Some more in the spiritual vein

What spiritual outlook do I have on life?

I have sided with large overlapping parts of stoicism and Buddhism for a long time. I like and want to believe in God, but try as I might I have not been able to put much sustained faith in a watchful, loving, protective personal deity: indeed, like Tagore, I have only grown more agnostic with age. I don’t understand the Buddhist idea of anatta (the soul is an illusion – if we are told to believe that both the body and the soul must be regarded as essentially illusory, aren’t we actually wishing the whole existential problem away?), so I’d rather hold with the stoic belief that a sensible and at-least-partly rational mind with some agency in the real world (which is not, for all practical purposes, an illusion) does exist, though both philosophies more or less agree that the soul/mind (without quibbling too much over the distinction between mind and soul) must train itself through long, arduous and disciplined effort if we are to find happiness, or at least some peace and stability while we pass through this world.

I agree with both that suffering is real and in the final analysis unavoidable, whether that be through toothache or heartache, and that happiness, if not entirely illusory, can never for ordinary mortals be more than very occasional flashes of joy in a fundamentally dark world. Also, those occasional flashes make the darkness that follows even harder to bear, which is why this world has been called ‘a vale of tears… a bridge, do not build upon it’. Several thousand years of material and social engineering should have convinced mankind that no amount of trying to change external conditions, whether that involves repairing damaged heart valves, or abolishing slavery, or predicting floods, or air conditioning and social media, can make all people substantially and lastingly happy: I hear that in the most ‘advanced’ and peaceful countries in the world, a great many people commit suicide simply out of depression and boredom. So the finest teachers in both East and West have insisted that there will never be paradise on earth; if anything faintly approaching bliss is to be found while alive, it must be through inner engineering – learning to bear the burden of living as lightly as we can. And learning to do that is by far the toughest of all goals; very few of us succeed. I haven’t, not by a long chalk. And of course, a very great deal depends on individual character: the same irritations and catastrophes seem to affect different people very differently, and to a much greater or less extent than others.

Finally, even if you are not a very committed practitioner of some specific code of ethics, I am convinced by now that you really cannot find anything like happiness for yourself or your loved ones if you follow some kind of livelihood and lifestyle that involves lying, cheating, coveting, envying, violence and avoidable cruelty: you must have a coherent and stable moral compass, whether that be the code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, the ashtasheel or the gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

Most people do not need to dwell upon such reflections – certainly not in a continuous, serious, lasting way. They manage, more or less well, to carry on through life ignoring the hauntings of the spirit, keeping themselves intoxicated with worldly things of one sort or the other: drugs, shopping, family ‘demands’, the pursuit of money, power, sex, tradition, or even that much-glorified thing, knowledge (I want to discover a new species of butterfly, a new polymer, another version of the string theory, a technique for building a million-tonne ship…). Many would in fact claim that these preoccupations keep them too busy to bother about such ‘wishy-washy’, hi-falutin’ things. But not everyone can do that. My type can’t. My deepest, and indeed the only real question ever since I began thinking, has been – is it possible to be happy, despite ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’? If yes, then how? This is as far as I have come yet, and that too, only in theory, not in practice. Was Camus being silly or profound when he wrote ‘Suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem’?

[Just back from a nice two-day trip to Mukutmanipur. Had nearly finished this little essay before leaving, so I concluded and uploaded it immediately after returning home, over a cup of tea.]

One more pujo past

I have a diary where I have been writing down all the significant events of my life, year on year, since 1969 – the year I was admitted to kindergarten. Makes interesting reading, if only to me, because the long list often reminds me of things that I had forgotten, or at least forgotten the exact years when they happened. Now that it is October, I have begun to wonder what I should write about this year. It’s important to think ahead, because I write down only those things which will seem to matter, say, thirty years later. Not that I am planning to hang around for another thirty years…

Well, yet another pujo is behind me as of today, Bijoya Dashami. Hopefully the honking of an endless stream of cars will stop from tomorrow. I spent part of this pujo in Kolkata, in a very silent neighbourhood (such things still exist!), so I am on the whole thankful. Missed the usual holiday trip owing to unavailability of train tickets, but had a fun birthday party instead, which several people young and old and close to me happily attended.

The winter, as I noted, is coming. My most favourite of all the stories I have written, as my best readers know, is If winter comes. So this time is one of great anticipation for me – the long night’s sleep, sitting out in the garden in the mellow sunshine and shivery breeze, the good food, the several holiday trips, the light work schedule, old boys (and the very occasional –girl) dropping in for a chat, they all work together to make it a delightful time. Of late my creaky bones and COPD combined with all the dust in the air have made things a tad less enjoyable, but still.

I have been playing with AI of late. I made it create a picture of mine with a shock of wavy hair, and it was hilarious: made me look at least twenty years younger, and rather intriguing, if I say so myself. Next, it suggested that I try creating a Roman-style statue of myself, and that worked interestingly too, not least because the inscription and the books and temple it used for background was its own doing, based on all that it had seen and read on the internet. Fun can take so many forms! AI is going to make the biggest change in the way humans live since the invention of mechanical engines, that’s for sure: if we handle it without self- destructing.

Another batch of students will be leaving in a matter of weeks. This was a good one: I’ll miss them for a while. And this is always the time of year when I begin to wonder how much longer I can, or even want to, go on like this.

This is precisely the type of writing that I call ‘musing’. No one has to read it; as I have often said before, I write primarily for my own pleasure. No one needs to respond to it, but of course I shall be glad to have some empathy (not sympathy, mind you: I never needed that). And that tiny number of sick people who write in only to say, in a great variety of ways, ‘I hate you’, rest assured that I never see your ‘comments’, because after anyone like that sends two or three inane, stupid and vulgar messages, I mark them as ‘spam’, and thereafter I never even get to see them at all. Enjoy spitting upwards, if you can actually enjoy that, knowing that your deepest desire, namely that I acknowledge your existence, will never be fulfilled.

A book and a movie

I have finished reading Patel’s biography. I shall not write a review, simply because it is so detailed and immersive a book that writing anything but a very long essay will be doing it a grave injustice. I shall only urge my readers to go through it as mindfully as I have, promising them that (if they are the inquisitive and thoughtful sort) they will not be wasting their time. However, I must quote two lines from the Preface to the new edition: ‘What should we make of continual attempts today to misuse or exploit Patel for political purposes? It is hurtful to encounter bids to use the Sardar to promote a politics of Hindu supremacy and Muslim subordination.’ That should well enough indicate the overall tone of the work.

Yes, I have discovered that Patel was, indeed, a ‘strong man’, and so, in a vexed and tumultuous age when so many diverse interests and urgent needs were clashing so repeatedly and so violently, he naturally, while doing very great things, also made a lot of critics and enemies. Such enemies continue to exist in our own generation, often deliberately misunderstanding things that he believed, said and did. Let us leave it at that. I should only like to add that I find it an unspeakable tragedy that so many great leaders who were contemporaries could agree so little among themselves over so many fraught issues – if they could, our subsequent history might have been very different.

