for the caretaker who would be dead drunk. The hotel further down the road was still waterlogged, and the labourers—even if they heard her—won’t be able to make it here in time. Too late to call the police, and then there would be many questions.
The shorter of the two opened the jerrycan and began to splash some liquid on the walls and on the chairs kept outside. Petrol! His partner pulled a tool from his pocket and reached up to the wall. The electricity metres were just above his head. What! They were trying to short circuit the electric wires and start a fire! That’s what she thought they were upto. And when she rushed out, they would shoot her and dump her body into the flames.
She went stiff for a second but was alert right the next moment. With a swift movement she swept away the curtains, pushed the shutter and stood straight in front of the window.
The thuggish-looking character with the jerrycan took a step back at the sound and then he saw her. He gave out a low whistle to warn his companion while trying at the same moment to draw his gun. But whatever happened after that was too fast for him, or anyone for that matter.
It is impossible to provide an exact record. If someone was watching, they would have seen her cross her hands after she swept away the curtains to face the hired hitmen. She joined her hands, crossing her arms in that millennia-old swastika mudra—which they say can even stop the devil in his tracks.
It could have ended there but didn’t. As she made the hand gesture, buck-tooth whistled but he couldn’t draw his gun. An ice shower from another world froze his muscles. He turned to stone, buried as if under an avalanche of ice.
Through that daze he saw the curls of her hair writhe and twist, having come to life, animated and growing longer. Sinuous dark ribbons hissing their way out through the window, hoods raised, fangs exposed. Till there was no one on this side, only these swarthy hissing messengers of death slithering into the verandah.
The taller of the two hearing the other whistle, cursed under his breath, ‘Damn! What is it yaar?’
He glanced to his left but it was all too late. All that Sujata heard as she stepped back was a blood-curdling cry of agony as a blue tongue of fire leapt out from the metre box lashing at the two, flinging them back. Both were knocked out cold. It was only left for the fire to do the rest.
A hot train of sparks charged ferociously through the wires and licked the petrol doused wall. Within seconds the lawn lit up with this eerie blue light. Blue changed to white. Flames shivered like teasing tongues. Now they leapt through walls and doorways, and were streaking across the ceiling of her room in angry crimson arrows.
She threw on her jacket and rushed towards the passage for the kitchen exit. Amitav Ghosh’s book about climate change still lay open on the couch where Chanchal had left it. She stopped, scooped it up and stuffed it into her knapsack. A book is always a good weapon, hardbacks are even better. Below the book was a half-eaten bar of Atman dark chocolate; she had given it to him.
She took a bite and jammed it into her pocket. The curtains in the passage had caught fire from the radiated heat coming from the next room. She made a dash for the kitchen. If it got hot beyond a point, the gas tank would explode. Not another moment to lose!
But the kitchen door leading out to the backyard was jammed. She struggled with the oil and grime-caked bolt, losing precious minutes. Is this how she will go then?
ABOUT THE BOOK
Chanchal Mitra wakes up in a far-off desert town, sharing a dingy hotel room with the flamboyant Mr. Kapoor, who is planning to abduct a billionaire. Kapoor insists that the billionaire tycoon is an impostor. Chanchal is unwittingly drawn into the plot. Soon they are joined by the mystery woman Sujata, her eyes dark like murder; and then a crutch-clutching ex-sailor, who is quick with a gun.
In the smog-swathed capital city of Aukatabad, an organic chemist engaged by the tycoon to design a mind-altering drug, is found dead from an overdose. Elsewhere, the billionaire industrialist’s chocolate factory is contaminated by salmonella while Sujata fights a fiery death at the hands of hired killers. As weird weather overtakes the land and Kapoor sets out with his accomplices to kidnap the businessman, the flimsy lines between friend, foe and lover begin to quickly disappear.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rajat Chaudhuri’s works include novels, story collections, edited anthologies and translations. He curated The Best Asian Speculative Fiction and co-edited the Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures(Asia-Pacific) anthology.
His most recent novel, The Butterfly Effect was twice listed by Book Riot (US) as one of the ‘Fifty must read eco-disasters in fiction’ and among ‘Ten works of environmental literature from around the world’. Acclaimed for its exploration of a ‘Ballardian near-future’, this novel is now taught in Indian, American and European universities. His short fiction has also appeared in the internationally acclaimed climate fiction video game, Survive the Century. Chaudhuri has received writing fellowships from Charles Wallace (UK), Hawthornden Castle (Scotland) and Livonics (India) and residency awards from Arts Council Korea-InKo (South Korea) and Sangam House (India).
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
An internationally acclaimed publishing house, Niyogi Books, established in 2004, has more than 650 titles today. They not only specialize in textual context but also strive to give equal importance to visuals. They purvey a wide range of content on art, architecture, history, culture, spirituality, memoirs, and every aspect, which connects with our rich heritage. Under their umbrella, they have fiction and non-fiction that cover books on social science, cookery, and self-help as well as English Translations of modern classics from different Indian languages. Niyogi Books has recently launched four new Imprints: Olive Turtle (English fiction), Thornbird (English Translation), and Paper Missile (English non-fiction) and Bahuvachan (Hindi Translation: Fiction & Non-Fiction). Also, they have co-published a number of critically acclaimed books with reputed institutions like the British Library, Rietberg Museum Zurich, IGNCA, National Gallery of Modern Art, Ministry of Culture (Govt. of India), National Manuscript Mission, Sahitya Akademi, among many others.
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Translated by Vidyanand Jha from Maithili to English
Madhubani Painting or Mithila Art
TRANSLATION
My eyes made through swimming
in the waters of the pond full of algae
carry greenery, see greenery everywhere.
My blood made of the juice of Ladubbi mangoes,
flow in my veins continuously, sweet, juicy.
Made from pieces of Rohu fish,
made from Garai Garchunni fish,
my body is shimmering, slick.
The sound of the hooves of Salhesh’s* horses,
the reverberations of the sound of the Chaukitora dance,
the desolation of the consequences of Vidyapati*,
and my voice, my clear language
made from mixing all these —
Gets translated —
speaking an unknown language outside my home,
spending my life in an unknown place, some other place,
losing myself, making myself into someone else
making myself into a customer in a glittering market.
And my Maithil existence
gets translated
into Indian citizenship.
*Salhesh is a folk deity in Mithila(Nepal and Terai region in India)
*Vidyapati (1352-1448) was a Maithili poet
TOGETHERNESS
A filled in disused well reverberates with
the mumbled Sahajiya song of a Vaishanvi*,
mixed with your name whispered softly,
mixed with the sound of a thundering river flowing in full spate.
So many eager songs swirl,
straining to come out of our souls
to touch the heights of the sky.
Sounds are mumbled, words are mumbled
in a filled disused well.
On the banks of a water tank
under a tree with leaves falling,
in a locked old box
are kept for many years so many embraces, kisses so many,
pressed and folded for many years,
the touch of your skin on mine - quivering, exciting,
impulses so many, so many disappointments.
Everything is folded and kept inside.
A box that is rusting slowly is thrown away.
It’s becoming one with the earth slowly.
Routes to many cities utterly unknown,
paths to many villages deserted
wait to be measured
by your feet, by my feet.
Many fabulous scenes, strange scenes many,
sad scenes many, grotesque scenes many
await our eyes,
lost in an unknown corner of this Earth,
in a deathly silent lost village,
Or in an utterly unknown strange city.
Would my being be
yours?
Or maybe on the path of annicca*,
I would be, you would be
separately, alone.
Or is that that I wouldn’t be, you wouldn’t be?
*Sahajiya -- a form of Hindu tantric Vaishnavism; Vaishnavi -- a woman follower of Vishnu
*annicca—Buddhist principle of impermanence
Photo courtesy: Ira Jha
Vidyanand Jha is a poet, short story writer and literary critic in Maithili. He is also a translator translating texts from and into Maithili primarily to and from English. He has been publishing Maithili poems in literary journals since 1980s. He has three poetry collections to his credit: Parati Jakan (Like a Morning Song), published by Sahitya Akademi in 2002, now in its second edition; Bicchadal Kono Pirit Jakan (Like a Lost Love) published by Antika Prakashan in 2019 and Danufak phool Jakan (Like Danuf Flowers) published in 2021. He has received many prestigious awards for his poetry in Maithili. His translations from Maithili have appeared in journals like Indian Literature and Anthologies like The Book of Bihari Literature. He was awarded Katha Translation Award in 1998.
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Agomoni (1878–1883), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kolkata
Bengal — and here I refer to undivided Bengal — with her plurality of religions, cultures and sub-cultures and her numerous linguistic forms and dialects, provides a wonderful kaleidoscope of thoughts and ideas through her oral utterances. Multiple streams of expressions provide a fascinating study for the researcher. This cultural heritage is deeply enmeshed in the life of a Bengali enfolding Hindu and Muslim alike. In the present scenario of divisive identity politics, it is imperative that we draw upon this common heritage constantly and consistently.
In this essay, we will highlight practices in which there was equal participation of Hindus and Muslims, with each community infusing and enriching the traditions of poetry, music, narrative and ritual. What is observed is a readiness to dissolve religious differences in a common cultural pool of assimilated identities.
