The Spirit of Bengal

Here's a guest post by my friend, Fazle Rezowan Karim who is also like a younger brother to me. I asked him to write because he touched upon a part of Bengal and the spirit of Bengal which is very dear to me.

Partitioning Bengal could not separate the Soul

In 1757, after defeating Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah, The East India Company got power of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Bengal’s administrative area was quite big, which was very difficult to govern by the British lords. So in July 1905 Lord Curzon decided to partition Bengal into two entities, which would result in a Muslim-majority in the eastern half and a Hindu-majority in the western half. Even though the plan was initially carried out, due to the public protests all over Bengal the British has to nullify the partition and make Bengal whole again in 1911. However, in 1947 after the decision of liberating India was finalized, India was divided and parts of Bengal and Punjab were cut off to form the new country of Pakistan.

Even now, the eastern region has a Muslim majority and the western region has that of Hindus. At the time of Partition, many people were uprooted from their homes and many of them had a hard time both economically and psychologically, trying to adapt to a new extremely harsh situation. The general people have always considered this to be a very bad political decision. At that time the social, political and cultural situation almost forced the people to migrate over the newly formed borders to India.

Many years have passed since and now the mentalities of people and the society have changed.  Now others do not influence them, they can think independently.

Presently, although Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country, but Hindus, Muslims and Christians live together in harmony. They have a good bonding and consider each other as family. The people of Bangladesh are God-fearing but not fanatic.

Here people of all religions live in peace. They observe each other’s religious festivals with great joy. That is evident everywhere in Bangladesh. You would see choirs singing in church, beside which in a mosque the Muslims are praying. On the other hand, Hindus celebrate their Durga pooja, Diwali and other festivals with great pomp and show. During that time the Muslims, Christians and Buddhists also join their religious festivals with an open mind. Everyone takes care so that they don’t face any kind of problem to celebrate their own religious festival.

During the Bengali New Year (Pohela Boishakh), the International Mother Language Day (Ekushe February), Bijoy Dibos or even Valentines Day all the people of the society celebrate with each other.

You will realize that in Bangladesh, the Soul of Bengal is still alive and no amount of political turmoil can crush it.

PS: These pictures have been taken by Rezowan as well :) 

Two families that enlightened Bengal

I have probably said this a million times, but I'll say it once more - I feel very proud to be a Bengali. However, recently, I was hearing about many weird behaviors which are not the stuff that Bengalis used to like. A class of people whose motto in life could be defined in a one liner as - plain living and high thinking doesn't really match the heavy drinking, party going and slang speaking people I now see back home. It is sad how a region famous for being the cultural hub of the nation has fallen into such a deplorable condition. I was thinking about this change and wondered if things are really getting bad or if I am getting old. Maybe it's both...then to free my mind I started listening to Debabrata Biswas on Spotify. When Bengalis run into issues, they turn to Rabindranath. Then I thought about these two families - the Tagores and the Rays (or Ray Chowdhurys) who enlightened Bengal and brought our culture up by quite a few notches.

Every Indian has heard about Rabindranath. He is but one jewel of the crown. Almost all of his siblings were endowed with various degrees of creativity. Starting from Prince Dwarakanath, this family has been the home of various philosophers, mathematicians, composers, playwrights and in many cases polymaths. The Tagore household can easily be called the hub of modernism in early Bengal. Other than Rabindranath himself, there were many people worth mentioning. Satyendranath, who was Rabindranath's elder brother was the first Indian ICS. I think the fact that he urged his wife Gyanadanandini to accompany him to his workplace in Bombay is a more creditable thing than him being an ICS. This lady was the one who taught Bengali women how to wear a saree in a modern style. Whoever wears a saree these days, even the ones who look up Youtube videos on how to drape a saree are actually indirectly following her directions! Jyotirindranath was another elder brother of Rabindranath. He was a playwright and composer. There are quite a few songs where he composed the tune while playing the piano and Rabindranath would put words on the fly. Swarnakumari was Rabindranath's elder sister who was the first woman in India to edit a magazine. Other than these people, there were various nephews, nieces and other relatives who have all shone in various facets of life. One of them whom I like a lot is the painter and story teller Abanindranath.