However, I cannot resist the temptation to quote a paragraph from the penultimate page, where the Iron Man, old, tired and dying, his life’s work done, was leaving the capital city for his beloved native Gujarat for the last time, probably knowing that he was never going to return. Here, Gandhi has waxed lyrical, and the historian has been eclipsed by the poet. As the aircraft flew up, ‘Behind him receded his life, as colleague to Jawaharlal – a touchy and at times contemptuous colleague, yet always loyal; as the Government’s helmsman and the raja of the rajas, as watchdog, welder and policeman to India; inheritor, along with Nehru, of the Raj; Congress’ decision maker, displacing the Mahatma, on the eve of freedom; as a lion pacing restlessly in the Ahmednagar cage; as Quit India’s indefatigable organizer; stern boss of a party and of Premiers; prisoner and defier of the Raj; Bardoli’s brilliant general; Gandhi’s rocklike lieutenant, caring friend and merciless leg-puller; the one who smilingly stepped aside for another, for Jawaharlal in later years and for Vithalbhai earlier; the rough, haughty, fashionably attired conqueror of the Ahmedabad Bar who yet thirsted for greatness, the adult London student wasting no breath on dalliance, the lawyer feared in Borsad and Godhra, silent husband of young Jhaverba – sad, dear and wrapped in mystery; as the youth who was severe on himself and upon those taking him for granted, the lad with a chip on the shoulder, the neglected fourth son of impoverished peasants…’ it brought tears to my eyes, and I could only think of the exquisite way in which Irving Stone describes the passing of Michaelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy. Yes, read the book.

Oh, and I just finished watching a movie titled Juror #2 on Netflix, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. It is a very interesting variation on the theme of one of the classic movies of all time, Twelve Angry Men, but it is definitely not the same story, because here the said juror, sitting in judgment over a man’s life, is himself (unwittingly-) guilty of the crime. I shall not give spoilers, because it is an eminently watchable movie, and it ends on a very tense, uncertain and disturbing note.

I am happy to find that several old posts here have gotten back to the most-read. As I have said more than once, nothing that I write dates quickly. It goes without saying that comments – sensible, relevant comments, even queries – are always welcome, no matter how old a post might be.

Winter is in the air, I can faintly sense it now, and I am thrilling to it. You still sweat in the sun, yet the water is cold already. Soon it will be time to pull out the jackets, pullovers and blankets once more. What comfort there is in the endless cycle of the seasons!

Tomorrow is another Mahalaya, start of Devi Paksha, the tithi I was born on 63 years ago. I am too old to wake up at dawn to listen to Biren Bhadra’s Mahishasura Mardini on the radio, as I did for nearly fifty continuous years. Just wish me good sleeping.

And yes, Episode 16 is up there on Spotify as of today. Many of you have not yet visited the previous one, which was a small compilation of ‘nonsense’ poetry, a genre that I like to say I am particularly fond of, because it dispels the false notion that I am a sourpuss. Do listen and get back to me: I love to hear (or read) all those lovely comments.

Go, September

Sriman Aveek, who is currently interning to be a doctor, has of late become my chief supplier of books, and none of those he gives me disappoints. Stephen Alter’s book on Jim Corbett, In the Jungles of the Night, was a delight to read: he has immersed himself so deeply in the little-known details of Corbett’s life and persona that though this is a work of fiction, it could all have quite possibly happened. My only grouch would be that it ends too quickly: one mystery story, one tale of the killing of a tiger, one piece of a fictional diary, and that’s about it.

Equally gripping is the new edition of Rajmohan Gandhi’s magisterial biography of Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, released this year. A fat tome that runs into 500-odd pages of small print, it is so felicitously written that it reads almost like a thriller, and having begun yesterday, I am past page 117 already. I shall probably write a review of it later on (or add to this post: keep an eye on it), but I am glad that a large and embarrassing gap in my historical knowledge is being rapidly filled. Unlike with most of the other great stalwarts of the freedom struggle, I had known too little of the Iron Man of India. But I am already bemused to have learnt that he had a sharp tongue, an acid wit, an aura of aloof superiority, and a taste for humour that sometimes bordered on the vulgar (though the author has held back samples of that from us)!

The monsoon this time, long as it has lasted, is going out with a bang. These last few days, it has been raining torrentially, so much so that my whole garden was waterlogged, and the water flooded into the space below the stairwell. Can’t remember when that sort of thing last happened. Mercifully the water drained out soon, but it was a scare, and a reminder of how so many people suffer in this country: not all of them the poorest either.

This year, for a change, I won’t be travelling anywhere far during the pujo days, so I am hoping that a sizeable number of ex-students will drop in to say hello. And also that I might be able to sleep of nights.

It has been a painful year. May the Lord help me by easing my woes in the last quarter.

Goodbye and thank you, Gloria

Gloria Steinem passed away on September 02. I wanted to pay my respects to her. Tonight it’s too late for me to stay up much longer, but I shall post this much already. This is my way of reminding myself that the rest of what I wanted to say must be written soon. The rest of you who can’t tell her from Eve might Google her up before coming back here.

(September 09): I have always been deeply persuaded by the women’s liberation movement as long as they fought against all the ugliest and stupidest kinds of oppression and deprivation, and as long as they fought for real freedom, equality and justice, especially for the poorest and least educated among them. I have read, and read about, some of the great feminists, from the time of Sita and Draupadi through Mary Wollstonecraft and J.S. Mill to Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan, along with many contemporary Indian stalwarts, some of whom I have written about with admiration and respect, not to say awe, here. Gloria Steinem was among the truly great. She left us at 92, so she was at her fighting best long before today’s young adult feminists were born, and I deeply regret that so many of them neither know about the likes of her nor about how much of their now-taken-for-granted freedoms and privileges they owe to the bitter lifelong struggles of women such as  she. She was still writing about burning issues at 90: what energy, what conviction! Though she had a low opinion of marriage and never had children, she lived a full and vigorous life, and never hated or despised men: indeed, as my newspaper obituary (The Telegraph, Sept. 04, p. 2) says, ‘she led a glittering social life and enjoyed relationships with many high-voltage men’. Also, ‘even as she personified the women’s movement, (she) defied the stereotype of women’s libbers as sexless, humourless and dateless’.      

Some of my dearest grown up female ex-students have told me that feminism today has turned into something far less honest, a far more selfish, vicious, opportunistic thing; it is (to many) no longer about freedom, equality, friendship and cooperation between the sexes any more. I have seen something of this with my own eyes, in the lives of many people around me. To a great extent, a lot of ‘feminists’ today seem to be trying very hard to prove merely that they can be just as bad, and given a chance, just as oppressive, exploitative and unfair as the worst of men can be. Some of them are quite unaware about it, and many are in furious denial. Given a different role of the dice, I’d have loved to have had a chat with Gloria about what she thought about it in the last days of her life, and whether she was just a little bit disillusioned.

I didn’t write much in detail about her life and works, but if this post makes some readers curious, I shall urge them to read up at least the Wikipedia articles about her.

P.S.: My own views on women and their rights were written down in 1995: see this. Over the last thirty odd years, I have grown sadder and less hopeful, but those views remain substantially unchanged.

P.P.S., Sept. 15: I just found out that Ms. Steinem's last interview, titled Famous Last Words, recorded not long before her death, has just been released on Netflix. 

Holiday down south

I hadn’t gone travelling anywhere (except a single day trip to Shantiniketan in boiling hot weather) for nearly five months, and I was raring to go. Abhishek called me over, saying he could manage a few days’ leave in late August, so I got the tickets and flew over to Bangalore. I arrived in the evening of Saturday the 22nd, and Shreya gave me a warm welcome at the airport. An hour’s chat in an open air café (I am becoming ‘cool’ in my old age!), then the interminable cab ride through the ghastly traffic to Abhishek’s cosy flat, where his parents took me in like an old friend. A not too long chat on the balcony in balmy weather with intermittent light drizzles, then off to sleep, because we had a long day ahead.