A large body of the oral literature of Bengal is rooted in the worship of demonic powers. As is to be expected in a tropical region and a primitive, rural society, certain deities are seen as holding human lives in thrall by their control of natural calamities, animal attacks and epidemics. Though Islam sanctions worship of none other than Allah, the Muslims of Bengal are equal participants in the propitiation of these deities. Interestingly, most of these are female deities, indicating that Bengalis have seen the powers of destruction and preservation as vested in women from time immemorial.
Olai Chandi
Let us begin with the Saat Bibir Upakhyan, the legend of the seven sisters who hold in their hands the power to unleash and contain some of the deadly diseases that strike rural Bengal from time to time. The eldest and most feared is Ola Bibi or Bibi Ma –the goddess of cholera or olautha –ola, in the rustic dialect meaning diarheoa and utha –vomiting. When the two symptoms appear together the villagers see it as Ola Bibi’s curse and rush to offer prayers and sacrifices. So great is their awe and terror of this deity that they invest her with the most flattering attributes. Worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims alike, she is represented as a woman of surpassing beauty, striking personality and noble mien. The Hindu version of the idol, Olai Chandi, has a bright yellow complexion and long slanting eyes. She wears a blue sari, has open hair and is adorned with the jewellery wealthy Hindu women wear – bangles, necklaces, armlets and a nose hoop. The Muslims visualize her as a high-born Muslim maiden in Islamic attire – loose pyjamas, shirt, cap, veil and nagras[1] on her feet.
The worship of Ola Bibi continues vibrantly into the present in Nadiya, Bankura, Birbhum, Bardhman and even Kolkata, sometimes singly, sometimes along with her other six sisters –Jhola Bibi, Ajgai Bibi, Chand Bibi, Bahurh Bibi, Jhentuni Bibi and Asan Bibi. Her puja is performed out in the open under the trees or by the river. But some places are earmarked as Saat Bibir thaan or Ola Bibir thaan –thaan being a corruption of the word sthaan meaning place. The rituals, even when the devotees are Brahmins, are performed by Muslims or drawn from the lowest rung of the caste ladder –the Hadis or Doms.
The second sister Jhola is the goddess of pustules – the full range from the harmless measles to the killer smallpox. But at least one of the seven sisters is a benevolent deity. The youngest, Asan Bibi, makes things easy for women who invoke her aid.
Asan Bibir brata katha[2] tells the story of Shireen, the first brati or invoker of the deity’s aid. Shireen’s father Sultan Isa Khan ordered his daughter to be killed at birth to save her from falling into the hands of the pirates of Arakan who descended on his kingdom, periodically, to loot, plunder and rape. But his purpose was foiled by his eldest son Chand, who escaped with his sister into the forest, far away from the civilised world and its cruelties to women. When Chand was forced to go out to seek a livelihood, he gave his sister seven munia[3] birds and charged her solemnly to give them their gram and water everyday and keep them alive, for his life was bound up in theirs. Young Shireen, in a playful mood, forgot her duty one day and was shocked to find that the birds had died. She set up a wail hearing which Asan Bibi appeared before her. Commanding Shireen to find seven married women and make them sit around the birds and listen to her story, Asan Bibi brought the birds and Chand back to life.
This was the first Asan Bibir puja[4]. Isa Khan’s cruelty to his daughter, with all its implications of female infanticide and honour killing being foiled by his rebel son –an enlightened man and champion of women’s rights — is as relevant today as it was then. Asan Bibi is not only a deity. She is the manifestation of woman power. The seven bratis symbolise the bonding and coming together of women in a bid to protect each other from masculine cruelty and domination.
Asan Bibi is a Muslim deity but, as part of an appropriation and assimilation that has gone on for centuries and is typical of Bengalis, the legend of Asan Bibi is enacted, to this day, by Hindu women not only in Bengal but all over India. The offerings are gram and water and the birds are represented by clods of earth
The rituals of this puja display a fascinating blend of Hindu and Muslim practices. The square of red silk on which the pot of water is placed, the silence observed when the tale is being told and the prasad being eaten out of the pallus[5] of the women’s saris, are pure Muslim. But the water in the pot is Gangajal[6], the pot is adorned with a swastika and the clods of earth have to be taken from the base of a tulsi bush[7]. Sindoor, alta and paan[8] with which the chief brati or pledger greets the other six women are the other Hindu elements of the puja.
Another women’s brata[9] is centred around Bhadu — a folk deity worshipped extensively in Rarh and its surrounding districts. Bhadu puja is performed throughout the month of Bhadra, that is the middle of August to the middle of September. The main component of the puja is the community singing by women in which the tale of young Princess Bhadreswari of Manbhum and her tragic, untimely death is told. Bhadu gaan or the ballad of Bhadu expresses the hopes and aspirations of young maidens in ordinary, everyday village life. This puja has no religious basis. No mantras are required and no priests to conduct the rituals. The devotees, like in the Asan Bibir brata, are all women. But despite the non-Aryan nature of the puja and the absence of mantras, there are references to Kali and Krishna in the ballad. The drums announce the coming of Bhadu from Brindaban but, at some point, in her journey she must have stopped at Kailash for her hands are covered with blood red sandal paste, like Kali’s, and a garland of hibiscus hangs around her neck.
Thus, Vaishnav and Shaivaite ideologies are mixed and mingled in the worship of Bhadu, and Shyam and Shyama come together. Yet Bhadu is human – a young girl. She is petted and pampered by her devotees and called Bhadu Rani and Bhadu Dhan[10]. Young girls form eternal friendships with her using the tradition of Soi patano – the exchange of symbolic names with special girl friends. In the song that follows a devotee makes Bhadu her soi picking phul (flower) as a name for her. But what is she to give Bhadu as a gift? Flowers and garlands, of course.
To go back to the deities who hold the key to human suffering and happiness we have Ghentu – the patron deity of skin ailments like sores, itches, scabies and carbuncles. Like Jhola Bibi of the pustular menace, Ghentu appears in spring which, though a season of sweet breezes and mellow sunshine, is particularly conducive to skin afflictions. But Ghentu is not accorded the same respect as Jhola. Though feared, like her, he is also hated and held in contempt. This, perhaps, is owing to the fact that he is only capable of causing minor irritations. He doesn’t have the power to kill or wreak serious damage.
Ghentu Puja is performed by women, mainly mothers, in the twenty-four parganas and the Bardhaman / Bankura belt through the month of Chaitra[11]. There are no temples to Ghentu and no images. A well-worn household pot of black clay is placed on a broken winnowing tray. A pat of cowdung on the pot forms the face and two cowrie shells the eyes of the god. He is made to look bizarre and ugly because Ghentu, though a Deb Kumar[12], had to take birth among the ghouls following a curse by Vishnu. The offerings denote the contempt the idol is held in. Ghentu phul (a foul-smelling flower) parboiled rice (also foul-smelling) and masur dal[13] which is considered unholy for some reason (caste Hindu widows are not allowed to eat it) are placed before the pot with the left hand and not the right. There are no mantras but some verses, insulting and derogatory, and meant to drive him away, are chanted.
Ghentu puja
On the last day of the puja the clay pot is beaten with sticks and kicked to pieces by an excited crowd. This extraordinary humanising of deities and the concept of irreverence as a form of worship is admissible only in Hinduism and never better expressed than in Ghentu puja.
Agrarian societies are almost totally dependent on the whims of nature. Droughts, floods, storms and pests might bring to naught months of hard labour in the fields. Thus, fear and uncertainty dog the lives of peasants and they can breathe easy only after the harvest is reaped and safely stowed away in their paddy bins.
The harvest festival of Bengal starts on Makar Sankranti or the Winter Solstice when the crops begin to ripen. In some districts this festival is known as Tush Tushulir Brata and in others Tushu. Tushu is neither a goddess nor a human like Bhadu. Tush or the husk that protects the precious grain for the whole period of ripening is the object of worship here.
The puja is performed by women irrespective of age or status. Young girls, married women, matrons and widows are all allowed to participate in the rituals which go on for three days. An earthen plate filled with husk is placed in a room where the women of the household assemble chanting verses in praise of Tushu. On the third day one of them carries the plate on her head to the pond and sets it afloat. The rituals vary from region to region but the practice of bauri bandha is prevalent in most parts of Bengal. The outer surface of a clay saucer is smeared with rice paste then filled with water and placed on the fire. As the rice paste bakes and hardens and gets stuck to the pot women chant and sing for joy, for the ritual of bauri bandha symbolises the binding of the grain. It is now firmly in the household and cannot escape. It is only on the conclusion of this ritual that the preparing of peethe puli – an array of sweets made from new rice, coconut and mollases –can commence.
The emotions that spark off the festival of Tushu are relief and gratitude for being spared the prospect of starvation for another season. What better way to express these feelings than in song? Song which liberates the mind and relieves fears and anxieties? Tushu gaan[14]is similar to Bhadu gaan in many ways but whereas the latter focuses on the dreams and aspirations of young maidens Tushu expresses the hopes and fears of an entire community and is represented as a rustic lass celebrating a bountiful harvest with her friends –boys as well as girls.
