Love is a many splendoured thing and takes many forms — that stretches beyond bodily chemistry to a need to love all humankind. There is the love for one’s parents, family, practices one believes in and most of all nurtured among those who write, a love for words. For some, like Tagore, words became akin to breathing. He wrote from a young age. Eventually, an urge to bridge social gaps led him to write poetry that bleeds from the heart for the wellbeing of all humanity. Tagore told a group of writers, musicians, and artists, who were visiting Sriniketan in 1936: “The picture of the helpless village which I saw each day as I sailed past on the river has remained with me and so I have come to make the great initiation here. It is not the work for one, it must involve all. I have invited you today not to discuss my literature nor listen to my poetry. I want you to see for yourself where our society’s real work lies. That is the reason why I am pointing to it over and over again. My reward will be if you can feel for yourself the value of this work.”
And it was perhaps to express this great love of humanity that he had written earlier in his life a poem called Dhoola Mandirthat urges us to rise beyond our differences of faith and find love in serving humankind. In this month, which celebrates love with Valentine’s Day, we have a translation of this poem that is born of his love for all people, Dhoola Mandir. Another poet who writes of his love for humanity and questions religion is Nazrul, two of whose poems have been translated by Niaz Zaman. Exploring love between a parent and children is poetry by Masood Khan translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam. From the distant frontiers of Balochistan, we have a poem by Atta Shad, translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch, for a fair lady — this time it is admiration. Ihlwha Choi translates poetry from Korean to express his love for a borderless world through the flight of sparrows.
Suzanne Kamata writes a light-hearted yet meaningful column on the recent Taylor Swift concert in Tokyo. Aditi Yadav takes up the Japanese book on which was based a movie that won the 2024 Golden Globe Best Animated Feature Film Award. Sohana Manzoor journeys to London as Devraj Singh Kalsi with tongue in cheek humour comments on extracurriculars that have so become a necessity for youngsters to get to the right schools. Snigdha Agrawal gives us a slice of nostalgia while recounting the story of a Santhali lady and Keith Lyons expresses his love for peace as he writes in memory of a man who cycled for peace.
In reviews, Somdatta Mandal has explored Tahira Naqvi’s The History Teacher of Lahore: A Novel. Srijato’s AHouse of Rain and Snow, translated from Bengali by Maharghya Chakraborty, has been discussed by Basudhara Roy and Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Toby Walsh’s Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World. News and Documentary Emmy Award winner (1996) Ruchira Gupta’s daring novel born of her work among human traffickers, I Kick and I Fly, has been brought to our notice by Sengupta and she converses about the book and beyond with this socially conscious activist, filmmaker and writer. Another humanist, a doctor who served by bridging gaps between patients from underprivileged backgrounds, Dr Ratna Magotra, also conversed about her autobiography,Whispers of the Heart — Not Just a Surgeon: An Autobiography, where she charts her journey which led her to find solutions to take cardiac care to those who did not have the money to afford it,
We have fiction this time from Neeman Sobhan reflecting on how far people will go for the love of their mother tongue to highlight the movement that started on 21st February in 1952 and created Bangladesh in 1971. Our stories are from around the world — Paul Mirabile from France, Ravi Shankar from Malaysia, Sobhan from Bangladesh and Ravi Prakash and Apurba Biswas from India — weaving local flavours and immigrant narratives. Most poignant of all the stories is a real-life narrative under the ‘Songs of Freedom’ series by a young girl, Jyoti Kaur, translated from Hindustani by Lourdes M Supriya. These stories are brought to us in coordination with pandies’ and Shaktishalini, a women’s organisation to enable the abused. Sanjay Kumar, the founder of pandies’ and the author of a most poignant book about healing suffering of children through theatre, Performing, Teaching and Writing Theatre: Exploring Play, writes, “‘Songs of Freedom’ bring stories from women — certainly not victims, not even survivors but fighters against the patriarchal status quo with support from the organisation Shaktishalini.”
While looking forward in hope of finding a world coloured with love and kindness under the blue dome, I would like to thank our fabulous team who always support Borderless Journal with their wonderful work. A huge thanks to all of you from the bottom of my heart. I thank all the writers who make our issues come alive with their creations and readers who savour it to make it worth our while to bring out more issues. I would urge our readers to visit our contents’ page as we have more than mentioned here.
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
If nations are imagined (but not therefore imaginary) communities, Bengal is a nation. The reality of nationhood rests on the quality of the imagination that goes into it.