We woke up at 4 on Sunday morning (I still can, though I prefer to stay in bed until much later) and were out by 5:15, to get out of the maddening city as quickly as possible. An eight hour drive to Bhagavathi Nature Camp in Kudremukh (‘horse head’ in Kannada) National Park. The last couple of hours were a bumpy ride through narrow and rutted hill roads amidst mild rain, but the lovely forested hill scenery, with clouds descending right onto us, compensated grandly for any discomfort. By the time we arrived at the picturesque resort, with a few cottages dotted around the lush leafy campus, it had started raining heavily, and post lunch I fell into a deep and restful sleep. In the evening it turned into a torrential downpour with only occasional respites, and it continued all through the night, convincing me that Kudremukh really deserved the moniker of ‘Cherrapunji of the South’. In the little auditorium we were treated to some very interesting videos showing the variety of flora and fauna in the region, and the multidimensional efforts of the Forest Department to ensure their conservation. Not yet on the busy tourist map, Kudremukh is mercifully lacking in noisy boorish crowds of holidaymakers. The story of how much of the area had been despoiled by an iron mining project back in the eighties, during my journalistic days, came back to me. Since then, a successful environmental protection agitation has stopped the mining, and the whole region has been well re-greened.

In the early hours, curled up inside a blanket, I was awakened by the thunderous drumming of rain on the tin roof, and much as I was worried whether we would be stranded the next day, the feeling was too delicious not to be enjoyed, so I shoved the worry aside in my mind and fell asleep again. The temperature had by then fallen to 20 degrees.

In the morning, I went to see the Bhadra river that flows right behind the camp. It was in full spate, and it was hard to believe that Abhishek had walked across it in summer, when it was a thin and shallow rivulet. The same Bhadra joins the Tunga downstream to form the fabled Tungabhadra. The rain had abated somewhat, so it wasn’t scary to set off on the road back. Abhishek – who simply wouldn’t let me drive this time – took us along a different route, partly because the road was better, and partly because he wanted us to see the beautiful Charmadi Ghat along the way. The heavy rains had created umpteen little waterfalls by the roadside, a true feast for the eyes. We had had a heavy breakfast, so we made do with a light lunch on the way – in south India you rarely get much variety, but it was tasty fare – and drove leisurely to the little town of Hassan, where we halted at a nice hotel for the night. The hours were filled with a lot of happy chatting and good natured mutual chafing, as if we were one family.

On Tuesday, we set off late in the morning and went off to Halebidu (also called Dorasamudra), where there is the famed Hoysalesvara Temple, and then to nearby Belur, to see the Chemmakesava, another architectural cum sculptural marvel. The ASI has done a good job of preservation and maintenance, along with very nice landscaping and well curated museums (with little unnecessary irritations, like having only the option of paying online for tickets for which you had to fill in a lot of personal details). The gentle breezy weather helped to make the strolls pleasant: I was told that in the full summer the blazing paving stones could scald the soles of your bare feet. On the long drive back to Bangalore, we made a short detour to visit Shravana Belgola, where stands the colossal statue of the second Jain tirthankara Bahubali or Gomatesvara, but when we learnt that we’d have to climb 1300 stairs up and down the hill, we gave it a miss, satisfying ourselves with a pranam aimed at the head of the giant which was visible from a certain point on the road. None of us could muster enough stamina or bhakti to handle the ordeal, and in any case it would have taken too long.

We arrived at the city limits a little after 8, but Google told us that it would take us two hours and a half of traffic crawling to reach home, so Abhishek chose to drive instead along the near empty STRR (Satellite Town Ring Road). Having dinner enroute at a very posh dhaba of the sort that is very common along the Delhi-Haryana highway, we arrived at home at about 10:45, and went off to sleep without much ado. We had travelled more than 900 km.

The last day, Wednesday, had been deliberately kept aside solely for lazing and adda. We woke up late, and went out for lunch of biryani at one of the Empire outlets nearby. Shreya came over, so the hours passed in a flash. We packed her off at 8, and chatted animatedly about a thousand odd things that make for really enjoyable Bengali adda, till 11, when it was time to turn in again.  Early waking on Thursday morning, feeling hot and ill in the cab all the way to the airport, very quick check-in thanks to Digi Yatra and absence of check-in luggage, then a smooth and timely flight back to Durgapur, miffed only by the fact that Indigo has made a ridiculous rule that they won’t serve you any beverages unless you first order some food. ‘Rats!’, as an old fashioned Englishman might have said.

Thank you all, Dada, Boudi, Abhishek and Shreya, for helping me enjoy such a lovely little vacation. Humans can be maddeningly aggravating at times, but congenial human companionship is essential to make life worth living, and though some people have denied it to me despite my best urging, many others have gone out of their way to balance things out: I must count my blessings, despite all ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.

This was my first real tour of the Western Ghats, and I did it during the peak monsoon, the best season. One thing that I shall carry in my memory is the characteristic honking of buses in south India: they all make the same noise, which sounds exactly like a ship’s foghorn. The other wonder is that you can hardly spot a Sikh in such a vastly crowded city! Thirdly, a landscape entirely of glass, steel and chrome towers can begin to grate on your nerves as quickly as a constant diet of dosa/idli/vada/uthapam and lemon rice. And finally, once you are outside the metropolis, Karnataka is a very sparsely populated state, if you compare with the likes of Kerala, Bengal or Bihar.

For photos, click here.

Kim revisited: a darned good yarn

I think I have mentioned Rudyard Kipling’s magnum opus, the novel Kim, more than once before on this blog. It remains, in my opinion as well as that of millions of other Kipling devotees, the finest and most adoring description of India as she used to be in the early years of the twentieth century, as it traces the travels and travails of the young Irish-Indian orphan boy Kimball O’Hara across the length and breadth of northern India accompanying his chance-found guru Teshoo Lama, and also getting deeply involved in the Great Game of espionage and counter-espionage against the Russians who pose a grave (supposed-) threat to Britain’s Indian empire. It comes to a conclusion when the old lama is convinced that he has found enlightenment. One closes the book with a profound sigh, slowly comes out of a trance, and wishes the story had continued forever. And one keeps going back to it.

Now Stephen Alter has dared to write a sequel to Kim with the title of The Greatest Game (‘being the further adventures of Kimball O’Hara’). The year is 1947, and the story opens in Lahore in March, as India is hurtling towards the ecstasy of Independence cum devastation of Partition, and events are unfolding as rapidly as a river approaching a great waterfall. Kim, who is in his own words, ‘60 or 61’ (he doesn’t care to keep careful track of the years), grizzled and somewhat the worse for wear but still very much engaged with life in the raw, the same life of the chameleon-like street smart and near destitute vagrant that he has always known and loved despite his moments of regret and self-pity, narrowly avoids being murdered and gets drawn into one final adventure: to detect and derail a plot to assassinate some of the top Congress leaders including Nehru, which might quite possibly derail the complex and delicate process of the transfer of power and throw the sub-continent into unimaginable turmoil. To say more about the plot would be to give it away, but here’s a teaser: some Nazi sympathizers in high places are involved. Of course Kim gets the better of the baddies and his private revenge, a couple of medals from the Viceroy himself, as well as a wad of money that will take him wherever he wants to go (but definitely not a fortune with which he can comfortably retire). He vanishes from the scene after one last nostalgic recollection of Zam-zammah, the great bronze cannon that for long adorned the entrance to the Lahore Ajaib ghar (museum), where Kipling began the story.

Oh, I nearly forgot: one of the finest touches in Alter’s story is that the shadowy head of the Imperial Secret Service went under the pseudonym Ulysses, and he had personally designated the motto of the Service as ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’. Educated readers will not need a note on that: for everyone else there is Google.

 The book ends with some beautiful lines which I am tempted to quote: ‘Now that the Angrez have gone and India has split apart, another chapter will be written in a language all its own. At times like this, I am convinced that I understood the world better when I was a child, rather than as an old man with tangled memories and tortured dreams.’