The literature of rural Bengal is studded with references to these deities. Brata katha and katha katha, stories with a moral lesson at the end, were told by professional narrators or kathak thakurs at religious gatherings from as early as the 5th or 6th century AD. The practice continues vibrantly into the present. At some point down the years they were given a structured form called panchali, a story chanted in verses. Still later, they were textualised by erudite versifiers or pada kartas in a form called Mangal Kabya[15].
The worship of Satyanarayan or Satyapir is performed by both Hindus and Muslims. The rituals are identical, but the deity is called by different names –Satyanarayan by Hindus and Satyapir by Muslims. The offering is identical too – a thick gruel like substance made of flour, milk, mashed bananas and mollases called shirni, which seems to be a corrupted form of the Persian word phirni. Satyanarayan puja in Hindu households is performed by Brahmin priests learned in the Shastras. A Shalagram Shila[16](symbol of Vishnu) is placed on a square of carpet called an asan. Five small plates surround it each containing a betel leaf, a supari[17], a banana, a batasha[18] and a coin. These are called mokams. A metal object, usually a knife or blade, is placed next to the Shalagram Shila.
There is some debate on what came first – the Islamisation of Satyanarayan or the Sanskritising of Satyapir. The latter seems to come nearest to the truth for the following reasons:
The presence of a metal object on the asan of the Shalagram Shila is totally alien to any form of worship sanctioned by the Shastras.
2. The words Satya and mokam are Arabic in origin.
3 Shirni, as an offering, is not seen in the worship of any other Hindu deity.
The truth probably is that someone called Satyapir actually existed at some point of time and was subsequently raised to the status of a deity by his followers. Since Islamic shariat does not sanction worship of any other than Allah, Satyapir remained on the fringes till caste Hindus, ever eager to swell the ranks of their pantheon, appropriated him and made him their own. The rituals remained the same. The only thing they added was the concept that Satyapir was an incarnation of Vishnu in Kaliyug[19]. Hence the Shalagram Shila.
Several eminent pada kartas have written of the exploits of Manasa, the daughter of Shiva and Ganga, another name for whom is Bishhari (conqueror of poison). Of these the most popular version is the one by Ketakadas Khemananda and is still performed by theatrical troupes in the small towns and villages of Bengal.
Manasa Devi (1920) by Jamini Ray (1887-1972)
Manasa worship is said to have emanated from that of the goddess of snakes Manacha Amma of Karnataka — the ch sound having changed to sh in provincial Bengali. There are several versions of how the concept arrived from South India to Bengal of which the most reliable one is that it was brought by bands of Bedeys –nomadic snake charmers who wandered from place to place exhibiting their skills in taming snakes and making them dance to the trilling of their pipes. Bedeys — a community that still exists in Bengal, though Muslim, are fervent worshippers of Manasa.
Manasa puja is traditionally performed at the base of a phani manasa bush – a wild plant with thick, spiky leaves edged with thorns. The bush is supposed to be the protector of snakes and hence their favourite haunt. Though a pre-Aryan deity, Manasa puja is performed by Brahmin priests in accordance with Vedic rites. The goddess is offered flowers, paddy, incense and sindoor. But the bhog – a meal of rice, dal and vegetables– has to be cooked the previous night and offered stale. Manasa puja is also performed in Bangladesh, often by Namazi Muslims who see no contradiction between their worship of Allah and this indigenous deity.
ManasaMangal or Manasar Bhashan is a long-drawn-out narrative set to music. The versification is rudimentary – composed of octosyllabic couplets interspersed with occasional quatrains. The story line is simple and the tunes primary and repetitive. The ballad tells the story of the complete humiliation and defeat of the merchant Chand Saudagar at the hands of the snake goddess Manasa. Puffed up with pride at his wealth, his seven sons and his fleet of ships that carry expensive cargo from one port to another Chand Saudagar refuses to pay Manasa the homage due to her. Manasa decides to teach him a lesson. His seven sons die of snake bite. Seven of his ships, in some versions it is fourteen, are lost at sea. But the youngest son Lakhinder’s wife, the great sati[20], Behula, saves her father-in-law from Manasa’s wrath. She refuses to cremate her husband or don widow’s weeds. Making a raft of banana trunks, she sets herself afloat on the Ganga with her husband’s head on her lap. The river takes her to the abode of the gods where she wins Manasa over with her devotion and humility. Manasa forgives Chand Saudagar and all ends well with Chand acknowledging Manasa’s divinity and Manasa returning to him all she had taken.
The story of Behula predates Brahminical Hinduism and established caste structures. The names—Behula, Sonoka and Lakhinder serve as evidence to the fact. Yet the moral is rooted in patriarchy. A woman’s chastity and steadfast loyalty to her husband, as integral to the welfare of family and community, has been valorised in ‘Manasa Mangal‘ and to this day Behula’s chastity is seen to be on par with that of the great satis of the epics, Sita and Savitri.
Agomoni, verses sung in preparation for Durga’s coming by itinerant minstrels, both Hindu and Muslim, got its first structured form in the songs of the sage Ramprasad who, along with Horu Thakur, Ramnidhi Gupta and other pada kartas from the Twenty-four parganas, Bardhaman, Bankura and Murshidabad, imbued the form with extraordinary sensitivity and human feelings.
At the end of the monsoons when the first clear light of Autumn suffuses the skies, when the lotus blooms and the waving kaash is reflected in the waters of ponds and rivers, Bengal villages come alive with the singing of Agomoni, the legend dear to Bengali hearts, of the coming of Uma. For the great goddess, the ten-armed Mahashakti and the vanquisher of Mahishasur, comes to her earth mother’s lap in the form of her little Uma. The emotional Bengalis, ever ready to humanise their deities and form relationships with them, rejoice at her coming.
Agomoni song by former folk artiste, Amar Pal (1922-2019)Giri Ebar Uma Ele… Kaaro Katha Manbo Na (Giri, when Uma comes, I will not listen to anyone), A song composed by Ramprasad Sen (1718 or 1723 -1775)
Agomoni is an expression, pure and simple, of the everyday life of women in a rural community –their joys and sorrows; hopes and fears. Agomoni opens with Menaka’s grief at the plight of her daughter Uma married, by a careless, indifferent father, to the wayward, half crazed beggar Shiva who covers his nakedness with ash, gets stoned with bhang and consorts with ghosts and spirits. Maneka’s impassioned plea to her husband Giri Raj to bring her darling to her, if only for a few days, echo the yearning of all mothers for a daughter married far away from home.
Giri Raj, like most men, likes to believe what suits him. Convinced that his daughter is perfectly happy in her husband’s home, he dismisses his wife’s fears and tries to placate her with vague promises. But Menaka won’t let him off so lightly. She tells him that she won’t send Uma back to her husband’s house when she comes next. She’ll turn a deaf ear to what people say and, if Shiva insists on taking her back, she and her daughter together will give her son-in-law the tongue lashing he deserves. This song, composed by Ramprasad Sen in the eighteenth century, touches a chord in every mother’s heart for all women, including Menaka, know that this show of rebellion is worth nothing and will be quelled by Giri Raj before he has even heard her out.
Uma comes but Menaka has to reckon not only with her husband but with a daughter whose other name is Sati and who smiles away her mother’s suggestion of keeping her permanently with her. The three days of Uma’s visit pass quickly, too quickly. A desperate Menaka changes her tune. She appeals to her daughter to persuade her husband to come to his father-in-law’s house and stay a few days. Dropping her aggressive stance, she promises to pamper him and give him everything he wants including his favourite bhang.
But that, of course, is not to be. Shiva, incensed with Giri Raj for past insults, won’t even step across the threshold. Nabami[21] night comes. Only a few hours to dawn and Uma will go back. Menaka breaks down and weeps. Alas, her desperate plea to the night of the ninth moon to embrace eternity and never see the face of dawn remains unheard and unanswered.
From the complex compound of anxiety, nostalgia and hope that is Agomoni, we move to another area of cultural memory—the legend of Kerbela. Through the month of Muharrum the Muslims of rural Bengal enact the legend of the battle of Kerbela and the massacre of the prophet’s grandsons Hassan and Hussain. The tale is sung in verse known as jaari gaan—the word jaari, derived from Persian, denoting mourning. It is accompanied by the playing of musical instruments like drums and cymbals and body movements like leaping and dancing. About twenty young men, with gamchhas[22] on their shoulders and ghungroos[23] on their feet, make up a jaari troupe. They go from door to door, the lead singer telling the tale—the others singing the refrain.
Jaari is presumed to have originated in the 16th century with its roots in the Muharrum legend. But the form evolved and came to incorporate other tragic legends—not all of them Muslim. For instance, a very popular Jaari theme is that of Chandidas and his ill-fated love for the washer woman Rami. And, over the years, Jaari has moved on bringing every form of human suffering within its ambit. While retaining old myths and legends in its repertoire, present day Jaari explores and foregrounds the adversities and afflictions of common folk – the fears and terrors that make up their day-to-day existence – poverty, sickness, failed harvests and natural disasters. A famous Jaari gaan reflects this transition. It begins with a heart-rending account of the trials and tribulations suffered by the adherents of Allah after losing the battle of Kerbela—the miles of walking in the desert under a white-hot sun, feet on fire against the burning sand, chests crackling with thirst.