Calcutta, where I was born in 1957, provided me with a cartographic point of entry into the imagined geography of Bengal. My Bengal began with West Bengal, within which lay a rough face-to-face society rich in visual and oral provenance. The everyday homeliness of rural thatched mud huts were reflected in the high gabled roofs which contoured the spiritual skyline of Dakshineswar. Minstrel bauls walked through the soul, half-starved on their way to seeking salvation for everyone. The very soil of Bengal broke out in bhatiali song. The chau dancers of Purulia dramatised Hindu epics in a language emotively accessible to all. The energy of santhali dances invoked the performative agency of a tribal culture that refused to let pre-industrial and pre-state time lapse into contemporary irrelevance.
Agricultural West Bengal encompassed the legacy of a land whose grasp was much longer and larger than the social circumference of middle-class life in Calcutta. In my own ancestral village in Hooghly district, a short train journey from Howrah station, boys my age could climb trees and run barefoot and naked across scorching soil, outpacing the shy urbanite in me. Young women, taught to avoid the roving gaze of male strangers, lowered their eyes to the ground in modest contemplation when men passed by. Farmers could bend unbearingly long to till the land, standing upright for only a few minutes before they resumed their toil. No one spoke English. No one needed to. No one needed me. I needed them.
To the west of West Bengal lay the rest of India. The “rest of the Indians” were decipherable. In Bihar and Odisha, once a part of Bengal Presidency, rump Bengal lived on in the linguistic and cultural traces of the colonial past. Farther west, West Bengal vanished into an eclectic Indian nationalism. I must say, though, that on a long train journey from Calcutta to Cochin in Kerala as a teenager, I thought (rightly or wrongly) that the particular shade of green found in the vegetation of West Bengal was lost till it was found in Kerala again. The renewed connection between Calcutta and Cochin made it possible for me to extend my Bengali-ness vicariously all the way to Kerala, making me quite a pan-Indian Bengali, I suppose. The connective nationalism of Indian Railways (like that of the State Bank of India) plays no small part in protecting the unitary reality of contemporary India.
Farther to the west of the rest of India lay the lands of Islam. They began with forbidden territory: Pakistan. Pakistan embodied the Partition of India, the departure of space from Indian time. For me, West Pakistan was unknown terrain: No one I loved or hated lived there. But if, indeed, there was an “Islamic world”, then I certainly inhabited it subliminally. I was (and am) a Muslim. I belonged to the global efflorescence of a great faith that had spread into my birth and self-recognition. West Pakistan had nothing to do with it. My mother was a practising Muslim (after a fashion), my father was a practising atheist. As a five-day-old, I had been “adopted” by a childless Hindu couple who lived in the same block of flats as my parents. Nilima Kurup (née Bose) took me to temples, and Parameshwara Raghava Kurup, well-versed in the Vedas, stayed away from the Puranas. But no one made me anything but a Bengali indebted forever to the Islamic religiosity of South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. Certainly, I belonged to the lands of Islam. There was nothing vicarious about this. It is just that West Pakistan had nothing to do with my identity. I respected its existence even as it stayed indifferent to mine (since it had no idea that I existed). That was all.
East Pakistan was different. I had relatives there on both my mother’s side and my father’s. I remember a childhood visit to my paternal uncle’s home in Narayanganj. It was raining. Unlike West Bengal (where rain falls on people), the people of East Bengal fall on the rain. A female cousin, all of six years old, made an excuse of going to the bathroom: instead, she took a bath in a roomful of rain as wide as the skies outside, within sight of the elders, dancing with the abandon of the water that flowed through her tresses, kissed her eyes, drenched her frock, and caused an uproar that led her to be dragged back to lunch, laughing unrepentantly. Meanwhile, her elder brother wanted to go to the “bathroom” as well. He was held back by his hair and resisted violently, raining cries of recrimination on everyone. Watching my wild bangal (native East Bengali) cousins in righteous ghoti (native West Bengali) awe, I decided that East Pakistan was too Bengali for me.
But it was not to be.
Bangladesh
Baker-ul Haque came to live next door to our flat in Nasiruddin Road, Park Circus, Calcutta, in 1971. A year younger, he caught up with me in historical time with vivid stories of how he and his family had escaped Bogra, trudging through forests as the Pakistani air force strafed fleeing civilians, people fell dead on the left and the right, his mother held on his elder sister’s hand, he grasped his younger siblings firmly, his father led on, and all of them made their way — to me. I doubted specific details of his heroic journey, but not his visceral courage. I witnessed it when my pet dog chased him to the fourth-storey terrace, he climbed on to the parapet and kept walking on it calmly, I held the dog back, and I implored Baker to climb down. He smiled at me insouciantly. It was only when he saw tears in my eyes that he relented. Once he was safely down, I wanted to give him a hearty kick, but settled for a rib-shattering hug instead. Epaar Bangla[1]wins when Opaar Bangla[2]is safe.