I intend no disrespect when I say that it is impossible to quite match Kipling’s level of storytelling magic, as Mr. Alter would probably be the first to agree, but I must say that he has done a splendid job of almost catching up. I was especially charmed by two things in this book. One, the way Kim keeps harking back to old memories from his early youth, including his brushes with harsh saver-of-souls missionaries, his stint at St. Xavier’s Lucknow, his mentors including Mahbub Ali the Pathan horse trader from across the border, Creighton sahib and Lurgan sahib who taught him his intricate trade, and the way he accidentally recovered the old lama’s brass begging bowl, a treasure to him indeed. Second, his involvement with two women: Champa, his middle-aged sort of sweetheart who ran a kotha in Lahore, whom he brought safely to Delhi just after the great killings had begun, and his final escapade in tandem with old Anastasia, who had been a close comrade and colleague in years past, who lives in Simla, still harbours a great zest for life despite her creaking joints, and who is now a widowed ranee in retirement. For the rest, my lips are sealed. Read the book; it’s very well worth the expense. Thank you, Stephen Alter – I am going to read some more of your books soon. And thank you Aveek, for lending me the book.

[The Greatest Game, by Stephen Alter, 2025. Aleph Book Company, pp. 243, Rs. 799 hardcover]

Is the wheel turning?

A book was launched recently at Oxford Book Store, Park Street, in Kolkata. It has been written by Mithu Chakraborti, and it is titled Anatomy of Misery, Part 1: Men's Misery. It was reported in yesterday's edition of The Telegraph, the article ticklishly titled 'Recentring Suffering'. As the writer said, 'I think it is... important to recognise the societal and emotional pressures faced by men... their emotional needs are seldom taken into consideration'. Hear, hear!

 I should like every one of my readers to go through the entire article for themselves (The Telegraph, August 5, 2026, t2, p.5), but I want to quote some lines from it here. The reporter says 'The book, structured as a work of narrative non-fiction and popular psychology (whatever that means - SC), comprises twelve interconnected stories. In these, a multitude of men find themselves facing various conflicts owing to the stereotypical expectations and  burdens inflicted upon them by a ... culture that does not acknowledge men's need for emotional support and expression. Themes of men's loneliness, emotional isolation, domestic abuse (so at last some people are  beginning to admit that men are abused too, ha ha ha!-SC), the pressures of being a provider and the personal costs incurred by men in a society that expects them to be silent are the focus of these stories'. Oindrila Dutt, arts curator and one of the guests at the book launch, added, 'This book reminds us that it is high time for us to extend equal consideration for men's and women's miseries in society (good to hear that such equality, it is now being admitted, was not accorded for a long time! - SC). It is a crucial reminder that we need to address the pressures faced by men who have been betrayed (so now we can openly say that we are often betrayed too, huh? - SC), but sadly think that they are at fault.' 

Well, AT LAST!  Countless generations of men, many of them nice, good, responsible, hardworking, honorable men, have worked, suffered and died in silence because they had always been told that men do not, must not, admit and lament and ask for amelioration of their suffering (I keep remembering Harihar Ray in Pather Panchali, along with many other such characters real and fictional). My generation suffered a double whammy - the rise of a particularly sick, strident, one-eyed, obsessive 'feminism' that screamed at us all our lives that it is only women's 'right' (for want of a better word) to suffer and whine about their suffering, and to keep on pillorizing us men for all of it being our fault, no matter how many of us tried, however hard, to make life good and happy for them: if some men are awful, every one of us must bear the guilt and go through life hanging our heads in shame, while being completely shouted down and blithely ignored if we sometimes mumbled 'Well, we suffer too, you know, and it is not always our fault; maybe we deserve a little attention and sympathy and consideration sometimes, too?'

But let that be. One human lifespan is too small against the backdrop of history to notice much significant change anyway, and maybe the wheel is turning the right way already before my eyes? I wrote not too long ago about a woman who is vigorously running a Men's Rights Association, and here is another woman who has written a book like this. Maybe I shall see some change for the better before I die? Maybe some women will again begin to say that men are equally human too, and women can be bad humans too, or at least have a lot of faults and failings which they should do something about? Maybe, God willing, some more women will even begin to think, like Ms. Chakraborti, that we men have been getting a raw deal for a nastily long time, and say so in public for all to hear?

What's happening all around?

I have reverted to the practice of first writing my blogposts on the computer and then copy-pasting them on the blog. This has been prompted by a very recent warning from Subhanjan that someday Blogger could simply take down and trash twenty years of my loving labour. I wouldn’t like that to happen. Meanwhile, I am looking for someone who has the technical expertise to download everything I have written here so far.

I must admit to feeling a little disappointed at having received so few congratulatory messages from dear old boys (and a few girls) in response to my last post. I should have thought that many of them, especially those of them who have been reading a long time, would somehow feel the urge and find the time to write a few lines. ‘Screen fatigue’ does not explain everything, you know; laziness, distraction and confusion together account for quite a bit of the things we know we could but did not do.

Which led me to reflect upon a passage that I have been dealing with in Julius Caesar. In Act IV scene iii, Brutus displays superhuman self-control by quietly absorbing the grief brought upon him by the news of the horrible death of his beloved wife. Perhaps he was only demonstrating how good a stoic he was; stoics believed it was a sign of moral weakness to make strong overt shows of any emotion, whether it be love or fear, anger or sorrow (by the way, we don’t lack the same ideal in the great Indian tradition: Sri Ram, described as the maryada purushottam, the ideal man, was said to be sukhey vigataspriha, dukkhe nirudvignamana … indifferent in joy, unworried in sorrow). Cassius is filled with awed admiration and a sense of inadequacy at this display of self-control: he says ‘I have as much of this in art as you, but yet my nature would not have it so’, meaning, I too have been taught this in theory (though he subscribed to a different philosophy, all schools taught self-control and calmness as a fundamental virtue), but my character is too tempestuous to submit to such discipline. What would they have said if they surveyed our world, where habitual and wild expressions of manic joy (whether it be over a World Cup Final victory for the favourite team or the son graduating from high school) is counterpoised by everyone falling into traumatic depression every now and then when they can’t find strong enough stimulants from day to day, and even language has degenerated into mindless repetition of empty superlatives (everything has to be ‘amazing’ and ‘incredible’… you call someone merely good or something just nice, and people take it as a snub, even an insult!). Could they be blamed if they wrote off modern ‘civilization’ as a babel of eternal children or madmen, regardless of all our vaunted technological progress?

Coming to the strong, growing and spreading popular protest movement spearheaded by the whimsically named Cockroach Janata Party, I can only wish them well (yes, I know some readers have been wondering when I will begin to comment on it). I am proud that so many young people have woken up to some of the most urgent and legitimate needs of the day. If we believe in democracy as the ideal form of government (or at least, Churchill fashion, the least bad among all the options), if we truly respect the Constitution, the right to dissent, argue and demand reform peacefully simply cannot be denied to the people: it is fundamental and non-negotiable. An Opposition-free Bharat would be a nightmare, a prison for all self-respecting Indians to live in. The government knows perfectly well that they are not all anti-national, foreign funded agents sent over to destabilize this country – who benefits from spreading and believing that sort of childish, paranoid nonsense? What they are asking for might be silly or superficial (does anyone seriously believe that simply dismissing a certain minister will magically and overnight clean out the Augean stable that our education system has become?), what they are doing and the way they are doing it might seem unwarranted or misguided or excessive to many (to think that way is also a democratic right, as long as we do not impose our views with brutal force), but to imagine that repression and suppression by obduracy, callousness and police action is the solution is to invite disaster. No man, no party, no government, no philosophy has a monopoly of truth and righteousness and patriotism, because humans are simply not built that way. That is why democracy has been called the art of muddling through: even it does not guarantee the best outcomes, it at least ensures that slow reforms for the better through dialogue and compromise are brought about with the least harm to the many. Any government which tries to simply silence and choke the voice of peaceful dissent is inviting trouble, if not catastrophe, for themselves, and if we are unlucky, for the whole country. I am neither unpatriotic nor anti-democratic, just a very humble man still proud to be Indian, and it is as such that I appeal to the government of the day: please listen to the protestors, do not hurt them, accept some of their demands, acknowledge your mistakes (there is no shame in that) and correct them to the best of your ability: that is what will work best for you and for ‘we the people’ in the long run. Doing the opposite, I repeat, is courting disaster. It has happened again and again before. As a wise but cynical man sadly said, ‘The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history’. 