Allah Megh De: Pani De (God give cloud, give water): Jaari song by legendary folk singer Abbasuddin Ahmed (1901-1959)
But soon the focus moves from the plight of the faithful in distant Arabia to the plight of the ryot in rural Bengal. From a song of worship it becomes a song of livelihood. Peasants, who live by the soil, in the grip of the whims of Nature, look up at a drought hit sky and call upon to Allah to send rain.
Music runs in the Bengali blood, particularly in that of the rural masses. Work and song are so closely inter-woven that every livelihood is expressed in song. All working people whether potters or weavers, cowherds or blacksmiths, peasants or palanquin bearers sing as they work. But being a land of many rivers and waterways and sailing being a way of life here, perhaps some of the most poignant forms of folk music are to be found in the songs sung by the boatmen of Bengal.
Bhatiyali is the song of the lone boatman as he drifts down the river, wide as the sea from monsoon rains, far away from his loved ones, braving storms and tempests, the fear of never reaching his destination in his heart. The boatman pours out his love and longing, dreams and hopes in a melody that is as slow and tranquil as the flow of the water. Of all the folk songs of Bengal, nothing matches the subtle and sensitive blending of word and image, tune and rhythm that characterises Bhatiyali. The boatmen are both Hindu and Muslim and their songs, though reflecting their distinctive lifestyles, throb with the same emotions of nostalgia and despair.
Like Bhatiyali, Saari Gaan is essentially a collection of river songs. But these are sung during regattas when rows of boatmen need to ply their oars in synchrony to attain maximum speed. In fact, whenever a group of men or women try to accomplish a physically demanding task – be it weeding a field, threshing paddy, washing jute or rowing a boat — they tend to chant or sing to give a rhythm to their movements and to relieve the tedium of the work. In that sense all the songs sung collectively by the labouring class comes under the category of Saari Gaan – saari meaning row or line. But Saari Gaan, like Bhatiyali, is linked in the minds of Bengalis primarily with the movement of a boat – quick and rhythmic in Saari; slow and languorous in Bhatiyali. The other, more fundamental difference between the two is that Bhatiyali is sung in a single voice—Saari in a chorus of voices.
Boat races are organised, and Saari Gaan sung, extensively in Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Dhaka, Mymensingh and Barisal, on both Hindu and Muslim festivals such as Sravan Sankranti, Bijoya Doushami, Eid ul fitr and Eid ul zuha. They have a wide range of themes. The songs sung before the starting of the race are usually paens of praise to the deities with the idea of invoking their blessings. After the boats set sail, the singing becomes loud and clamorous and is accompanied by the beating of drums and the clanging of metal plates. These songs are loaded with comic jibes, contempt and invective for the rival group. Sometimes the main singer is seen dancing on the boat to the rhythm of the oars.
On the return journey, the mood changes. The singing becomes somber and pensive; the language thoughtful and imbued with philosophy.
Bhavaiyya is essentially a wonderfully lyrical love song expressing the full range of emotions that sway the heart of a woman in love. Sung mainly in Rangpur, Cooch Bihar Assam and Jalpaiguri, Bhavaiyya describes the rapture of union and surrender and the anguish of parting and loss. But, somewhere down the line, the fate of the abandoned woman is fused with the tragic destiny of the mahout—the dangers he faces as he guides his elephant through impenetrable forests. These songs are also known as Goalparar gaan—after a forest of Assam where, presumably they had their origin.
Jhumur is the name given to a style of folk music common to many parts of India such as Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The language differs from region to region, but the tune and style of singing is more or less similar. The bordering areas of all these states, being hilly terrain covered with forests, are inhabited by adivasis of whom the ones in Bengal and Bihar are santhal. Santhali Jhumur having come under the influence of Bengali folk and classical traditions, has evolved into something different in terms of form, tune, language and expression.
Santhali performance in spring
Santhali Jhumur is made up of three-line verses. The singing is accompanied by dancing and the playing of musical instruments like the madol (a kind of drum) and banshi (flute) The themes are mostly those that pertain to everyday adivasi life – such as the agony of a girl whose father, lured by a large bride price, marries her off to a man from a distant village or the aspirations of a vivacious lass who wishes to dress and walk as gracefully and elegantly as the women of the city.
But soon the girl’s flirtatious charm is revealed for what it really is– a thin veneer. Her real self is laid bare in the heart broken lament that follows; of a woman for whom poverty and deprivation are constant companions; whose children die because she cannot feed them.
We now come to the two universally acclaimed traditions of music in Bengal.Keertan and Baul, which while transcending the traditionally religious, and social and community needs and concerns, yet absorb and assimilate them all in the rich fabric of their complex plurality.
Cultural movements such as Bhakti and Sufi, spanning time and territory, entered Bengal in successive waves creating a syncretic culture in which music, poetry and other fine arts were amalgamated. Bhakti and Sufi found their creative expression in several parallel musical forms in Bengal. These forms, though distinct from one another, have some attributes in common. The presence of a mystical fervour which celebrates the unity of God and man and a philosophy of humanism which rejects rigid and stifling religious orthodoxies and stresses the equality of all human beings irrespective of caste, class, race, gender or religion is common inKeertan and Baul.
Keertan, derived from the word keerti or deed, is a form that showcases the attributes and exploits of the gods, humanising them to an extent that makes them part of the everyday lives of ordinary men and women. Keertan is said to have emanated from Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Vaishnavas believe him to be the eleventh incarnation of Krishna. It is said that Radha wept a hundred years after Krishna’s desertion –- that is his departure from Brindavan to assume the kingship at Mathura. But, as the legend goes, Radha didn’t stop at tears. Her grief and yearning were transmuted into a burning rage in the throes of which she cursed Krishna with another incarnation. He would be born among the common people, she said, bearing his own form but her heart, mind and senses. He would experience for himself the breathless rapture and the excruciating agony of Krishna love. Great God though he was, Krishna could not shake off Radha’s curse. He came down to earth as Nimai of Nadiya. But he didn’t come in his own aspect. The cloud complexioned god took on the hue of a golden lotus, Radha’s hue, becoming Gouranga or He of the Fair Form. The itinerant minstrel sings…
Nimai was Krishna’s natural incarnation in infancy – playfull and mischievous, the bane of his mother Sachi’s life. Then gradually she, whose heart, mind and senses he bore within his body, began asserting herself and he was drawn towards Krishna as a moth is to a flame. In the grip of a divine frenzy that could only be matched by Radha’s for her Madanmohan, Nimai found himself drowning in a sea of Krishna consciousness. He would stop in his tracks whenever he heard the God’s name then, lifting his arms above his head, he would close his eyes and start swaying and pirouetting, chanting …hare Krishna hare Krishna[24]…
This was the origin of Keertan. Naam Keertan (reciting the names of the god) swelled as villagers, both Hindu and Muslim, started veering around Nimai in twos and threes. Then, with the passing years, a large band of devotees was formed and Nimai the wayward and incorrigible was metamorphosed into the great saint and sage Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who preached a religion of humanism and founded the Vaishnava cult.
As the numbers grew, Naam Keertan changed in form and content. Sang Keertan (sang meaning together or in a chorus) added adjectives and descriptive phrases to the names and used drums and cymbals to liven up the singing which became loud and clamorous. The Mahaprabhu often took the lead himself and the rest took up the refrain. Sang Keertan parties moved from village to village in the manner of troubadours disseminating the Mahaprabhu’s message.
From these humble beginnings Keertan passed, by degrees, into the hands of skilled versifiers and came to be known as Padabali Keertan – pad meaning verse. Haridas Thakur, Narottam Thakur, Jnandas Thakur and Raghunandan Thakur were some of the padakartas[25] from whose creative genius Keertan evolved into the intricate, meticulously structured musical form it is today. But though it had its genesis in the Radha Krishna legend, Keertan moved, over the years, towards the Shaivaite tradition imbuing it with its philosophy of humanism and love. Down the river from Nadiya was Halishahar where the great Kali sadhak[26], Ramprasad sang Kali Keertan which humanised the goddess of terror and turned her into a mother whose eyes held oceans of mercy.
Concentrated mostly in Kushthia, Shilaidaha and Sajadpur in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and Murshidabad and Birbhum in West Bengal, Baul is a folk tradition rooted in the lives of the rural people. Though traces of other influences are seen in Baul gaan its main flow is from two strong sources—Muslim Sufi and Hindu Vaishnav. Hence the equal presence of Hindu and Muslim bauls in the villages of Bengal. Though they dress differently –Muslims wear robes of motley-coloured rags and carry a hookah and chimta[27]and Hindus don saffron and have sandalwood markings on their brows and ektaras[28] in their hands – their message is one and the same. Nurtured by great composers like Lalan Fakir, Duddu Shah, Madan Baul, Gagan Harkara and Fikir chand, Baul songs disseminate a message of harmony between man and man rejecting religious codes like Shariat and Shastras, caste differences, and social conventions and taboos as barriers to a true union with God. But where is one to find God? Gagan Harkara, an unlettered rustic whose livelihood was carrying the post from village to village sang as he went: “Ami kothai pabo tar amar moner manush je re…”[29]
And how does man find this moner manush—the being within himself. Only by freeing himself of all external forms of worship and trusting the flow of his own spirit.