Almost overlapping the age of Rabindranath was the family of Rays. Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury was a stalwart of that family, but here also there were many other people who were famous for being professors of Math and Sanskrit and also being great cricket players at the same time. More or less everyone wrote books. One brother worked at the Geological Survey of India so he wrote stories about wild animals while traveling to various parts of the undivided country. Sukumar Ray is a personal favorite of mine. Someone I would like to meet in heaven if possible. I can see myself talking to him, reading his works, laughing and enjoying every moment by being the crazy self that I am. The magazine that Upendrakishore started which Sukumar and later his son Satyajit also were editors of is so far the best children's magazine in Bengali. Now that I am growing older, I can understand how they tried to imbibe the best things in the whole society by teaching children the right things in a fun way. Those editions have riddles, puzzles, contests for children, story writing competitions which I like even now. Arnab bought a compiled copy of all the editions of the first year. Even though it is more than a century old we both love reading it. Satyajit Ray was probably the last lamp of the Bengal Renaissance. People might call him a movie director, a writer or composer or even artist, I would call him a teacher. In every book he wrote for young children and in almost all the movies he directed, he taught us something. Be it the right pronunciation of Job Charnock's name (it is pronounced "Jobe" and not job as in work) or how camels store water, he taught us all those. Satyajit Ray's aunt, Leela Majumdar is another personal favorite of mine. She taught me to cook, if not anything else, and reading her recipes give me the same enjoyment as reading a fun story book.

If these two families didn't exist, not that we would lose some of the best minds of our society, we would possibly still be in the dark ages. In everything I do, I say, even my tastes in literature and music, my views about the society and the world are in some means the result of what these two families endowed us with and indirectly how I was molded.

Living the American Dream

In the developing world, there are generally two sorts of people - one are the "liberals" who don't like the West. Who assumes that the West (including USA) is the embodiment of capitalism and all sorts of vices that come with material pleasures, a loose society and consumerism. The second bucket thinks that the West is a dream world. As if everyone is rich, houses are elaborate, streets impeccable and life more or less quite heavenly. Well, I am generalizing for sure, but these are the two ends of the scale. While none of the above facts are true, both are somewhat true. I don't agree with all societal norms here, there are places which are extremely dirty, not everyone follows the law, but also the general work culture is great, generally people are law abiding, an ambulance will arrive on time, etc.

Immigrants have flocked to USA over hundreds of years. Even Wikipedia says that the first sight of the Statue of Liberty signified a new life to many immigrants who came here over the years in search of a better life. They can be software professionals like me wanting a better quality of education and a healthy workplace or they can be a person from Africa wanting to just live like a human being. The common thing is the American Dream, about which Wikipedia says - "In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth." 

I sometimes look back at my life and think. A few weeks back I was sitting at our break room during lunch waiting for my buddy as he was heating up his food. I looked across over Lake Washington towards Seattle and down below at the lunch time crowd walking busily down in Bellevue. I sat and thought how did I land up here? I was out in a totally different city half way round the globe, leading a totally different life. Where was Lake Washington and Bellevue and Concur and my buddy ten years back? How did my life change? What changed? What did it enrich me with?

I am a big proponent of leaving home and residing in other countries, with people of other cultures. So it is really rewarding how my (and people like me) slowly learn new things. Arnab was saying how they are learning basic greetings in Turkish and Chinese and teaching their team the same in Hindi and Bengali. Was this part of his job description? No. But is that enriching him? Yes, for sure! My American dream is not about buying expensive cars or designer wear. I think I have evolved out of those because I don't see any value in them. Neither do I want to live in a huge impersonal mansion.

My dream is to be myself.

To be what I am without any inhibition. To live in a society that does not judge, to work where someone who speaks up is cherished and not snubbed down. To have opportunities to help others without people mocking me. To have a career that helps me grow and have hobbies I love. To learn, to travel, to talk, to experience....even to have healthy pets.

After a year of coming to US I wrote an article on the changes in my life. Those were apparent from the surface, after six more years I realize the deeper things. The stuff that has opened my eyes, the things that have taught me to be less judgmental and to be more compassionate. And also the little things which are actually not so little. Like a sky full of stars beside the Pacific, snow storm at Mt. Rainier, the multitude shades of blue at Hapuna Beach, talking with friends from the world over about their homelands, being invited to eat a turkey at Thanksgiving, giggling over a cup of Starbucks coffee with crazy coworkers, setting up my own home, cuddling with my babies, finding the right guy to get married to...and in all these things really finding who I am.