[P.S., July 26: I uploaded this post yesterday afternoon, and in the evening I learnt that the protest movement has been called off, because the government has accepted three demands: that the minister shall resign, all FIRs against the protesters will be withdrawn, and the families of the students who have committed suicide will be financially compensated (!). Well, if the protesters are happy, then as far as I am concerned, there is nothing more to be said.]   

After twenty years

I started writing this blog on July 08, 2006. Which means that I have been writing continuously here for twenty years now, and this is my 825th post. Twenty whole years of writing! The contents would certainly make a fairly fat book. I am the sort of man who doesn't quickly give up what he starts doing, but even I had not imagined that I would keep at it for twenty years. That's half or more of a man's entire working life. Those who had just passed school in 2006 are family men and women in their late thirties now; those in their twenties who started reading this blog then must be pushing fifty! My little girl was ten years old then, now she is thirty, and busy living her own life. Is there anybody who has been reading this blog continuously right from the beginning and still visits it now and then? I would certainly like to say congratulations and thank you...

I have had a lot of interesting debates and conversations here, too, so thanks to all who participated. I have revealed a great deal of my mind and life here as I have passed through the prime of life into old age. Of course, do not imagine that you know everything about me even if you have been a regular long-time reader. As Tagore said, you will not find the poet in his poems. I have by preference shown the happier side of my life and the sunnier part of my mind here, if only to avoid burdening my reader with the weight and gloom of my own sorrows, fears, losses and disillusionments, of which, like every other human being, I have had aplenty. That is because it has been my lifelong desire to ease the travails of living for a few people if I can through my work, and not to make it more irksome by inflicting my own complaints on them. At worst, maybe a hint of melancholy and tiredness may have crept into some of my writing, for which I sincerely apologize: I wish I could have sounded cheerier without pretending to be what I am not. Also, despite talking and writing so much, I have always been at heart a very private sort of person - unlike most young denizens of the age of social media, I keep very personal (and usually painful) things for the most intimate circle, to which few belong, many have dropped out from, and thousands never came into.

I don't know how much longer I shall keep going. Without specific requests, I often feel at a loss for things to write these days. Also, as I frequently say myself, I am growing old, and weary, and no longer quite sure whether my writing matters to people. Why do people work at all? As I have always believed, unless it is under some sort of external compulsion, it is either for love or money. This was never a money making proposition, so obviously I did it for love: love of the written word, love of many things that I have seen, felt and enjoyed, love of the idea that perhaps I was influencing some people's lives in a good way. Now, I am not so sure that that love endures, or will endure much longer. Other than working as a teacher in my own house, I have, unsocial being that I am, have led a withdrawn life for ages, and perhaps a time is coming when I shall withdraw some more, limiting my human interactions to face to face conversations with those who keep visiting me at home. Maybe I have shared enough with the vast faceless public already? 

One good thing that I have just noticed: even when I am not attending to the blog, the number of pageviews keeps on climbing, and more and more older stuff has been coming into the most-read list (right now, the post titled Ingratitude and Karma is on the top of the list. Interesting). Unless I am much mistaken, that means a lot of people still remember the blog and are still curious to explore beyond the home page. Cheers to them, but also a lament: why can't you write in comments that will energize me to engage? Hundreds and hundreds of posts on such a huge diversity of subjects, and nobody finds anything to say?

Browsing through several dozen posts written over these last twenty years, I felt a sense of unreality. I was running a family then, working seven days a week non-stop for months at a stretch, reading so much, frequently going travelling, counselling so many people outside of my classes, dealing with all kinds of emergencies... where did I find the time in between all that to keep writing so much? And I hear so many people saying that they 'have no time' for any kind of serious (mental) work, not even reading, let alone writing! I myself have lost a lot of readers to two things: jobs and marriage. Of course, I never married and never worked for a living. Isn't it a really funny world? 

They say every grown man has a story - is a story. Well, I have told a large part of my story here. Not earthshaking, not maybe very educative or moving, but perhaps it will have significantly affected, even touched, a few people. That should be enough. In my own life, I have met many 'ordinary' people who have deeply instructive and memorable stories to tell, if only they are encouraged a bit (remember I once wrote the memoir of a roadside phuchkawallah). Mine may not be the most trivial of them. Some may remember. Otherwise, like everybody else, I shall soon pass, not only from this world but from everyone's minds. So what? And what would be unique about it? I just learnt in class two days ago that teenagers of today haven't heard of Sir Don Bradman!

Lately I have been enjoying myself enjoying old TV series now available for free on YouTube: specifically Mind your language and Blandings (yes, the Wodehouse creation). Try them sometime. Wonderful things for those who admire wit and genuine humour of the educated and civilized sort rather than what passes for comedy today. Also, regaling myself watching the 'vlogs' of young bike riders who go gallivanting across the length and breadth of India: so relaxing and interesting if you can do it from the safety and comfort of your bedroom, ten or twenty minutes at a time, spending virtually no money at all, and they give you drone's-eye view scenery, too! Science ka kya marvel!

A gentle nudge: do listen to my story collection on YouTube and the growing series of poetry podcasts on Spotify (in both cases you need to search only for 'Suvro Sir') and tell me what you think about them, here if you like. And if you do, please write more than a one-liner. 

So much for now.

So that June may not stay empty...

Yes, I know, I haven't written for ages. Fact is, looking back on the immense amount and variety of things I have written, I can't think of much to write any more. Not, at least, for now. I am too tired. Maybe someday the blocked stream will break free again. 

I watched Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi again earlier this month, after I guess a gap of nearly forty years. Two things occurred to me: a) such a beautiful movie, and yet so ahistorical - a story about Gandhi's life and times with no Subhas, no Ambedkar, no mention of Tagore though the Rev. C. F. Andrews features notably, and Jinnah barely a shadowy figure on the margins?! and b) how did Gandhi do it - returned to India in 1915 little known, and by far the most prominent and influential leader of the country as no one has been before and after, hypnotizing and holding the worshipful attention, affection and obedience of millions of both high and low, without fakery, without violence, and with no more modern tools of mass communication technology except radio and newspapers in a largely illiterate country? I have been wondering all my life, and I am as far away from the answer as I have always been...

New government in the state, of an entirely new type, as I have noted before. Not been in office for two months yet. As I said, I am watching. I am not a man who draws conclusions quickly.

I don't know whether many people are listening to my poetry-reading podcasts on Spotify, but making the successive episodes has been giving me a particular sort of gentle pleasure. I shall be glad to have suggestions from listeners about what they would like to hear next. Till then, it remains entirely a matter of my personal taste and choice. Meanwhile, it is good to see that my stories on YouTube continue to attract new listeners, however slowly (both can be accessed by typing in 'Suvro Sir'.) Something that I heard today and loved: a senior ex student of mine reported that her daughter recently exclaimed 'I know... you are going to visit your Spotify Sir'. Newest nickname... made my day.