The Baul (the word is derived from bayu –air) moves spontaneously towards God the way air flows in and out of all created things. The term could also be derived from the Arabic bawal meaning mad –in this case, mad with love of God.
Since God is believed to reside within man, the human body is looked upon as the site of the ultimate truth; that which encompasses the entire universe. This tenet of Baul philosophy is known as dehatatwabad—the belief that the soul being pure the body that houses it, together with all its functions, is pure and true. Lalan Fakir expresses this philosophy in a song so complex in idea and image as to be almost abstruse. The body is likened to a cage from which the godhead flits to and fro. The Baul spends a lifetime trying to capture it but the bird remains elusive.
Khachar Bhitor Ochin Pakhi( An unknown Bird in a Cage) Song by Lalan (1772-1890) sung by Kartik Das Baul, a contemporary Baul singer
In such a philosophy there is, one would think, no place for Guruvad[30]. If the godhead you seek resides within you, where is the need for a middleman? Yet, strangely enough, guru, peer, murshid and sain are extolled in Baul lyrics and often take the place of God. Baul philosophy, like a gigantic honeycomb, seems to have a slot for all human needs.
I would like to end this piece, with an account of the life of the greatest of Baul composers Lalan Fakir. Not much is known of him except what has come down to us in the form of anecdotes. Lalan was born in the year 1774 in the village of Bhadara in Nadiya district, to a kayastha family with the surname Kar or, as some academics maintain, Das. He lost his father in infancy and was married while still in his teens. As a young man he went on a pilgrimage to Puri and on the way back was stricken with small-pox. His fellow travellers abandoned him or, as per another account, set his body adrift on the Ganga thinking him dead. He was found, alive but badly pitted and blinded in one eye, by a Muslim woman who nursed him back to health. In this village, he met an itinerant Baul singer named Siraj Sain who became his murshid or mentor. There are frequent references to Siraj Sain in Lalan’s compositions.
Lalon by Jyotindranth Tagore. The poet Tagore and his family brought Lalon’s music to limelight… as much as they could.
At some point Lalan went back to his native village but was not accepted by his family and community because, having lived among Muslims and eaten with them, he had lost caste and was no longer acceptable as a Hindu. Many of Lalan’s songs question this aspect of Hinduism. But Lalan’s rejection is not only of the discriminations practiced by the Hindus. He questions the very basis of the divisive walls created by religion between man and man.
Shocked and hurt by his rejection Lalan renounced his family, community and religion and started keeping company with Siraj Sain. On the latter’s death, Lalan set up an akhra[31]in Chheuria village on the banks of the Gorai River and gradually a band of followers gathered around him. Lalan was an inspired singer and could only sing when the Muse was on him. But being totally illiterate, he could not record what he sang. Thus, many of his songs are lost to us. Later a disciple started writing them down the moment they issued from his lips. And his collection is what we have today. Though he didn’t go through any formal process of conversion or adopt Islamic religious practices, Lalan lived like a Muslim and among Muslims till his death in 1890 at the age of 116. In Lalan’s life and art is seen the confluence of the two greatest religions of this world in its truest and most humane form. He lies buried in Chheuria —a place of pilgrimage for all Bauls of Bengal, Hindu and Muslim.
[21] The fourth day of the five day festival of Durga Puja, the last day of Uma’s stay with her parents and the ninth day of Navratri, the Hindu festival.
[30] A guru is seen as a middleman who will help you reach out to God.
[31] An enclosure where they would live and practice their beliefs
Aruna Chakravartihas been the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fourteen published books on record. Her novels Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, The Inheritors, Suralakshmi Villa have sold widely and received rave reviews. The Mendicant Prince and her short story collection, Through a Looking Glass, are her most recent books. She has also received awards such as the Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar for her translations.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In the contemporary world, with its multiple environmental crises, conflicts, and violence, persisting poverty, and social exclusion, the question about the role of arts in general, and of literature specifically, must inevitably arise. Do they have any positive role other than entertainment and distraction, or are they merely the icing on a rapidly decaying and disintegrating cake?
Without naming the problem in exactly this way, much of Chittaranjan Das’s work was devoted to implicitly answering this question, for he clearly recognised that a merely functionalist approach to trying to identify the role of the arts in society would be totally inadequate and theoretically shallow. Rather, to answer the question more fully, we should ask what constitutes a society’s self-understanding, its modes of self-representation, and its internal hermeneutics, and how, methodologically speaking, we can gain access to this deep cultural grammar of a society. Das’s original professional career was as a rural sociologist and teacher of the subject in Agra and elsewhere. As a sociologist he would have been aware that such questions arise not only in the sociology of the arts, but equally in relation to such intractable subjects as religion, suicide, and the emotions.[1]
The year 2023 is the centennial birth anniversary[2] of the thinker, educationist, critic, pioneer of Odia non-fiction writing and one of the finest translators, Professor Chittaranjan Das. Chittabhai — as he was known throughout Odisha — was the most prolific writer, with numerous diaries, essays, reviews, autobiographies, memoirs, columns, textbooks, and monographs.
Many eminent writers were born in Bagalpur village in Jagatsinghpur district. Chittaranjan Das was one of them. He was the third child of five brothers and three sisters. He attended Punang School after schooling in his native village. Afterwards, he attended Ranihat Minor School and Ravenshaw Collegiate School. In 1941, he passed the matriculation examination and enrolled at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, for higher education. However, he became involved in the independence movement. His inspiration came from Manmohan Mishra[3].
During his Ravenshaw student days, he was an active member of the Communist Party of India. In 1942, he joined the Quit India Movement and was imprisoned. During his jail term, Das acquired many skills, including learning languages, particularly French. In 1945, he was released from prison and attended Santiniketan. During his academic career, he was exposed to a wide variety of intellectuals, thinkers, and writers. He was deeply influenced by their works.
His studies in psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology continued in Europe and abroad in the years that followed. He was trained in clinical psychology at the Vienna School established by Sigmund Freud. It was here that he met philosopher Martin Buber. He continued his studies at Santiniketan and later at Copenhagen University, Denmark.
He returned to Odisha in 1954 and joined the Jibana Bidyalaya, a school inspired by Gandhi’s ideals on education, established by Nabakrushna Choudhury and Malati Devi. Later on, he became the headmaster of this institution. He left after four years and took a teaching assignment near Agra.
Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy drew Das to the revered sage’s teachings. Upon returning to Odisha, he taught at the Institute of Integral Education in Bhubaneswar, based on Sri Aurobindo’s values. This was in 1973. While he did not stay for long, he remained associated with this movement until his death in 2011.
Das considered the whole world to be his home. He was proficient in a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Assamese, Sanskrit, Danish, Finnish, French, Spanish, and English. His vast studies covered many areas of social and human sciences like philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and linguistics as well as school studies. His knowledge is reflected in 250 books he wrote or translated into Odia.
He was a regular contributor to newspapers and his columns appeared in major Odia dailies like Dharitri, Pragativadi, Sambad, Samaja and more. These short pieces have been compiled into books that give insight into his views on contemporary issues. His first writing was an article in a school magazine. The article ‘Socrates’ appeared in 1937 in the Ravenshaw Collegiate magazine, Sikshabandhu.
Das travelled widely around the world. During his travels, he closely examined the social, cultural, and political life of the countries he visited. He wrote books describing his impressions. He has translated many books into Odia from countries he visited. His translation work is vast. His understanding of the topic and the translation of the books make for a pleasant reading experience.
He was an excellent diary writer. These captured his feelings about many incidents. The autobiographical diary entries have been published as Rohitara Daeri[4], a series of over 20 volumes. His love for the mother tongue was unparalleled. Despite excellent command of more than a dozen languages, including German, Danish and Finnish, as well as Sanskrit, Pali, Urdu and Bengali, he wrote mostly in his mother tongue, Odia.
His contribution to Odia literature was huge because he translated the works of many prominent writers — Bengali writer Ashapurna Devi, polymath Albert Schweitzer, French novelist François Mauriac, British-Indian anthropologist Verrier Elwin, Danish poet Karl Adolph Gjellerup, French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran, Russian poet Boris Pasternak, former President of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and the iconic Mahatma Gandhi. Sri Aurobindo’s principal philosophic work, a theory of spiritual evolution culminating in the transformation of man from a mental into a supramental being and the advent of a divine life upon earth, Life Divine, is Chittranjan Das’s significant work.
Many awards have come his way. In 1960, for his essay ‘Jeevana Vidyalaya’[5], he was awarded by the Odisha Sahitya Akademi. He was given the Sarala Award in 1989 for his essay ‘Odisha O Odia’. He was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1998 for his book Biswaku Gabakhya[6]. He bagged more accolades from Prajatantra Prachar Samiti, Gangadhar Rath Foundation, Utkal Sahitya Samaj and Gokarnika.
Chittaranjan Das’s works incorporate both creative experimentation and a transformative philosophy. He has worked in education, literature, cultural creativity and artistic criticism. During his lifetime, he was instrumental in the growth and development of numerous social action and development groups. Throughout his writings, he discussed self-development, social change, and mankind’s evolution. His Odia autobiography Mitrasya Chakhusa[7]is an extraordinary work in the genre.
