India

When I was tiny, I remember my sister teaching me when the birthdays for people in our family are. She taught me that Aug. 13 is my own birthday and Aug. 15 is India's birthday! Yes, in a true sense it is. I remember very well in 1997 on the morning of Aug. 15 when I picked up The Statesman and something caught my eye - Two dominions are born - was the big headline. What!! I exclaimed as I saw Jawaharlal Nehru's picture. Then it struck me and I saw the date. Statesman intentionally draped the front page of their newspaper from 1947 after fifty years! That was fun. So our country was born in 1947. But we can't and shouldn't forget our rich heritage that dates back thousands of years.

Our country is in a bad shape now. I know that like every other person. It is terribly over populated, run by corrupt politicians and nothing seems to work correctly. In every possible place from health care to education and professors to cricketers all seem to be seeped in corruption. There are power failures at hospitals, villages still don't have motor-able roads, lack of proper education leads to problems in almost all places, religious leaders reign supreme, police officers work for political parties... you name it.

But, that is home!

That is the land I was born and that is the land where my roots are. In the crowded fish markets where Bengalis throng in the morning to bargain for the freshest Ilish, where school-college and office goers board buses like sardine cans, with the conductor crying "pechhoner dike egiye cholun" (advance towards the back - the most common oxymoron of the streets of Calcutta), in the Southern breeze that comes from the distant oceans, in the cheers during cricket matches... that's where I am from.

India will survive...The land which has withstood invasions over thousands of years by the Sakas, Huns, Greeks, Mughals, British and French does not have to fear anything. We came out of all problems, we will come out of this too.

That is where Indians will find their home...in the sage who sits in a cave in the Himalayas, in a tiny lamp that floats on the Ganga at Varanasi, in the colors of Rangoli and glass bangles, in the red bordered white sarees and taste of fish and mishti-doi, the platter of banana leaves and the fireworks of Diwali! That will never go away and with it the land stretching from the snow capped Himalayas with tulip fields in Kashmir in the north to the land of coconut palms, backwaters and tropical rainfall of Kerala in the south, to the fertile green plains of Bengal in the east to the golden desert of Rajasthan in the west will always be there to give us a feel of home...

বলো বলো বলো সবে 

শত বীণা বেণুরবে 

ভারত আবার জগতসভায় শ্রেষ্ঠ আসন লবে 

The last year in my twenties

I may look like someone in her teens (I get carded everywhere possible), but the truth is this is my last year in the twenties! Even though it sounds like I am slowly creeping towards the really grown-up age but well, that shouldn't be bad right? It is just another decade, life goes on in the same way...the world stays the same...

Things were so different for me 29 years back though...it was like a Big Bang. Till the time I was born there was just darkness, then in a moment I was flooded with information. Light, sound, touch, pain, smell, taste and the basic consciousness about being alive. Isn't that the best thing? To be alive in this world!!

A world full of people and animals, beautiful blue sky, bright sun, stars like diamonds, green trees and fields of wheat. To be alive to cherish these beautiful things, to smell a rose, to pick a home grown ripe tomato, to roll on the cool grass on a summer afternoon, to walk up snowy ridges and to see the lapping waves of an ocean at my feet is worth living.

To grow up in a family where one is loved and cared for, the very fact that there are happy childhood memories, to have a husband who is a friend and partner, to have friends to hang out with from all over the world, friends who speak different languages, come from different religions and cultures but with whom you can share little details of your life. Co-workers who help and teach, who encourage you to try out new things, learn new technology. Teachers (physical and virtual) who inspire and teach you good morals and lead by example. The things we can take in from this world to enrich our lives, those are the best.

If you don't love yourself, no one else would. If you don't respect yourself, then also no one else would. However, pets are different. They are the only beings who love you without any expectation. I am so blessed to have Mota, May, Peanut Butter and Bebe in my life. Every night when Mota lays himself down next to me, cuddled up into a fur ball, I feel so great and every morning it's Bebe with her enthusiastic jump on the bed who wakes me up with a "Good morning" woof!

Life is great when you feel great. And you feel great when you accomplish something good, when you love and are loved in return, when people appreciate you or just feel good when you are around. With that comes sharing all the good stuff I have...when I am happy I would like others to be happy. There is so much to do and so much to learn...I don't know if one lifetime will be enough for all that.

On Bengali marriages

There might be some article on marriages, yes not weddings, but I haven't seen them, so I wanted to write one of my own. Like everything, the concept of a marriage has changed a lot over the ages and the transformation has been great over the last half century or so. I would concentrate on the Bengali ones, but I guess those are pretty much similar to the ones all over India.