Speaking of YouTube, I loved this speech of Chandril Bhattacharya's. After a long time, he's said something that I agree with in toto. (In a democracy) people get the kind of government they deserve.

Over the last few weeks, the rains have been playing truant hereabouts, making us swelter in the muggy heat day after inexorable day. What makes it especially galling is that we keep hearing how Kolkata and north Bengal are being inundated.

That's all for now. As of June 25, my daughter is a married woman. May God bless both her and Swarnava. I am looking forward more and more eagerly to vanaprastha. Just think: even that post is nearly four years old!

The Pope on AI, and ranking countries

The current Pope, Leo XIV (an American and by training a mathematician, so not exactly science- and tech illiterate), has just released an encyclical (open letter to all people of goodwill) warning against the rapid and, to many, overwhelming and frightening rise of AI: see this news report. I shall not comment on any part of it right now, but I shall be glad if there is a discussion here on his various prescriptions for the future development and control of AI - before we, human beings, are actually overwhelmed and cast aside (that is a prospect  at least as old as the Frankenstein story, and looks ever more likely to come true within a generation or two). It is interesting to note that giant-tech honchos were beside him as he spoke, including, notably, one of the chief officers of Anthropic. I shall be eagerly waiting for responses: what sort of Brave New World are we shaping? And shall we be able to handle it?

Also, in today's newspaper, I read that the UN has come forward with a newly designed complex and multi-dimensional measure of the progress and wealth of nations - meant to replace the many-decades long narrow focus on GDP as a catch-all; see this and this. It has been drawn up by an expert panel of fourteen, headed by the well-known Indian origin economist Kaushik Basu. Now it has been agreed among the majority of economists for a long time that GDP and its rate of growth by itself is a very unsatisfactory index of real human progress and welfare (even if you consider only 'real' and per capita incomes, and factor in purchasing power parity corrections), because it ignores too many important things, like the degree of wealth- and income inequalities, the sustainability (environmental effects) of the kind of growth we are pursuing, the contents  of the basket of goods and services that we keep producing (more guns count for as much as more healthcare drugs, more roads as much as more cars, in purely financial terms), the actual quality of life that the majority of people enjoy (safety, green living spaces, gender equality, long term health security, type of education), etc. etc. So experts have been searching for better ways to measure things for a long time. However, the problem has been that most 'alternatives' fail to provide a different and much better picture of reality: the same UN's Human Development Index, based on a weighted average of three metrics, per capita income, literacy levels and life expectancy, very closely mimics the GDP figures, in the sense that ranking countries by their per capita GDP alone shows nearly the same list of countries in the same order as the HDI does, whether you look for the ten most 'developed' countries or the ten most backward ones.

On the other hand, taking too many metrics into consideration might make the measurements much more subjective/biased and much less dependable/broadly acceptable than a simple ranking based on GDP alone, as the critics of the new measure have already pointed out. So how best to measure which country is really most advanced, and how much more than others? Would anyone like a discussion on this issue?

Finally for now, any comments on episode 5 of my poetry podcast series on Spotify?

Diary entry

Weather-wise, this is the most extraordinary summer in living memory. All through April and May, till the day of writing, it has been raining on and off - sometimes even on successive days, along with classic nor'wester storms and otherwise, so that the maximum temperature has not risen above 32/33 celsius for nearly a fortnight, falling abruptly sometimes to 25-26 even in the afternoons, so that, forget the airconditioners, we are having to use warm water for baths, turning off the fans and pulling rugs over ourselves when going to sleep! I could easily believe, if I were not looking at the calendar, that it was not summer at all. I would rather call this climate erratics than secular climate change. Anyway, even if it becomes very hot in June and July, we shall have to be thankful for a short summer.

I have lately become obsessed with Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. Just 'revised' the novel Dhatri Devata (we had it in our ICSE syllabus, and it seemed so familiar and well-remembered that I might have read it only a month ago, rather than 47 years), moved on to Ganadevata, will deal with Hansulibaanker Upokotha next; then maybe revise Gurudakshina too. I have paid Tarashankar too little attention, considering his stature as a litterateur: but better late than never. My mind has wandered too far and wide for ages: it is good to be back closer to home in the dusk of my life. I might be writing more about his works in a later post.

Just watched an animation movie called Wild Robot on Netflix. Quite a heartwarmer, a robot eager to please and complete assigned tasks to perfection getting briefly lost and falling in love with a host of wild animals, a stunted baby goose in particular, changing their lives greatly for the better despite much misunderstanding and resistance, and herself learning the meaning of loving and caring beyond the scope of any kind of programming. Food for thought too - brought back to mind all the countless different scenarios about human-robot conflict and coexistence that Isaac Asimov conceived half a century ago (as I have discussed in one of my YouTube podcasts), many of which are going to come true within a generation or two. It will be a brave new world indeed.

My podcasts on poetry have got going. Three episodes are already up there; several more are mentally lined up. I don't need to put up links here, it seems: you can simply type in 'Suvro Sir' in the Spotify app, or Google 'Suvro Sir Spotify' and it will take you there. Some listeners are already commenting, but unluckily there is a glitch on my side, so I cannot see them on my app; have patience until someone fixes things for me, and meanwhile do please cheer me on by commenting here on this blog. And don't forget the 52 stories that are waiting for you on the YouTube channel (again, just typing 'Suvro Sir' in YouTube will take you there). 

Meanwhile I am wondering why, suddenly, so many people are reading this blog on all continents (see map on the right-hand sidebar). If a lot of them were commenting (politely and sensibly, it goes without saying) I'd have been a famous author by now!

Also, approaching 63 (as I keep reminding myself, if I had held a salaried job I would have been compulsorily retired on a paltry pension three years ago), I am greatly enjoying the ease and leisure my careful plans for gradually reducing my workload have earned me, and also the fact that I have been able to decide I don't really need to care and worry about family responsibilities as intensely as I have done for four continuous decades - nor can they expect it from me any more - so I can live out the remaining years of my life 'for myself'. Whatever that means. I shall be most deeply indebted to anyone who can give me some pleasurable engagement that can help to fill in the yawning hours of emptiness, until I have become senile and decrepit (which I mightn't, if God is kind to me. Three score years and ten, I made a deal with Him thirty years ago, and I am just seven years away from that deadline. Believe me, far from being scared, I look forward to it more eagerly with every passing year).

The new BJP government of West Bengal is going to be inaugurated tomorrow, Ponchisey Boishakh. First time ever that we shall have an avowedly right wing government in power. I shall keenly follow their progress over the next year, and try to write up a report card of my own at about this time in 2027. What I am hoping and praying for can be best stated in the ruling party's own slogan: sabka saath, sabka vishwas, sabka vikas -- everyone's progress with everyone's faith and everyone's participation. 

P.S., May 13: The fourth poetry episode has been uploaded tonight on Spotify.

Sukumar Chandra: a great doctor

In three months' time this blog will be twenty years old, and the number of pageviews will have crossed 1.5 million. The number and variety of things that I have thought of and written about boggles my own mind now and then. Hard to believe that I was simultaneously leading a full, active family life all along, at least until recently.