A scholar of eminence, literary commentator and author of numerous books in Odia and English, he was known as ‘Socrates of Odisha.’
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[1] John Clammer (The Essays of Chittaranjan Das on Literature, Culture, and Society/Ed. Ananta Kumar Giri and Ivan Marquez)
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poems
Editors: K. Satchidanandan & Nishi Chawla
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Preface
Humanity’s power to degrade the environment has become unprecedentedly dangerous. In fact, we have already changed the environment irreversibly, and suicidally so. What we call nature is no longer nature in its pristine glory. Human intervention has transformed it into something sub- rather than semi-human: a combination of climate, topography, the original environment and the effects of the long history of human intervention. If it was agriculture that had transformed the landscape once, it is now urbanization that has affected the broader areas of our environment. Managing the environment is becoming a practical rather than a theoretical problem. It is not enough that we create theme parks or conserve a select few areas. ‘Museumizing’ nature and landscape will not be enough. Several animals and birds are on the verge of extinction; the list is growing, and human beings can easily be next in the at-risk list. What we require today is not isolated action, but concerted action at the global level. Techno- fascism that leads to eco-fascism—both have their roots in human greed and aggression—is one of the inevitable fall-outs of blind and unsustainable patterns of development.
While a few poems in this anthology offer a perspective on how humans can respond to the reality of extinction, others give us an awareness of how we can struggle to keep what we still have. Some poems share earnest insights into our own evolution, and others offer grim warnings or raise voices against the imminent threat of extinction and the fate of our planet. Some poets spin interconnected incantations and weave healing nature through their blood, and others honor it by connecting the sustainable with their personal poetic bones. The environmental theme of most poems can inspire meditation as well as a commitment to apocalyptic action. The poets anthologized here offer landscapes of beauty and joy, of rustic retreat, of communion with our natural world, against the larger looming questions of human survival, of spurring towards conservation and preservation, of recognizing our ancestral knowledge, of a complicated pact and a complex impact. The anthology, in short, is our kind of shock tactic to the glaring lacunae within our urbanized, post-industrial society. What distinguishes us further, is that our anthology is a global chorus of poetic voices. We cannot stress enough the ‘sustainable’ route felt in the ‘sustainable’ poetic voices of our anthology. Along with our conscious eco warrior poets, Greening the Earth is our kind of responsible activism.
Extinction
Maren Bodenstein
here
on the prairie we measure
the years
by the extinction of insects
that visit our porch lamps
the brittle
longhorn is gone
for a while now the giant
stick insect no longer flares its scarlet wings even
the bluewhite chafers have succumbed
to the heat
by day we dwell in the creek
my sisters and I
one of us pregnant
but I keep forgetting
if it is me
look I am full term now
I tell them stroking my flat belly
on the horizon
a fire roars
through the grasses and over
the houses it marches
the last army of insects
into the bellies of storks
a confusion of vehicles
full of belongings flees
towards us
Ma in her car
with the poodle
comes rushing at us
get in she shouts
misses the bridge
plunges deep
we must rescue her
I tug at the metal
but my sisters
heavy with chatter
do not hear
Ma broken mermaid sneezes
opens her blue-eyes
happy
to see me
Beholden
Erin Holtz Braeckman
I come to you as Crow. But not before you first come to me. My bones are left like tinder in the dark ashes of my feathers when you find them. Crouching low in the crisp clutch of Spring the way the grandmothers once did, you speak words of ritual from the cave of folk memory you’ve walked right into without knowing. And you ask—before you hear my totem call from the pines high overhead; you ask before you slip one of my bones into your pocket. Because wrapped inside the song of that old teaching circle you stepped within was this telling: what you collect, you become the caretaker of. Not the thing itself, but its living story. Those crystals on your altar? You are the steward of their mountains. Those shells lining your windowsill? You are the custodian of their oceans. The pressed petals and dried acorns and vials of sand—the bones; in them there are entire fields and forests and feral ones of whom you are a curator. Which is why I come to you this time, a cackle-caw of shade-shifters stalking through your sister spruces. The others fly when you near, leaving me below in the corner fencing, the wing you took the bone from a tangle of black shadow throwing back the light. I feel the moment you are beholden, Crow-Keeper; how you fold the wild beating of my body into your hands, placing me like a stone on a cairn into the bracken beyond; how those grandmothers come to braid feathers into your hair.
(Excerpted from Greening the Earth: A global Anthology of Poetry, Penguin Random House)
About the Book:
Greening the Earthis a rare anthology that brings together global poetic responses to one of the major crises faced by humanity in our time: environmental degradation and the threat it poses to the very survival of the human species. Poets from across the world respond here in their diverse voices-of anger, despair, and empathy-to the present ecological damage prompted by human greed, pray for the re-greening of our little planet and celebrate a possible future where we live in harmony with every form of creation.
Editors:
K. Satchidanandan is a leading Indian poet He is also perhaps the most translated of contemporary Indian poets, having 32 collections of translation in 19 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, English, Irish, French, German and Italian, besides all the major Indian languages. He has 24 collections of poetry, four books of travel, a full length play and a collection of one-act plays, two books for children and several collections of critical essays, including five books in English on Indian literature besides several collections of world poetry in translation. He has been a Professor of English, and also the chief executive of the Sahitya Akademi, the Director of the School of Translation Studies, Indira Gandhi Open University, Delhi and National Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 52 literary awards from different states and countries, including the Sahitya Akademi award, India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland, Knighthood from the Government of Italy and World Prize for Poetry for Peace from the Government of the UAE. His recent collections in English include While I Write, Misplaced Objects and Other Poems, The Missing Rib: Collected Poems, Not Only the Oceans, Questions from the Dead and The Whispering Tree: Poems of Love and Longing.
Nishi Chawla is an academician and a writer. She has six collections of poetry, nine plays, two screenplays and two novels to her credit. Nishi Chawla holds a Ph. D. in English from The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. USA. After teaching for nearly twenty years as a tenured Professor of English at Delhi University, India, she had migrated with her family to a suburb of Washington D.C. She has taught at the University of Maryland from 1999 until 2014. She is now on the faculty of Thomas Edison State University, New Jersey, USA. Nishi Chawla’s plays get staged both in the USA and in India.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In Conversation with Mitra Phukanabout her latest novel, What Will People Say?A Novel , published by Speaking Tiger Books, March 2023
Mitra Phukan. Courtesy: Speaking Tiger Books
What will people Say? A Novel by Mitra Phukan, a well-known writer from Assam, plays out like a sonata with fugues introducing complexities into the narrative. It concludes in a crescendo of hope with an acceptance of love. At the end, Phukan writes: “It was love. A love great enough to conquer all the ‘What Will People Says’.”
What is remarkable about the novel is the light touch with which it deals with major issues like communal tensions, acceptance of love across divisive human constructs and questioning of social norms. She elucidates: “I have written What Will People Say in a conversational, everyday style, sprinkled liberally with humour, even though the themes are very serious.”
Phukan’s novel moves towards a more accepting world where social norms adapt to changing needs — perhaps an attitude we would all do well to emulate, given the need for a change in mindsets to broach not only divisive societal practices but the advancing climate crises which calls for unconventional, untried steps to create cohesive bonds among humanity.
The story is set in a small town in Assam called Tinigaon. Where the protagonist, Mihika, a widow and a professor, upends accepted social norms with her budding romance to a Muslim expat, a friend of her deceased husband. She has strong supporters among her family and friends but faces devastating social criticism and even some ostracisation. This makes her think of giving up the relationship that drew her out of the darkness of widowhood.
Suffering during widowhood is a topic that has been broached by many Indian writers ranging from Tagore, Sunil Gangopadhyay to many more. Before the advent of these writers, in 1856, the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act was brought into play by the efforts of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who had also written on the issue. But despite the law, has it as yet been accepted by conventional society? And how would such a society which bases its perceptions on rituals and traditions respond further to a relationship that discards marriage as a norm? These are questions that Phukan deals with not only in her novel but in the conversation that follows.
The plot showcases an interesting interplay of different perspectives. In certain senses, it has the delightful touch of a Jane Austen novel, except it is set in India in the twenty first century, where relationships are impacted by even social media. Phukan, herself, sees “ageism” and female bonding and friendship” as major issues addressed in the novel. She says that women’s bonding is a theme that “has not been focused on enough, at least in Assamese writing”, even though, it is a fact that this has been the focus in other literature like, Jane Austen’s novels written in the nineteenth century and in subsequent modern-day take-offs on her novels, like the The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, published in 2004. In the sub-continent, Begum Rokeya described a full woman’s utopia in Sultana’s Dream(1905), though Rokeya’s story is essentially a feminist sci-fi. Unlike Rokeya’s book, Phukan’s is not an intense feminist novel. The protagonist, Mihika, has men well-wishers and men friends-cum-colleagues too. The tone is lighter and makes for a fabulous read, like Austen’s novels.
