Something of Myself
Thursday, March 22, 2007
It was pissing rain. Mahindra and Mahindra, in those days was a brand to reckon with. Imagine a jeep chugging along a motorway (highway?) - the Great Trunk Road. Three passengers. One driver. One little kid. Twelve years only. Expiry date unknown.
It was on that day, as the car shoved through the snarling traffic that the boy was introduced to the culture of his own history. Music. Lyrics. Sony Walkman (no, the iPod did not exist back then)...
What is it about our culture that constantly draws us towards it? Is it the language that binds us all? Is it the congregation of communities? Is it the dress code? Is it the way people talk? Communicate? The conservatism or the hideousness? Binge drinking or no drinking? Free sex or no sex?
The boy was a Bong. A bengali. A hindu branch. Tainted with the burden of the Babu adage. The Empire is not dead after all! Go back to the late 1700 or the early 1800 and you will find enough lit on the Bengali Babu. The english speaking native, known for his laid-back attitude, never falling short of praising the masters who ruled 3/4ths of the world! In a way, selling their conscience to ensure they had a respectable position.
Cut to 2007. The boy is a man now. Still a Bengali. The same old songs that moved his parents and his parents' parents. The same old dishes that lit up his father's eyes. The same tenderness that attracted his mother to his father. The same daring attitude, the same thirst for knowledge, the same I-will-submit-now-only-to-rape-your-unfair-system attitude.
Think about it. What it means to be what you are - a minute part of a huge community. What is it that binds you together?
For me what works is the simplicity. The naivety. The intellectual thirst. The collective mourning of what-we-could-have-been: a classical symptom of being a Bengali. :-)
During my stay abroad, I always feared I would lose a part of me that was very dear to me - my roots. But after years, as I look back, I can safely laze around on a leather couch, knowing this laziness is a trait of what I am. I belong somewhere. To a language. I have words that my mates understand. I have a notion of history that is embedded in the collective consciousness of the community to which I belong.
But above all, this is what fascinates me the most: we are so many things at once - a son, a father, a teacher, an employee, a Hindu, black, Bengali, friend, lover, enemy and still we manage to be what we are. Perhaps at times sacrificing one part for the other.
Joi Bangla! :-)
It was on that day, as the car shoved through the snarling traffic that the boy was introduced to the culture of his own history. Music. Lyrics. Sony Walkman (no, the iPod did not exist back then)...
What is it about our culture that constantly draws us towards it? Is it the language that binds us all? Is it the congregation of communities? Is it the dress code? Is it the way people talk? Communicate? The conservatism or the hideousness? Binge drinking or no drinking? Free sex or no sex?
The boy was a Bong. A bengali. A hindu branch. Tainted with the burden of the Babu adage. The Empire is not dead after all! Go back to the late 1700 or the early 1800 and you will find enough lit on the Bengali Babu. The english speaking native, known for his laid-back attitude, never falling short of praising the masters who ruled 3/4ths of the world! In a way, selling their conscience to ensure they had a respectable position.
Cut to 2007. The boy is a man now. Still a Bengali. The same old songs that moved his parents and his parents' parents. The same old dishes that lit up his father's eyes. The same tenderness that attracted his mother to his father. The same daring attitude, the same thirst for knowledge, the same I-will-submit-now-only-to-rape-your-unfair-system attitude.
Think about it. What it means to be what you are - a minute part of a huge community. What is it that binds you together?
For me what works is the simplicity. The naivety. The intellectual thirst. The collective mourning of what-we-could-have-been: a classical symptom of being a Bengali. :-)
During my stay abroad, I always feared I would lose a part of me that was very dear to me - my roots. But after years, as I look back, I can safely laze around on a leather couch, knowing this laziness is a trait of what I am. I belong somewhere. To a language. I have words that my mates understand. I have a notion of history that is embedded in the collective consciousness of the community to which I belong.
But above all, this is what fascinates me the most: we are so many things at once - a son, a father, a teacher, an employee, a Hindu, black, Bengali, friend, lover, enemy and still we manage to be what we are. Perhaps at times sacrificing one part for the other.
Joi Bangla! :-)
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