During my two-day visit to Labhpur in Birbhum this January, I had happened to visit the little museum dedicated to the memory of the most famous son of the soil, the writer Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, and there I came upon a little book titled Labhpurer Bishu Daktar - a biography of Dr. Sukumar Chandra, vastly better known as Bishu Daktar - which outlines the story of a true karma yogi, one that I have just finished reading, and I have been deeply moved. In his nineties (unless he has left us within the last three months), he is still attending to his calling, incredible as it may seem, which, being a generation younger, makes me both wonder and feel deeply ashamed about being so tired of life already: I can only say

ক্লান্তি আমার ক্ষমা করো প্রভু। 

Born into a very humble (but dedicated-) schoolmaster's family, he graduated from R. G. Kar Medical College in 1948, missed going abroad for higher degrees because of his father's untimely death and, at the great novelist's behest, settled back to practise in and around his native village, and has spent his entire working life there. Starting with two humble rooms which did not even have the luxury of electricity in the early days, he built up a vast practice over the decades, and evidently made a decent living, considering that the book says he took care of the upkeep and upbringing of a huge joint family and gave away a small fortune out of his lifetime earnings to all sorts of local welfare projects, especially those that look after the furtherance of education and culture. He has earned countless awards and trophies from far and near, including one from the state government personally handed over by Smt. Mamata Banerjee, but he still counts the love and respect he commands among those who have benefited from his ministrations, help and wise counsel as his most fulfilling achievements. He has also been an avid and eclectic reader all his life. Where have such doctors vanished? Has any one of my old boys (some of them in their fifties now) become a doctor of that calibre and repute yet - as distinct from mere skilled technicians with one eye firmly fixed on the bottom line?

My grateful thanks to Mrs. Monalisa Chandra for having written with so much empathy about her father in law yet managed not to make it a hagiography. Else I wouldn't have known, and that would have been a loss. I shall make it a point to offer pronaam to both the daktarbabu and his Boswell, if I have the good fortune to meet them. It would be silly to wish Bishu daktar a long life at this point, but I certainly wish him a happy and easy passage when the bell tolls for him, and may he be remembered and idolized by thousands long after he is gone.

P.S. May 02: Oh, the pageviews counter has crossed the 1.5 million landmark already!

Start of poetry podcast

This is just to announce that I have tentatively begun to recite and discuss poems on Spotify. The first podcast, unimaginatively titled 'The Beginning', is already up there. I am still learning how to use the app, so I am likely to go about ham-handedly for a while: please bear with me. For now, I think clicking on this link will take you to where I want you to go. Alternatively you can search for Suvro Sir's beloved poetry on the app (yes, it seems you need to download the app first, unless you already have it - but it is free, and would take you less than five minutes).  Give me fifteen minutes of your time: listen and tell me about it.

P.S., April 27: The second episode has been uploaded. The link is here.

P.P.S.: May 07: The third episode has been uploaded: here.

Time and wonder

Nineteen years ago I wrote a post here with the title 'The sense of wonder'. I am a much older man now, and would have been bored to tears with life if something of that sense didn't still linger deep inside me. 

One of the greatest wonders, of course, is the fact that I have lived all those years since that last post, and so much has happened, and the days dragged while the years whizzed by, until now I sometimes feel like laughing and crying at the same time to think that I am quickly becoming an old man, and 85%+ of the living human population, or so says Google, is younger than I am!

Some forms of wonder never seem to pall. I first watched my work being transformed into money with which I could buy things when I was in mid-teenage, and I have been working continuously for more than four decades now, and bought so many things with the money I have made, and yet it still makes me wonder like a child to watch people paying me so that I can pay others for their wares and services - imagine, me, pushing 63, and having a formal training in economics! So also the way the young keep being born and growing up into self-sufficient, self-important adults (or so they think) before my eyes, and I keep watching and cannot always remember that I am growing ever older along with them, with 'Time, which makes memories of everything'...

কাল ছিল ডাল খালি / আজ ফুলে যায় ভরে,

বল দেখি তুই মালি /হয় সে কেমন করে?

There are more bitter kinds of wonder too, like the all too common human folly of putting off the most important things for a later time (like telling your loved ones how much you care for them and miss them) until it is just too late, and the kind of stupidity that persuades people that they can somehow try the bad things that their forerunners did and the results will, this time round, turn out to be good. When shall we learn, for instance, that nothing truly good comes from going to war, for either side, that could not be negotiated in peace, over time, with much less horror and devastation?

And now there's a different kind of wonder. In his Ode to a Nightingale, Keats concludes with the line 'fled is that music/do I wake or sleep'? Having thought and read so much along those lines for much longer than most of my students have yet lived, I begin to wonder: what does 'real' mean? Was this life real by any universally acceptable definition, or was it a long, vast, bewildering dream which is soon to end? And will that truly be the end, or just a final waking up? I shall refer the interested reader to the chapter titled On Dreams and Daydreams in the only book I have ever written, To My Daughter.

One last item for now: I cannot stop wondering how the computer/smartphone/internet era has made the general run of humankind so ahistorical minded. From infant to 40-year old, they all seem to believe that the world was created maybe just about half a century ago, the way they talk, the way they are surprised to hear that we have been living with lots of things, from epidemics to spectacles, for hundreds, or even thousands of years. And also how very different things people mean when they say 'it happened a long time ago'. The ordinary man means maybe twenty years, a historian means thousands, a biologist or geologist means millions or tens of millions, and an astronomer glibly talks of supernovae exploding billions of years ago, as if that makes perfect sense to him, as if he really grasps what that kind of timespan means...

So here's as much time as makes sense to me, a very ordinary man:

Jenny kiss'd me when we met

Jumping from the chair she sat in, 

Time, you thief, who loves to get sweets into your list,

Put that in. 

Say that I am weary, say I am sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,

Say that I am growing old, but add -

Jenny kiss'd me.

Tired and brooding at the end of March

The last week has been hectic for a staid and increasingly easygoing person like me. First I made a sudden two-day trip to Kolkata to watch a play in which a dear old boy was playing the role of Satyajit Ray's Feluda (first stage production ever), and he asked me up on stage during the curtain call to felicitate me as his childhood Feluda and current Sidhu Jyatha (look up Shoumo Banerjee on Instagram): it was as heartwarming as it was embarrassing. Then a rushed visit to the local police station with all sorts of documents for passport-renewal related verification - but a very nice experience for a change, swift, helpful and polite. Then a three-day admission routine for the incoming batches, followed by my mother's IOL implantation surgery yesterday, which seems to have gone smoothly, God be thanked. I hasten to add that my usual classes have been continuing side by side. So I am currently fagged out and can't get enough of sleep. Mercifully, Pupu and Swarnava have been here since Saturday to give me support and company. The admissions have been to my satisfaction on the whole, but I must say that the majority of parents are growing simultaneously sillier and more distracted and more entitled with every passing year (the current generation is the one I taught in the early and mid-1990s). Some day I am going to write at length about all the many different kinds of cartoons I have seen, but I am getting more and more exasperated, and will have to stop pretty soon, or put the entire admission procedure online.

March has been gentle on the whole, weatherwise - let's see what kind of summer is awaiting us this time round. I can't say as much for geopolitics, given the insane 'war' (quotes put in deliberately) going on in the Middle East, and its terribly upsetting effects on everything, from cooking gas availability to the massive and continuing slide in the stock market, probably to be followed by a huge car fuel-price hike. I am nowhere close to going hungry to bed, but I certainly can't say I am feeling safely and comfortably off. And the most traumatic elections in ages are scheduled for April: traumatic if, like me, you feel like an utterly beleagured Bengali, that is. The time to write at length on why I am feeling that way has not yet come, but it will. This much, though, I shall say now: I am remembering Harshavardhan ranged against King Sasanka, Gandhi against Subhas, and even Nehru against Bidhan Roy - it is all about the Hindi heartland trying to obliterate Bengali culture and asmita for good, so it is a very great pity that so many Bengalis can't see that any more, blinded as they are by a combination of historical ignorance, self-loathing, pure opportunistic greed, religious hatred and anti-incumbency. So, though I am eagerly looking forward to some very good things happening on the family front soon, I have no idea how this year is going to end for Indians as a whole and Bengalis in particular among them. I wish everyone well except those who are motivated by stupidity, greed, fear and malice. Nothing good ever came from that awful combination...