As if rising in a fugue to Mihika’s romance are two more relationships of a similar nature. One is between her daughter and a young boy from a traditional, respected, conventional home. The other, which I found more interesting, and I wish Phukan had explored a bit more, is a relationship between Mihika’s Bihari beautician, Sita, and a tribal boy. While the girl is from a traditional vegetarian strictly Hindu family, the boy is an orphan, a tribal. It is a romance that is outside the conventional affluent, middle-class circle. And is used as a contrast to Mihika’s and her daughter’s experiences. Sita’s narrative highlights how the conventional finally accept the unconventionality of a romance that in the past might have been completely rejected.
The novel rises above victimhood by looking for resolutions outside the accepted norms subtly. The plot weaves the triangular interplay of relationships with notes of harmony. The story, devoid of gender biases and darker shades of drama, delves into serious themes with a feathery touch.
The structuring of the novel arrests the reader with its seeming simplicity but each is fitted into the composition to create a fiction that touches your heart and leaves you pining for a bit more… like the strains of a composition that has the deftness and neatness of a Jane Austen novel, written in the context of twenty first century Assam.
Phukan herself is a trained vocalist in Indian classical, a columnist, a translator and a writer. In this conversation, she reveals more about the making and intent of her novel and her journey as a writer.
You wear a number of hats — that of an Indian classical vocalist, a columnist, a children’s writer, a translator and so much more. How does this impact your work as a novelist?
I feel everything is related; everything flows seamlessly into the other aspects. Yes, I am a trained Shastriya Sangeet[1]vocalist, though I have retired from performances now. But at one time that was my life…even now, I write extensively about music through essays and reviews. And I’m always listening to music, of many genres.
I began writing, hesitantly comparatively late, though I always enjoyed it, getting prizes in school and college. Later, I began to write stories, etc, for magazines such as Femina, Eve’s Weekly. Mainly though it was the paper The Sentinel and its editor D N Bezboruah which gave me a platform through middles, short fiction, essays and other genres. My children were very young at the time, and somehow the children’s stories came to me at that point. Now that they are grown up, those stories don’t come any more…and I regret that.
Translation happened because two stalwarts of Assamese literature, Jnanpith awardee Dr Indira Goswami and Sahitya Akdami awardee poet Dr Nirmal Prova Bordoloi encouraged me to try my hand at it by translating their work. I found I enjoyed it …and the journey continues!
Writing fiction, especially novels, needs the writer to have a wide view of life, I feel. I love storytelling. I write from observation, but also, I learn a lot about the literature of the place I come from, Assam, through the works of the greats in Assamese.
Do your other passions, especially music, impact your writing?
Music, definitely. In What Will People Say, for instance, there are so many references to songs and music, to concerts and musicians. There is an entire chapter devoted to songs in Hindi and Assamese where the theme is music. Besides, my novel A Monsoon of Music is about the lives of four practicing musicians. Many of my short stories from A Full Night’s Thievery have music as a theme …’The Tabla Player’, ‘The Choice’, ‘Spring Song’, and so on.
Also, musical metaphors seem to creep in, unbidden, to my writing…
Among the other passions that are reflected to a greater or lesser degree in my writing are gardening, and of course food!
What led you to write What Will People Say?
My stories, whether long or short, are always triggered by events, people, that I see around me. Sometimes it could even be a sentence I overhear while waiting at an airport, or maybe an expression on somebody’s face. They are based on reality, though they are fictionalised as they pass through the prism of my mind, my imagination.
What Will People Say was triggered by the fact that I see so many older women who have lost their spouses spend their lives in loneliness and sometimes despondency. Yes, their children may be caring, they may have women friends, a profession, but that is not enough. Love, finding a romantic partner, even companionship, is very unusual as a senior. There are so many unwritten codes, so many taboos and restrictions, especially in the small, peri-urban places.
And yet I find that change is coming. After all, people are exposed to other cultures, where going in for a second relationship is not seen as a betrayal of the dead husband, as it tends to be here.
The need for social change and a questioning of norms is part of the journey you take your readers through in your novel. Were these consciously woven into the story or did the story just happen? Please tell us about the journey of the novel.
This was the theme I have had in my mind for a while now. It was a conscious decision, and not always an easy one to implement, because of the binaries involved.
The place where I live, the larger society, prides itself on being “liberal”. And it is, compared to some other places on the planet, or in the country. But in the twenty first century, we are aware that there is much more that needs to be done, a much longer path to be traversed. The theme came first. After which I began to think of the storyline, the characters, the incidents that would make the theme come alive, all in a fictional way, of course.
What Will People Say, the line, is a kind of whip used to keep “straying” members of society, usually young people, within the fold. But here I have inverted it …it is the older members, those who are supposed to uphold the status quo, who are doing what, for many, would be the unthinkable.
Do you still see widow remarriage as an issue? Is it still an issue in Northeast India as your book shows?
Assam is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious society.
The community I am describing is what is known as the “caste Hindu” society, in which, traditionally, widow remarriage is not “allowed”. Even now, even in urban Assamese society, it is uncommon. There are unspoken taboos, unwritten codes of conduct. The extreme strictness of the past has lessened no doubt, but also a lot depends on the economic and social status of the woman. I never, for instance, saw my grandmother, a staunch Brahmin, wear anything but stark white after she was widowed. Her vegetarian kitchen was separate from the main kitchen …leave aside meat or fish, even onions, garlic were not allowed there. My mother wanted to follow the same route after my father passed away, but her doctor forbade her from doing that, while her children insisted, she wear colour. Today, my generation of women wear colour and eat non-vegetarian after the demise of their husbands, so things are slowly changing. But a second marriage, or a romantic relationship, in middle age is still very rare indeed.
Your book describes middle class liberals, conservatives as well as immigrants and tribals. What kind of impact have tribals and immigrants had in Assam over time?
There have been many waves of migration into this fertile valley of the Brahmaputra. As a result, it is a rich cultural and linguistic mosaic. Different influences are at play all the time, communities that live in proximity to each other are definitely influenced. But it is a slow process, naturally. And usually takes place over generations.
You have hinted that tribals are more liberal and out of the framework of Hindu rituals. Is that a fact?
Many tribes are, in general, indeed more liberal when it comes to widow remarriage, as are the large Muslim and also the Christian communities. It is the “caste Hindus”, especially those from the “top” of the caste pyramid, who mostly have these taboos. The original inhabitants of these valleys were different ethnic groups, which, because of the riverine, heavily forested aspects of the region, tended to remain in isolation from each other. As a result, cultural practices were unique to each one. Different waves of immigrants from both the East of the region, from Southeast Asia and beyond, and from the rest of India in the west brought in different influences, which were absorbed slowly. We see this in the food practices, the music, the weaves and clothes that we traditionally wear, and religious and social practices, among other things.
How do your characters evolve? Out of fact or are they just a figment of your imagination?
All are creations of my mind, my imagination. But I try to keep them as real as possible. It is all fiction. I love adding layers to them as I go along, till they have their own individuality, their own body language, their own ways of thinking, speaking, their food preferences, everything. By the end, they are “real” to me, though they actually exist only within the pages of a book.
What writers/ musicians/art impact you as a writer? Is there any writer who you feel impacts you more than others?
My music gurus have impacted me in many ways, beyond music. Guru Birendra Kumar Phukan, especially, taught me …through his music …what it means to be steeped in spirituality, and how to aspire higher through Shastriya music, which, to him, and sometimes to me, too, was and is prayer.
As for writers, there are so many I admire deeply. Among the Assamese writers are the scholar and creative writer of the 15th-16th Century, the Saint Srimanta Sankardev, Jnanpith awardees Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya and Indira Goswami. I am always deeply moved by their humanity. Their works, their characters, are drenched in it.
Among writers that I have read in English are the obvious ones, so many of them …but for style and humour, I think nobody can beat P G Wodehouse, and for irony, Jane Austen. And my Go To book during the pandemic was Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, for an instant lifting of spirits.
You have written a lot of children’s stories and written columns. Have these impacted you as a novelist? How is writing a novel different from doing a fantasy-based children’s story or writing a column?
I have written biographies, short stories and essays too. Basically, I see myself as a storyteller, though I write non-fiction too. The children’s stories came from my observations of the child’s world at one time, the way they thought and reacted. My columns are commentaries on society, couched in different “rasas”, including the humorous, but are sometimes a narration in the form of a story. The practice of writing, whatever the genre, and the habit of observation, have all helped me in the marathon task of writing novels!
What can we look forward to from you next? Are you working on a new novel?
Yes. I do have a novel in the pipeline, am giving it some final touches now. But what is due to be published next is a biography of Dr Bhupen Hazarika, a monograph really. He is a musical icon and so much else for us. It is being published by Sahitya Akademi. And then there is a translation of a novella by Sahitya Akademi Awardee Dr Dhrubjyoti Borah, to be published later this year by Om Books. And then of course there are the columns which I really enjoy doing, since the paper that I write for, The Assam Tribune, reaches the deepest areas of rural Assam. Many of the readers of this column, ‘All Things Considered’ are first generation literates, and that makes me really happy.
There were many Tinigaons within the city of this name. ‘Three Villages’ was the meaning in the local language. A small city in the folds of a valley in the middle of Assam. There was the Tinigaon that was still a small town, not in terms of size, but in the attitudes of the people. It was not just the middle-aged and older people who clung to tradition. Quite a few younger people did, too. And it was not always bad, this conservatism. Indeed, sometimes this unshakeable belief in the sanctity of the past was beautiful and illuminating. It was this conservatism that preserved the precious heritage of the past and kept it alive, preventing it from passing into oblivion.