Baker and his family lived next door, in the third-storey flat which the writer Syed Mujtaba Ali had occupied briefly earlier. Given his literary reputation, I stayed away from him, but he was rather fond of me, and I invaded his rooms whenever I found the door ajar. The family which stayed with my own family was that of Lutfar Rahman, an Awami League Member of the National Assembly from Khulna. Chachaji[3] smiled a lot but was fierce, chachiamma[4] was benign to a fault, their elder son Ornob took after his mother and their younger son Tulu (his pet-name) took after his father. Both brothers, who were much younger than I was, became mini companions on laughing excursions to the same terrace on which Baker had reduced me to tears.
The liberation of Bangladesh on December 16, 1971 (which happily and sadly soon saw Baker’s and Lutfar Chacha’s families returning to Bogra and Khulna) was my rebirth as a Bengali. I had been born into the bifurcated mythos of Bengal, which was first partitioned administratively in 1905 in an act rescinded in 1911, and then partitioned along national lines in 1947 to produce Pakistan. The partition of that Pakistan in 1971 produced an independent Bengali nation called Bangladesh. It is only in the years to come that I would understand the reasons for the ontological security of Bangladesh: it is a sated or satisfied nation because its borders guarantee the two conditions of its existence — that it be Bengali and Muslim in co-determinate measure — with provision being made for the rights of non-Bengalis and non-Muslims within its borders. Indeed, so successful has Bangladeshi nationalism been that its majority population finds it unnecessary to seek links with West Bengal to achieve cultural completion. That attitude is reciprocated in West Bengal, whose incorporation into the Indian ethos makes Bangladesh its closest neighbour, but a neighbour nevertheless.
Yet, to look across the border within Bengal, to see its integrity, is to un-see its divisions. Bengal is named ground: To walk on it, even vicariously, is to recover the insights of Walter Benjamin [5]on his visit to Moscow. Benjamin’s delineation of Russia as named ground (in his Reflections) leads him to proclaim that “you can only see if you have already decided… Only he who, by decision, has made his dialectical peace with the world can grasp the concrete. But someone who wishes to decide ‘on the basis of facts’ will find no basis in the facts”. The facts are always too many. The facts are contested. The facts might not even be facts. But Bengal is decidedly one — not because of its successes but because of its vulnerabilities.
The Refugee Within
The fragile figure of the refugee straddles the two Bengals. Achintya Kumar Sengupta’s[6] poem,Udvastu[7], rendered unforgettably in the recitation by Kazi Sabyasachi[8], is a part of an aural tradition without which it is impossible to re-imagine the Bengal that existed once. What makes the refugee central to the idea of Bengal as a state of mind is that she embodies the land’s biological unity and integrity in the very act of losing her place in its stolen geography. Bearing the scars of uprooting, dispossession and exile, the refugee socialises the pain which lasts long after the immediate displacement of enforced migration has passed. To seek refuge is to pass from basha to bari. Basha is a temporary place of residence, no matter how long that temporarity lasts. Bari is an inherited abode which is both ancestrally personal and nationally interchangeable with desh, the native land. The udvastu or vastuhara[9] from East Bengal seeking refuge in West Bengal since 1947 had to contend with what Nilanjana Chatterjee calls “epistemological denial in India”, wherein those who had crossed the border were treated as an economic burden.
The epilogue to the story of the refugees of 1947 was written in 1971, when it was the turn of Bengali Muslims from East Pakistan to join Bengali Hindus in seeking refuge in West Bengal. While the vast majority of refugees spent months in harrowing conditions, professional and other middle-class families were often hosted by middle-class families in West Bengal who could afford to do so. It was not unknown for the family of a Bengali Hindu, who himself had come from East Bengal in 1947, to share its basha with a Bengali Muslim family. The Bengali Muslim knew that he would return home if Bangladesh won the war. His Hindu host kept dreaming of a bari relegated forever to the nostalgic lay of a lost land.
My family was more lucky. Our first trip to Bangladesh was to Lutfar Chacha‘s home in Khulna across the land crossing in Benapole. Of course, I enjoyed the royal spreads at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. But what filled my eyes was the sight of Ornob, Tulu and their little sister (by then), strutting about their home as if it was theirs. It was theirs. Bangladesh restored in me my extended sense of myself, my identity as a resident of Epaar Bangla who sought completion in the autonomy of Opaar Bangla. Soon after, I visited Baker in Bogra. At one dinner, his mother sat down just the two of us together. Naturally, I got the larger piece of fish in a bowl. I cooked up an excuse for Baker to go and look for something. I exchanged the bowls. He returned to eat. When we began with the vegetables, he exchanged the bowls. That insouciant smile again. I hate him. He has outwitted me always inspite of being a year younger.