Photography

I seriously did not need another hobby. But there is something so fascinating about "learning something just because I want to" that I brought my five year old DSLR out of its bag and played around with the settings. I am not new to photography. When I first learned the how-to's of it, I was not even ten. At fourteen, I took pictures of an entire fortnight's trip to the Himalayas with an old Kodak camera (the ones that came in leather cases). At that time those were film cameras that did not show you on a scale how your exposure is, nor would it let you "see how the shot came" before you send the whole film to be developed. There were people who found out that their pictures came out horrible, but I am truly proud of the fact that I always had 38 shots (you could take a couple more than the standard 36 if you were really good) and none of them were badly under or over exposed. The camera was also fantastic. It was really difficult to mess the settings up. I remember once at Agra Fort (in 2001) I took a picture of some intricate wall carvings with the "distance" set to 1 m. Then I was taking the picture of the rampart of the fort and forgot to change the "distance" to infinity. The picture came out quite ok. Not as sharp as I wanted it to be, but not blurry either.

With National Geographic having this "Your Shot" thing, it has been quite a nice vent of my photography rather than littering my Facebook wall. The good thing about Nat Geo is I can see other people's fantastic pictures and even though mine are nothing in comparison to the photographers there, it feels good to contribute my bit. Photography opens your eyes to see beauty in simple things already around you. One leaf drenched in water, my kitty's whiskers, black and white shot of fallen snow on branches... you don't have to look far. Also, there's a community of photographers from all over the world. It's because of them that I know how pretty the country of Turkey is, I can practically see villages of Bangladesh, beaches from Florida, wild life of Africa... and I realize once more, how beautiful is our Earth with its people...

The Rising of the Moon

There has been only a couple songs in my life with whom I can say there was a "love at first hearing" sort of relationship. One of them is the Indian marching tune "Kadam kadam badhaye ja" and the next was Enya's "Only time". Yesterday another one was added to the list. That is the Irish song - "The Rising of the Moon". I had read the play by the same name when I was in eleventh grade as it was part of our English text book and even at that time I realized the similarity between the Irish nationalists and our own Indian Freedom Fighters. That is why as Indians we always sympathize with the Irish, as we were oppressed by the same country.

This is a song of rebellion where the rebels get crushed. I see the same thing as what happened to our Indian National Army. They put up a fight against a massively strong unmatched enemy and they lost. But that didn't stop the future generation follow in their footsteps. These are actual battles, but in our society now we are fighting battles against unmatched adversaries. There are so many things that we need to fight against and there are a handful people who have gathered so far "with the pikes upon their shoulders at the rising of the moon". Oppression is everywhere, in every society. With all the blabber about Marxism and socialism there are still millions and millions of people having a horrible quality of life. Not just poverty, but facing all sorts of crimes that we can't even think of. I should include animals too. There are tons of animals being abused too, which is one thing I fight against.

Fighting is difficult, going against the tide is difficult. I do just a couple things and even in that I always see apathy, selfishness, a callous couldn't-care-less attitude. A fear to come out of the comfort zone. A general idea of "why bother when it's not affecting me"...

I am trying to change that in all fields that I can. Go for the better alternative. Choose the better solution. I said it is tough but who said being a rebel is easy?

বিশ্ব ছাড়ায়ে উঠিয়াছি আমি
চির উন্নত মম শির 

Photo source - Wikipedia

"Mirror, mirror on the wall..."

What do you do when you see a mirror? Isn't it the most common behavior to quickly check how we are looking? Is the one hair sticking out? Is the nose too shiny? Has the lipstick smudged? From time immemorial human beings try to look better. "Better" is an extremely relative word, because in different cultures and in different times this "better look" sometimes border the crazy. We wonder, "what kind of taste do those people have?" Like when we see those iron shoes from China, don't we think, "what made them think that THAT looks nice?" But if we look around, I am sure we would find a lot of crazy things that we do in the name of "looking good".