But at other times, when conservatism became rigid, and sought to impose its beliefs on those who had a different mindset, dictating how they should behave, dress, what relationships they could or could not have, it could become a prison that prevented any kind of progress from taking place. As with much conservatism, the greatest restrictions were placed on women. There were strict codes of conduct for women and girls, codes that varied from age group to age group, but were authoritarian, nevertheless. Individual freedoms were always secondary to the ‘expected’ modes of conduct. ‘It’s always been like this,’ was a refrain often heard to justify the many rules which had lost all relevance in a swiftly changing world. If, indeed, they had ever been relevant at all.
The rules for girls and young women, though unyielding, at least took into account the rebelliousness of youth. ‘You are young, that’s why you think like this,’ was a sentence that was spoken grudgingly by parents or uncles and aunts, to people who were, in their eyes, guilty of ‘errant’ behaviour. But young people went outside the city, outside the state, to study, to work, and who knew what their lifestyles were there? Preferring to turn a blind eye to many rumoured ‘goings-on’ in the metro cities, goings-on in which their children were willing, even enthusiastic participants, they were for the most part relieved that at least when they came home, they behaved in ways ‘expected’ of them.
And so, even though they spoke viciously of that girl, WhatWasHerName, who was now living in with some boyfriend in Delhi, they preferred to keep silent about their own daughter who was doing the same. Grateful for small mercies, they pretended not to know anything when they visited her in the flat she rented in Gurgaon. They kept a deadpan face when they came across a shirt in size 42 hanging, forgotten in the cupboard in the second bedroom. They tried not to notice the other telltale signs that their daughter had been ‘cohabiting’ with a male, and refrained from asking where he had gone, now that they were here for three weeks. They did not ask about the long phone conversations that stretched to well past midnight and were only grateful that their daughter had been ‘considerate’ enough to spare them the trauma of meeting some unknown boy with whom she had been sleeping for the past so many months. They even pushed into a dark recess that worry of pregnancy, and the even greater worry of ‘WhatWillPeopleSay?’
Yes, in these changing times, people were learning, slowly, to ‘adjust’ to the fact that the younger people now were prone to living their lives in ways that were different from what was deemed to be ‘allowed’. But when it came to older people, things still remained as rigid as they had been for centuries. Especially for women. And especially, very especially, for widows.
True, Hindu widows were no longer expected to live a life that was, virtually, a death sentence. Younger widows, especially, ate non-vegetarian food, though their mothers, after the deaths of their husbands, still did not. They wore coloured clothes, though again, their mothers wore pale, traditional clothes, even though during the lifetimes of their husbands they had worn the most vibrant colours under the sun.
But there were, still, many restrictions on single women, widows, even divorcees or never-marrieds, in Tinigaon. They could go out in mixed groups, but never in a twosome with a man not closely related. They could not ‘date’ a man, and go out with him, even if it was as innocent as an outing to a theatre, or a music concert, or having a meal at a restaurant. There were always prying and peering eyes around who would ‘see’ what was happening, magnify it many times, load it with all kinds of intent, and then broadcast it with relish to salivating friends at the next kitty party that took place.
Mihika remembered the time a recently divorced forty-something mother of two had accepted a lift, two days running, from her superior, a married, fifty-plus man. Without a car at that time just after her divorce, she had been waiting on the pavement, in pouring rain, for a bus or auto or ricksha to take her home. As time passed and no vehicle stopped for her, she was growing increasingly desperate. The nanny who looked after the children would be leaving at six-thirty, and it was almost six already. She was greatly relieved, therefore, when her boss’s boss, whom she knew only slightly, stopped and asked her if he could drop her anywhere. It turned out her apartment was on the way to his house and she had gladly accepted the offer of the lift.
(Extracted from What Will People Say? A Novel by Mitra Phukan. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023)
About the Book
When Mihika, 56 and a widow, gets drawn into a relationship with Zuhayr, a 60-year-old divorcee who was her late husband Aditya’s friend, it doesn’t seem to her like an event that should cause more than a raised eyebrow or two. Not in the twenty-first century, and not when their grown-up children are happy that their parents have found a second chance at happiness. But inTinigaon—a small town in Assam—it is just not done for a woman of Mihika’s age to have a romantic relationship—that, too, with a man from the Other Religion: a Muslim.Tinigaon’s Old Guard is scandalized as Mihika and Zuhayr are seen together in restaurants and cinema halls,‘flaunting’ their affair. And a nosy neighbour, Ranjana, keeps the moral brigade busy with juicy details of Zuhayr’s late-night comings and goings from Mihika’s house. Mihika decides to ignore the gossipmongering and slander and remain true to her relationship with Zuhayr, who has filled a void in her life after Aditya’s death five years ago.As long as her four closest friends,Tara,Triveni, Shagufta and Pallavi, stand by her, she doesn’t care if others turn away. But when the gossip turns into something more sinister that could threaten her daughterVeda’s happiness, Mihika is forced to take a call—should she give up the man she loves for her daughter’s sake, or is there an alternative that could give them both what they want? Writing with great sensitivity and gentle humour, Mitra Phukan proves once again that she is an extraordinary chronicler of the human heart. Rooted, like all her fiction, in the culture and sensibilities of Assam, What Will People Say? speaks to all of us, wherever we are, whoever we are.
About the Author
Mitra Phukan is an Assamese author, translator and columnist who writes in English. Her published works, fourteen so far, include children’s books, biographies, two novels, The Collector’s Wife and A Monsoon of Music, several volumes of translations from Assamese to English and a collection of her columns, Guwahati Gaze. Her most recent works are a volume of her own short stories, A Full Night’s Thievery, and a translation of a volume of short stories, by Sahitya Akademi Award-winning author, Harekrishna Deka, Guilt and Other Stories, both published by SpeakingTiger.
Imagine a world without wars, without divisions, where art forms flow into each other and we live by the African concept of Ubuntu — I am because you are’ — sounds idyllic. But this is the month of March, of poetry, of getting in touch with the Dionysian elements in ourselves. And as we have said earlier in the introduction of Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, what could be a better spot to let loose this insanity of utopian dreams than Borderless Journal!
Having completed three years of our Earthly existence on the 14th of March, we celebrate this month with poetry and writing that crosses boundaries — about films, literature and more. This month in the Festival of Letters or Sahityaotsav 2023, organised by the Sahitya Akademi, films were discussed in conjunction with literature. Ratnottama Sengupta, who attended and participated in a number of these sessions, has given us an essay to show how deep run the lyrics of Bollywood films, where her father, Nabendu Ghosh, scripted legends. It is Ghosh’s birth month too and we carry a translation from his Bengali autobiography which reflects how businessmen drew borders on what sells… After reading the excerpt from Nabendu’s narrative translated by Dipankar Ghosh and post-scripted by Sengupta, one wonders if such lines should ever have been drawn?
Questioning borders of a different kind, we have another piece of a real-life narrative on a Japanese Soldier, Uehara. Written by an Assamese writer called Kamaleswar Barua, it has been translated and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. The story focusses on a soldier’s narrative at his death bed in an alien land. We are left wondering how his need for love and a home is any different from that of any one of ours? Who are the enemies — the soldiers who die away from their homes? What are wars about? Can people live in peace? They seemed to do so in Kurigram, a land that has faded as suggests the poem by Masud Khan, brought to us in translation from Bangla by Professor Fakrul Alam, though in reality, the area exists. Perhaps, it has changed… as does wood exposed to a bonfire, which has been the subject of a self-translated Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi. Tagore’s poem, Borondalatranslated as ‘Basket of Offerings’, has the last say: “Just as the stars glimmer / With light in the dark night, / A spark awakens within/ My body. / This luminosity illuminates / All my work.” And perhaps, it is this luminosity that will also help us find our ideal world and move towards it, at least with words.
We have a book review by Aruna Chakravarti of Bornali Datta’sIn A Better Place: A Doctor’s Journey, a book that is set amidst immigrants and takes up certain social issues. Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna’s Journey, translated from Marathi by Deepra Dandekar, one of the oldest Indian novels has been discussed by Somdatta Mandal. Bhaskar Parichha has told us about S.Irfan Habib’s Maulana Azad – A Life. Basudhara Roy has brought out the simplicity and elegance of Robin Ngangom’sMy Invented Land: New and Selected Poems. He writes in the title poem that his home “has no boundaries. / At cockcrow one day it found itself/ inside a country to its west,/ (on rainy days it dreams looking east/ when its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)”. We also carry an excerpt from his book. Stories by Jessie Michael, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Sangeetha G and Shubhangi bring flavours of diversity in this issue.
Our journey has been a short one — three years is a short span. But, with goodwill from all our readers and contributors, we are starting to crawl towards adulthood. I thank you all as caregivers of Borderless Journal as I do my fabulous team and the artists who leave me astounded at their ability to paint and write — Sohana Manzoor, Gita Vishwanath and Pragya Bajpai.
Thank you all.
Looking forward to the next year, I invite you to savourBorderless Journal, March 2023, where more than the treasures mentioned here lie concealed.
Borderless 