The Hero

Today is 25th Baishakh, Rabindranath Tagore's birthday by the Bengali calendar. I was thinking of translating one of his poems for this occasion. As I said before on this blog,

One of the earliest memories that comes to my mind when I think about Rabindranath Tagore is that of my mother reading Beerpurush (The Hero) to me. Whenever she took the Sanchayita (a fat anthology of Tagore’s poems) in hand, I’d tell her to read that poem at least once.

Here's Tagore's own translation of the lovely poem. However, that translation only tells the story. The structure of the original Bengali poem is not preserved. So I thought, "Why not translate Beerpurush?" and started on it. Lack of time and difficulties in translating certain phrases keeping the rhyme intact almost made me give it up. Then I found this on the Net:



I have a very skeptical view of the Indian animation industry, but this animation is so beautiful that I feel I need to change my views. It is the recitation of the original Beerpurush in Tagore's own voice, along with animation created along the lines of Nandalal Bose's illustrations of Tagore' book "Sahaj Path". I felt I needed to share this.

So I started with renewed vigour and translated the rest of the poem. Enjoy!


The Hero
By Rabindranath Tagore

Imagine, I’m on a foreign tour and

Taking mother to a far away land.

You are on a palanquin, mother,

Going with the door slightly ajar,

I’m traveling on my red steed,

Trotting by your side.

The hooves kick up a cloud of red dust

That flies behind us as we ride.

.

Evening comes, the sun drops down low,

By the field of the twin ponds we go.

It’s desolate as we look all around,

There’s not a single soul to be found,

You are by yourself, in your mind,

A little scared, thinking “Where are we?”

I’m telling you, “Don’t be afraid mother,

That’s the dried up river we can see.”

.

Hidden thorns cover the vast field,

The curved path in the middle lies revealed.

Cattle are nowhere to be found,

To the village they went at sundown,

Who knows where we are bound?

In the dark we can’t see properly.

Then imagine you called me and said,

“What’s that light on the shore that we see?”

.

Suddenly a war cry we hear

And see some people draw near!

Scared inside the palanquin

To the gods you start praying---

The bearers dropped their load trembling

In the bushes they have hidden in dread.

Imagine, I call you and say,

“I’m here mother, why are you afraid?”

.

Sticks in hands, bushy hair on their heads---

Their ears are stuffed with flowers red.

I call out “Halt where you are,

If you take a single step further

Just take a look at my sabre,

With this blade I’ll mince all of you.”

Hearing this they jumped up

And uttered their war cry anew.

.

“Child, don’t you go!” you pray

“Be quiet and watch me.” I say.

I rode on my horse in their midst,

There was a clanking of swords and shields,

The fighting was, mother, so intense

You’ll get goose bumps if you hear.

So many people ran away in fright,

So many others’ heads were chopped clear.

.

Fighting with so many people alone,

You think your child is surely gone.

Then I come drenched in blood and sweat

And tell you, “The fight has ended.”

Then from the palanquin you alight

And kiss me and pick me in your arms.

Saying, “Thank God my child was with me,

Or what a calamity it would be!”

.

So many events happen every day---

Why doesn’t something happen this way?

It would just be like a story then,

It would amaze all who’d listen---

Brother would say, “How can it happen?

My little brother isn’t that strong!”

The neighbours would hear it and say,

“Thank God she took her child along.”

(Translated by Sugata Banerji)

The Mysterious Beast

On last Thursday night, a cat gave birth to three kittens inside the shoe rack in our verandah at our house in Hooghly. When I returned home on Friday night, I found three tiny creatures mewing on the ground. One black and white, and two ginger and white. On Saturday morning, when my mother went out into the verandah to unlock the gate, one kitten was missing, another was lying dead with two of its paws severed, and only the head of the black and white one was lying on the floor. What ate them? Maybe a tom-cat. Or more probably, a mysterious beast whom we call "bham" in Bengali.

I have heard about the bham since my early childhood although I do not know its English or scientific name. In our old ancestral house in Chinsurah, the bhams came at night to look for scraps of food among the dirty plates. I had never seen it, and I had no idea whatsoever what this creature might look like, and so I had formed an image of a fearsome animal maybe as large as a tiger. As I grew older, I came to understand what a bham was really like. It was, I was told, an omnivorous creature something like a mongoose, and a cat, and a raccoon all rolled into one, and more ferocious than any of those.