The refugee is the first citizen of imagined Bengal. She will also be the last. That is, without Bangladesh and West Bengal being the ultimate refuge of the transitional Bengali self, there will be no Bengal.
There will be no me.
Birth matters. No one can be born in two places.
In his essay, “Englands of the Mind”, Seamus Heaney[10] registers the birthing role of place in the “interlacing and trellising of natural life and mythical life”; what a land does is to afford a man “nurture that he receives by living among his own”. Bengal forms a similar geography of the mind. It received me among my own. Life was material, which is to say that it veered from the banal to the brutal, but it was redeemed by the furtive companionship of the imagination. The trellising which Heaney notes does not have to be idyllic. It rarely is. Australian writer Dorothea Mackellar’s[11] poem, “My Country“, written while she was homesick in Britain, captures the native lore of a land that her ancestors supposedly discovered for her. She writes: “I love a sunburnt country,/ A land of sweeping plains,/ Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of drought and flooding rains.” Australia is nothing without its enervating drought and its equally uncaring rain. Mackellar dismisses the pastoral epiphanies of a promised expatriate land, particularly “When sick at heart, around us/ We see the cattle die”. Natural disasters provoke her to reclaim art from nature. She redeems a wayward landscape by offering it refuge in her lines.
I am no Heaney or Mackellar. Bengal has no need to find refuge in my words. May these English words of mine find refuge in the lap of Bengal from which I sprung into life.
[1] Epaar Bangla: This side of Bengal (West Bengal)
[2] Opaar Bangla: That side of Bengal (East Bengal or Bangladesh)
[3] Father’s younger brother is chacha and ji is an honorific in chachaji
We are living in strange times that seem to be filled with events to challenge the innovativeness of man. As if the pandemic were not enough, concepts that had come out of the best in our civilisation to unite mankind have been convoluted by a minority to manipulate and hurt the majority into submission. Life is not about surviving with faint-hearted compliance but about having the courage to live it as you want, facing it full up front, to voice out in unison against injustices, wrongs, and most of all to loan strength to help and care for each other. Often to understand this, we need to hinge on to our past, to learn from our heritage. But do we do that? In the hectic drive to be successful, we tend to ignore important lessons that could have been imbibed from the past. Like, did you know that the tribes in the Andaman can save themselves from a tsunami?
Padma Shri Anvita Abbi tells us all about the Andamanese and her attempts to revive their moribund language in her interview and book, Voices from the Lost Horizon, reviewed by Rakhi Dalal. While the review focusses on the uniqueness of Abbi’s work and the publication with its embedded recordings of the tribe fast dissolving into the morass of mainstream civilisation, her interview highlights the need to revive their lores that evolved out of a 70,000-year-old culture. On the other hand, Jessica Mudditt, interviewed by Keith Lyons, dwells on the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, which has been clearly the focus of her book, Our Home in Yangon. This interview focusses on the here and now of the crisis. But most crises have their roots deep and perhaps an exploration of these could help. There are 135 ethnicities in Myanmar but how many are actually integrated into the mainstream? Are they in the process of getting ‘lost’ like the voices of the speakers of Greater Andamanese?
That is why we tried to showcase a few such strains that are going unheard in the loudness of the ‘civilised’ mainstream. We have translations in poetry from Santhali and Adivasi, touching on the concerns of those who are often considered underdeveloped. And, perhaps, as Abbi said in her interview about the Andamanese, we can say much the same for these tribes too.
“These tribes are neither poor, nor uneducated (their knowledge of environment comprising birds, fishes, medicinal plants and their … weather predictions, and the Earth they walk on is amazing) …”
Distinctions have been created by a ‘civilisation’ entrenched in mono-cognitive enforcements leading to the loss of trust, confidence, languages, cultures and valuable knowledge about basic survival. Perhaps we can attempt to heal such wounds by imbibing the openness, love, devotion and compassion shown by the Buddhist monk, Upagupta (who is still revered in Myanmar as Shin Upagutta), in the translation of Tagore’s story poem, ‘Abhisar’ or ‘The Tryst’. Somdatta Mandal’s translation of Tagore’s letters introduce similar humanitarian concerns when the maestro mentions a German anthropologist and his wife who for the betterment of mankind were journeying to study tribals in India. Tagore remarks, “The people for whom they are willingly prepared to undergo hardship and to overlook all sorts of danger are not their relatives, nor are they civilised.” And yet even a century ago to fathom more about mankind, attempts were being made to integrate with our ancient lore. The concept of being ‘civilised’ is of course now much under the microscope. What is being ‘civilised’?