Take for example, the high heeled shoes. What makes us think that those look good? And for people who wear those (included me, though very rarely) can vouch for how uncomfortable they are. I don't think anyone can say that they feel good wearing them. Adds to the height? Haha! For a really short person, that won't really add much and for an already tall person, that is not something she's worry about. Makes the gait graceful? Bwahaha...until she sprains her ankle! Also, it adds quite a strain to the leg muscles because humans were not meant to be walking in that unnatural manner.

Then is the thing about nail colors. Why? Painting nails... who told us that it looks pretty? I don't know. (I paint my nails too, more often than I wear high heels). Ranging from simple things like wearing makeup, taking pains to make the hair look more voluminous, coloring hair and going to the last degrees as laser hair removal, Botox and the like, we do spend a lot of money, time and energy in trying to "look good". When I see teenaged girls wearing makeup I wonder what they are thinking. How are they trying to present themselves, how important is "looking good" and why?

I don't know.

We grew up in a society where putting on makeup was considered a bad thing. It was like if you think too much about how you look, you would not be trying to grow yourself properly. I personally like that idea. Especially while growing up, it does good. Probably that is why me and girls of my generation are pretty comfortable in our own skins and I had never heard of the word "negative body image" until I was in my late twenties. The only image we knew of is the one the mirror showed us and we were happy with it.

I am not saying people don't have to look good. We all need to look presentable. That is why we need to wear nice clothes while going to a wedding, professional things when we go to work. Going to a wedding in PJs with a bed head look may be very "natural" but that is also borderline eccentric. We need to take care of ourselves, look proper and wear normal clothes. But how much is too much?

There should be much more emphasis on being healthy. A healthy person will anyway have healthy skin and nails and hair. And when you have naturally healthy hair, why bother to increase it's volume by applying an array of chemicals? A healthy girl will not want to become skinny and result in an anorexic or bulimic or both. A healthy skin does not need any makeup.

It is in our genes, that we girls like to dress up but why? Next time you take up that makeup applicator, ask yourself why you are doing it? If you spend an hour in the morning dressing up before going to work, or worse still, before going to school, ask yourself why. Why do you think you need to hide under a layer of makeup before you go out to meet the world. And those women who apply eye makeup while driving on the highway, let me assure you, no one will admire the eye makeup of your corpse.

Take a look here: http://www.stopthebeautymadness.com/ and see for yourself where the world is heading. #StopTheBeautyMadness

#StopTheBeautyMadness

A season of introspection

I went on my first fall hike this afternoon and realized that like everything, trails show a special beauty in this season. With the early dusk, overcast skies and trees shedding the extra, I feel this is a season of melancholy, of turning inwards. As I looked up on Wikipedia about fall, I read these specific lines - "Autumn in poetry has often been associated with melancholy. The possibilities of summer are gone, and the chill of winter is on the horizon. Skies turn grey, and many people turn inward, both physically and mentally." Just to mention, I read it after I had my thoughts. That means this is a common realization of all people. 

I wouldn't say that this season makes me depressed, but it is true that I tend to introspect more than I would do in summer. Spring and summer are all about being active. There are so many things to do, new life springs up with the tulips, daffodils and Easter lilies. If seasons could have characters, I think fall would be the introvert one.

Just like everyone don't like introverts, there are many people who do not like fall. Yes, at first it does look very depressing (to add to it is the time change by falling back one hour), the sudden chill brings a lot of colds and coughs, but if we take a deeper look we will see how beautiful and romantic this season is. If spring is about new lovers, Valentine's Day and dreams of "living happily ever after", then fall is about thinking of lost loves or of those people who could never become ours. 

This is also the time to be grateful. With Thanksgiving coming up, it doesn't do bad to count one's blessings. Especially if you are prone to feeling depressed in fall, this is a good antidote. Write down one thing you are thankful for, every day and you would see that the fact that we are alive should be reason enough for us to be thankful for. 

Bring out your fleece blankets, warm socks, find out some nice crockpot recipes, get a cup of coffee and curl up with a book. While sitting on my chaise and reading a book, I pause and look out to the back yard...and think...it is fun to enjoy every day as it comes and try to be the greatest extrovert, but at times it is nice to question and find answers within my own self too...