When we moved to our new house in Hooghly, the bhams came every night on our roof terrace and knocked at our doors. They ate guavas from our tree and left their droppings on the roof. However, all my attempts to see the creature were in vain. Ferocious they may be, but they are also very shy of people and I could never glimpse even the shadow of one. My cousins in Chinsurah, however, had frequent encounters with bhams and they could never understand why I would want to see them. Would I want to see a cat, dog, or monkey with the same enthusiasm?

During the first ever floodlit cricket match in Eden Gardens (Hero Cup pre-final, most probably), the camera found a very surprised animal on the outfield. I don't expect many people to remember that incident. However I do, because my father told me that it was probably a bham.

My first bham sighting was in my college fourth year when I saw a creature cross the main road near my house in Hooghly one evening. It was a mongoose-shaped animal, but larger, and was lightning fast. The most noticeable thing about the creature was that it had a bushy tail as long as its body. It ran across the road and at the same speed, ran up a betel nut tree. It was already dark, and I could only make out the silhouette of the animal. A few days later, I again saw the silhouette of another bham in our neighbour's garden, once more in the dark. Since then, I have several times seen the creature, but strangely, always in the dark. Always only its outline.

The only time I saw something other than the outline was again, in my fourth year. I used to sleep alone in a ground floor room with a window that opened in front of the guava tree in our garden. One night, on hearing movement among the branches, I shone my torch out of the window and into the guava tree. My batteries were almost dead, but still, the yellowing beam froze the animal like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. All I could see were two big glowing eyes set amidst the black outline of a face that best resembled a lesser (red) panda. The light was too low to see more details.

But I can't see it does not mean the creature is a myth. It is very real for creatures like the mother cat who is still searching for her kittens. The bham lurks in the dark, and since Hooghly, as a small suburban town, is more dark than lit up during the evenings, this animal still thrives there. I don't know if it is endangered, but I actually like the fact that it is so difficult to see. The 21st century hasn't left a lot of mysteries for us, and while I wouldn't turn away my eyes if I came face to face with a bham, I wouldn't mind it if the creature remains shrouded in mystery for me.

[Update: Thanks to Google, I have finally found out that a bham is known as a "civet" in English, and I found quite a few photos on the Internet which look different from each other. I am attaching one of the pictures here.]

Happy Holi!

I wish all my readers a very Happy (albeit belated) Holi and Easter! Hope you enjoyed your weekend. Normal posting will resume soon.

[The photo shows my sister. I shot this on the 21st.]

Kolkata Book Fair 2008 - A few images

Do you know Mr. K. C. Paul? Not the famous umbrella manufacturer but the astronomer? No? Well, he has made one of the greatest discoveries of our era and spent the last four decades trying to convince people that his discovery is true. He has written books, given interviews on the media, and filled the walls of Kolkata and Howrah with graffiti preaching his theory. I had been reading his graffiti since my childhood days. But it was only in this year's Kolkata Book Fair that I had the fortune to meet him in person. I was photographing him, and so he gave me one of his pamphlets for free.

What is his theory? He claims he has proof that the sun goes round the earth and it is not the other way round. Is he insane? Probably, by all our standard definitions of sanity. Yet, he has the conviction and confidence that keeps him clinging to his foolish theory for forty years. And while I do not for a moment imagine his theory may be right, I cannot help think that Galileo must have been insane in his time too!

Kartik Chandra Paul is only one of the many characters one can see at the Kolkata Book Fair whose passion seem to be on the verge of madness, and one can only feel respect mixed with pity for them. This man, for instance, who sells funny books (in the photo). Just look at his banner, it says: "Buy for two rupees. You'll read for twenty minutes and laugh for half an hour. As you start reading, you'll start laughing. When you stop reading, you won't stop laughing." I visited the fair on two days, and this man was roaming around selling his books, carrying this large banner and in that posture. I wonder how many he could sell. Then there was the old artist who sat on the ground outside a stall with a stack of his paintings. He eagerly showed me some of them as I stopped by. I sadly realised that most people, including me, would rather buy a print of a European masterpiece to hang in their room rather than buy an original painting by this man. But then, that's what has been happening in the past too. Van Gogh couldn't sell a painting in his lifetime. I did not have the heart to take his photograph.