Is it about having power? We have Akbar Barakzai’s poem translated by Fazal Baloch on creation looking at the divide between a ‘civilised’ God and man. The theme stresses the two sides of the divide. More translations from Odiya, Dutch and Korean further mingle different flavours of the world into our journal — each questioning the accepted norm in different ways.
In an edition focussed on myths and stories from which we evolved, Rhys Hughes has created an unusual legend around elephants. His poetry also deals with animals — cats. One wonders if the T S Eliot’s famed ‘Macavity, the Mystery Cat’ could have to do something with his choices? We were fortunate to have Arundhathi Subramaniam share her poetry on myths around Indian figures like Shakuntala and Avvaiyar and the titular poem from When God is a Traveller that won her the 2020 Sahitya Akademi Award. Michael R Burch continues on the theme dwelling on Circe, Mary Magdalene and Helen. Sekhar Banerjee has a more iconoclastic approach to myths in his poetry. Jared Carter talks of modern myths perpetuated through art and cultural studies as does Mike Smith in his musings with his glance back at the last century through a photograph.
We have poetry by a Filipino writer Gigi Baldovino Gosnell from South Africa, looking for a new world, a new legend, perhaps a world without borders. Tohm Bakelas has given us a few lines of powerful poetry. Could these poems be a reaction to world events? Smitha Vishwanath has responded to the situation in Afghanistan with a poem. In this edition, photographs and verses in Penny Wilkes’ ‘Nature’s Musings‘ draw from the universe. She writes, “The sun never asks for applause” — a powerful thought and perhaps one mankind can learn from.
Ghost stories by Niles Reddick and Sunil Sharma perpetuate the theme, especially the latter has a ghost that questions myths of ‘isms’ created in the modern-day world. We also have a writer from Malaysia, P Ravi Shankar, with a futuristic legend set in a far-off time where man has embraced the reality of climate change and artificial intelligence. An interesting and fun read as is Devraj Singh Kalsi’s professions about why he did not become a professor, Geetha Ravichandran’s light musing on word play and a young writer Saurabh Nagpal’s musing, ‘Leo Messi’s Magic Realism‘ — a footballer viewed from a literary perspective!
While our musings make us laugh, our essays this time take us around the world with the myth of happiness deconstructed by Candice Louisa Daquin, to Burma and deep into Kolkata’s iconic history of the detective department started in the nineteenth century. There is an essay by Bhaskar Parichha that explores politics and media and mentions ‘gatekeepers’ of the media who need to be responsible for influencing public opinion. Guess who would be the gatekeepers?
Bhaskar Parichha’s review of Wendy Donniger’s non-fiction exploring myths around horses, Winged Stallion and Wicked Mares,and Basudhara Roy’s review of Bina Sarkar Ellias’ Song of a Rebel and Other Selected Poems perpetuate the theme of the importance of the past on the one hand and question it on the other. But that is what Borderless is about — exploring the dialectics of opposing streams to re-invent myths towards a better future.
We have a bumper issue again this time with nearly fifty posts. I invite our wonderful readers on a magical journey to unfold the hidden, unmentioned gems scattered on the pages of the September Issue of Borderless. Thank you again to an outstanding team, all our global contributors who make every edition an adventure and a reality and our wonderful readers. Thank you all.
A Poem for the Ol-Chiki
The Bengali script in Bengal
The Odia script in Odisha
I do not know the Bengali script
You do not know the Odia script
Let us agree to one script for Santhali
The Ol-Chiki is our script.
They write in the Roman somewhere
They write in the Devanagari at some places
I do not know the Roman script
You do not know the Devanagari script
One script will unite us all
The Ol-Chiki is our script.
Dear writer, for how long will you
Write your language using
Someone else’s script?
You are dividing our readers
You are making our publishers lose money
Let us all understand this
The Ol-Chiki is our script.
One language, one Script.
This is what will strengthen us Santhals
The talents of so many of us
Scattered for the want of one script
All of us Santhals, let us solve this script issue.
(First published in 100 Poems are Not Enough, Walking Book Fairs)
Sokhen Tudu is a Mayurbhanj, Odisha-based Santhali poet, haiku writer and Santhali script activist. He was involved in spreading the Santhali script, the Ol chiki, among Santhals in Bangladesh.
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar writes in English and occasionally translates from Santhali and Hindi to English.
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