In the 1800s, girls were married off when they were little kids and their husbands would be in their early to mid teens. As they were so little, girls would keep on living at her father's house for some more years, until she becomes of child bearing age, that would be her early teens though. Those marriages would involve a middle man, or woman, who would bring information of prospective brides and grooms. Then caste and astrological matches were calculated, with that the basic things of if the girl is pretty or if the groom's father has say a lot of land would be looked into. The bride and the groom would never ever see one another. In most cases their parents would not see their prospective spouses either until the very day of wedding.

Later, with boys getting more educated and some of them moving out into the cities for higher education, they started complaining about early marriages. As a result, the age of boys went up significantly from teenage to early twenties. Conservative families still didn't like this and even though some families encouraged their sons to go see their would-be spouses, many other families totally rejected that idea. In the stories of Rabindranath, we see these young men who would at times go with their guy friends to see the brides. Some of these men who were open to western education didn't want to get married to child brides. Even with a wide age difference of ten years or more, they wanted a little older girls. Especially for families in Calcutta, school educated brides slowly became common. Those girls would be able to read and write Bengali, they read story books and were proficient in writing letters. In the famous novel "Prothom pratishruti" that was the kind of daughter-in-law Satyabati wanted.

With the onset of Brahmoism, a class of Bengalis became extremely well educated and shun the rigid orthodoxy. Here I am talking about late 1800s to early to mid 1900s. It was the time when Bengal Renaissance lit up the entire society and people gained that consciousness to question what is right and what is wrong. Even though all these were arranged marriages, that is the family decided on the match, both the brides and grooms were allowed to meet one another before the wedding. There might be a few "love marriages" in those days, of people inspired by the British, but those were negligible.

From the mid 1900s, love marriages increased in count. Also, in some of those marriages, the spouses were from different castes and backgrounds, which in those days were small revolutions I'd say! However, in most of these cases, the common trend was the new bride would move in with her in-laws. Even though educated, she still would not have a career. There were some women who were teachers, but mostly they would leave their jobs, if at all they had any, after marriage. Some men who were working out of the city would take their wives along, but generally people stayed with their families in their ancestral homes.

In the later part of 1900s, say in around the 60s, a new trend grew among the well educated community. Then young men started to leave the country and settle abroad. Before, there were barristers, engineers and doctors who would go to study in Britain, but they came back after completing their studies. This new generation did not come back. They were the first instances of brain drain. They took their wives with them to the USA and had their kids there. They would come once a year or so to visit, but that was all. These wives in most cases found a career abroad and they were the ones who had their "own home" outside that of their parents and in-laws.

The concept of nuclear families became more apparent and normal families started to be called as "joint families". People moved out of their ancestral homes, partly because those old houses became too much to maintain and flats were easier to maintain and gave a sense of independence as well. From the 70s, women were working as well in many families and so they wanted to have a different set up and not tow the lines of their mums-in-law. The concept of marriage went through a lot of change. These young women were married in their early twenties. By that time they completed their graduation and some even studied for post-graduation after getting married. If they were working, they wouldn't give up their jobs just because they are married now and the families realized that another source of income is always welcome. Also, families started having lesser number of kids, so parents didn't really worry about marrying off their daughters at an early age.

When we were growing up, parents did not want us to get married before settling into a job or securing our studies well into completion. In our generation, even for arranged marriages, these young people were not just allowed, but encouraged to go out together, watch movies, eat out so as to know one another better before marriage. This is a very big step. Also, nowadays there are at most two kids in the family, in many cases just one. So girls are getting similar encouragement for studies, extra curricular activities and career guidance. When marriages are arranged by parents, the only difference is that the bride and groom are introduced to one another by the family instead of they themselves taking that step.

Expectations have also changed a lot over the ages. From the time where wives were supposed to cover their heads all the time and not speak in front of elders, nowadays girls comfortably wear western clothes at their in-laws place and continue to have a normal life without any restrictions. Many people have their own setup even when they live in the same city. Living in a different apartment doesn't mean that they are not on good terms with their parents or in-laws. It is just a comfortable distance.

With people debating about the differences of love marriage and arranged marriage and about women's lib in our current society, I'd end this article with a funny story. This is from Leela Majumder's story, I am just translating. Long back in the late 1800s, a very emancipated family decided to let their daughter see her prospective husband and then the girl and her would-be husband can choose to proceed with the match or not. An extremely bold step in those days. Everything was planned and this family went on a picnic to the zoo where the young man would come with his friends. The men walked round the place where the girl was sitting, she really liked the young man and gave her approval when asked. Later, on the wedding evening she found out that he was not the guy whom she liked! No one specifically told her which one among the group of guys was her future husband!! Well, but at that time she was already married and she didn't complain about it. They lived happily married for sixty long years...it is for a reason they say marriages are made in heaven!