I went there twice: once with my sister to browse through books, and the second time with the Flickr Bangla Community members to do some candid photography. Although the book fair does offer wonderful opportunities for candid photography, one really needs large telephoto lenses to take pictures unobtrusively. One of my friends got into trouble because a girl had come into one of the photos that he had taken. Her boyfriend promptly snatched away his camera and dragged him into the police station, insisting on lodging a written complaint. It was really funny to see the policemen laugh at him as he became more and more furious. At one point he said he was with the Human Rights Commission, another time he said he was with the Press, and when I asked him if he knew what candid photography was, he whipped out his father's - yes, his father's - visiting card and insisted I show him respect. When I informed him with all due politeness that I did not recognise his father from his name, he asked me if I understood that his father was an IAS officer. Although my friend was a bit anxious to get back his camera at that time, we had a laugh riot later imitating that girl and her boyfriend.

The fair this year was smaller since the Publishers' and Book Sellers' Guild put its foot down on not having a book fair at all if the fair was not allowed to be held at the Kolkata Maidan. There were others, however who wanted to have the fair and it was held at the Salt Lake Stadium. Some of the big book stores didn't come. The fair was delayed by a month and the weather was really hot. Still, the queue at big stalls like Ananda Publishers was long and serpentine and stretched across the field in front of the stall. This field was full of small clusters of people who had come together and had decided to spend some time sitting in a group. As the evening progressed some sang, some brought guitars and played them. Others just sipped on cups of tea and chatted. A news channel conducted walk-in auditions for a newsreader's job. Some people were trying their skill there. Another TV channel had brought finalists of a music competition on their channel to the fair and they were performing live on request. Soap-bubble-blowing-apparatus-sellers were filling the air with bubbles and children tried to catch them. On Friday we stayed till the fair was closed at 9:00 pm. On Saturday I had to leave at 5:30 as I was going to Hooghly. By that time, it was almost impossible to see over peoples' heads in the fair ground.

Since I had grown up in Allahabad, I was unaware of the charms of the Kolkata Book Fair till 2001 when I came to college. Even then, I had gone to Allahabad on vacation during the Book Fair for the first two years. But once I had visited the fair for the first time in 2004, I eagerly wait for it every year. I missed it in 2006 since I was in Hyderabad, but was back in time for the 2007 fair. I don't know where I will be next year, but wherever I am, if it is not Kolkata then I will definitely miss the Kolkata Book Fair.

(The photos that I took in the book fair are available here)

Spring in the City

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens (Great Expectations).

That may have been true in London, but here in Kolkata, March is not yet halfway through and the summer has already arrived in the sunlight and in the shade too. We call this spring.

Considering the fact that we live in an era of increasing global warming, the winter was unusually persistent this year. Over the last one month, several times it seemed as if the cold was gone for good, but each time it returned with a vengeance, assisted by a fresh spell of rain. This winter Kolkata saw its coldest day in the first week of February, a rare occurrence indeed. But when finally the cold went, the heat was surprisingly quick to follow.

The wind has changed direction. The leaves have started dropping off the trees. The cuckoos are going berserk. These are a few signs of spring that one can see and hear in the concrete jungle. And yes, flowers! Flowers of all hues, sizes and shapes have covered almost every plant and tree in sight. The accompanying photograph was taken in my colony in Salt Lake - the tree is Palash (Butea monosperma). Both the tree and the ground underneath are covered with the flaming orange flowers. Similarly various other trees are covered by shades of red, blue, violet and yellow. The seasonal flowering plants like dahliyas, zenias, salvias, poppies, pansies and chrysanthemums are blowing out their last flowers. There are bees, damselflies and butterflies everywhere (in fact quite a few wasps and mosquitoes too at my house). The mango trees are covered in tiny blossoms, with mustard-sized mangoes just beginning to show. If you go and stand under one of these mango trees, you will be showered continuously with a fine drizzle of flower particles and mango nectar. The early morning air is slightly cooler, which causes drops of dew to cover the blades of grass which glow like jewels as they catch the first rays of the sun.

The sun is, however, ignoring all these signs of spring. The days are already obscenely hot with hot winds blowing. Very soon, the seasonal blossoms will dry up as dust storms arrive with the first sprinkles of rain. And even after that, even after summer has completely arrived in Kolkata, the cuckoos will continue their frenzied calls throughout the day, as if it were still spring.