Meanwhile, this blog, continuously updated, will be twenty years old this July. Those (perhaps few) who have been attentive readers for years together, I beg to tell me in comments why they have stuck to it for so long.

My YouTube story podcasts on the channel Goppoguchchho (also accessible if you simply type in 'Suvro Sir') has come to an end - for now. I shall be doing other things next, on Spotify. Look out for the links given here in coming weeks.

One last observation: after going gung ho for social media and digital classrooms, many advanced countries, beginning with Australia, Finland and Denmark are now applying reverse gear and putting stern restrictions on those efforts, while India, in the name of 'catching up with the world', is going precisely down the disastrous path those countries took ten to fifteen years ago and suffered heavily in consequence. Shall we never learn that whatever the white man does is not necessarily right, good and urgent?

Hey Madhav!

 মাধব, বহুত মিনতি করি তোয়ে   

দেই  তুলসী তিল দেহ সমর্পিলু ,

দয়া জনি ছোড়বি মোয়ে। 

গনইতে দোষ গুণলেশ না পাইবি 

জব  তুঁহুঁ করবি বিচার ,

জগতের নাথ জগতে কহায়সি,

জগ বাহির নই মুই ছার। 

Probably Govindadas. More than 500 years ago. (I wrote this from memory, bits and pieces of which are fading now); read around 1981, in class 11 or 12. A rough translation would go as follows:

My Lord, I beg you fervently

Supplicating you with the ritual offerings (tulsi and til, basil leaf and sesame seed)

Please have mercy on me.

When the time comes for You to judge me, you will not find a trace of virtue, but

They call You the Lord of the world, 

Do remember, I, insignificant though I am

I do not exist outside this world.

The hour of judgment is approaching. Today, I can only supplicate: 'Lead, kindly light, for the night is dark, and I am far from home', or 

আরো কতদূরে সে আনন্দধাম ? 

And, as another Bengali adage goes,

বিশ্বাসে মিলায় কৃষ্ণ, তর্কে বহুদূর। 

The Fifteen: book review

Thanks to Swarnava and Pupu, I am engrossed in and being edified by a recently published book titled The Fifteen, which offers short, well-researched biographical sketches of the fifteen extraordinary women who played highly significant roles in framing the Indian Constitution between 1946 and '49. Remember, they were only 15 in a Constituent Assembly of 299 members (ultimately only 11 of them remained, and 284 in total signed the final Document) - all the others were males. Moreover, six of these fifteen were Bengalis, and all were deeply influenced by Tagore and Gandhi. Says a lot about many things, doesn't it? In a desperately poor, mostly illiterate and superstitious, rigidly orthodox, ferociously patriarchal society torn apart by civil war and massive two-way migration, it was a miracle that fifteen such could at all be found, though: highly educated, intelligent, self-confident, self-assertive, idealistic and patriotic women who looked many generations into the future while imagining the India of their dreams and left their own indelible stamp on the new nation state on the basis of which so many others both female and male have been building, with varying degrees of success, over the last eight decades. While paying my deepest respects to these women, I frankly admit that their stories take my breath away, especially when I compare their characters and achievements with those of the three latest generations of women I have lived alongside: a huge number of whom have no idea and don't care two hoots about how much they owe to these fiery pioneers for the often lazy, wasteful, dissolute, entitled and pointless, if not utterly selfish and vicious lives they are allowed to live today.

Among these, I already knew something of the works of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Sarojini Naidu (nee Chatterjee) and Vijay Lakshmi Pandit. It is a pity I knew hardly anything about Ammu Swaminathan, mother extraordinaire of Dr. Captain Lakshmi Sehgal of INA fame and sister of the redoubtable Mrinalini Sarabhai (as I become surer and surer with age, it's genes plus the first five years of upbringing that determine virtually everything, apart from who holds your hand in your youth!), or about Annie Mascarene, Begum Qudsia Rasul and Dakshayani Velayadhun (the only Christian, Muslim and Dalit woman members respectively), and too little about the likes of Renuka Ray and Sucheta Kripalani. I could wax eloquent and write reams in praise of each of these, ruing my unforgiveable ignorance of details for so long - but I choose here to write about one who has impressed me most: the following paragraphs should elucidate why.

All these women, by the way, were born to some kind of privilege: either they were born to rich and/or progressive parents, or married to highly supportive men, or they were high caste, or at least they had the benefit of a good education, which 99.9% of women in those days were denied. At the same time,  the point is that they worked to make better lives for the common woman and man, not just for themselves or their own little elite circles, and every one of them had to fight almost lifelong against all kinds of unfair obstacles and prejudices, often of the meanest sort which make me cringe in shame (like women cannot be doctors, poets or lawyers) yet they never soured up or gave up - I wish I myself could have remained so positive minded, so hopeful at my age. Anyway, as I was saying, my heroine of choice from this book happens to be Durgabai Deshmukh (1909-1981). What I find fascinating, nay, incredible, is that a girl born in those days, with all her social and familial handicaps, could know her mind so well even before she had outgrown childhood, rejecting her 'arranged' marriage at age eight (and persuading her in-laws' family at 15 that the marriage was impossible, so the man could and should marry someone else), setting up a girls' school at age 12, working for the the Congress party and refusing no less a personage than Jawaharlal Nehru himself at age 14 because he did not have a valid ticket for entry to an important meeting, and she had been tasked to refuse entry to all such arrivals (the modern 'advanced generation' child would not dream of dealing with even someone as trivial as her school headmistress that way, and recently two parents informed me that their girl children, of exactly the same age, cannot come to my class any more, because in the afternoons, they, the parents, would be at work, and such 'infants' cannot possibly dream of coming over on their own - though the fact remains that literally thousands like them have done so for close to four decades now!) My God, she even outstrips Abigail Adams and Rani Rashmoni, about whom I have written gushingly in this same blog long ago...

Still a child, she became a translator for Gandhiji whenever he visited the South. She quickly picked up some Tamil and a lot of Hindi, and actually became a Hindi teacher to hundreds (she was then all of 13). She learned English only in her early twenties. She refused all donations from tycoons of the stature of Jamnalal Bajaj except for books. She was jailed again and again, and actually asked to be housed with the lowest grade of prisoners, just to find out how badly they were treated. She graduated in political science, and then became a qualified lawyer at age 22. At 37, she was elected to the Constituent Assembly - if not the likes of her, then who? She argued forcefully on countless burning issues (read the book), and moved more than 750 amendments. Born into Telugu, coached excellently in Hindi, she fought for Hindusthani to be made the national language, considering the propagation of Hindi 'a serious obstacle to the growth of the provincial languages and a provincial culture', and that 'the narrative to turn Hindi above all other languages was embittering the feelings of the non-Hindi speaking people': Amit Shah, will you please note? She fought for Constitutional protection of the Fundamental Rights of citizens,  for lowering the age criterion for qualifying for a seat in the Rajya Sabha, arguing that being older doesn't necessarily mean wiser, and for a reformed Hindu Code Bill which would guarantee shares of daughters in their fathers' property. In the early days of free India, she served in very high and responsible positions in the Planning Commission and the Central Social Welfare Board, and also won numerous national and international awards, including the Padma Bibhushan. She prepared the first report of the National Education Policy for Women. Her marriage to C.D. Deshmukh, the first Indian Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, was a huge success. She died in his arms, as she had always longed to, and the loving and respectful tribute he paid to her in the book My Durgabai, is something that could be the dream of millions of smart, cool, modern-day women.

And this was just one of those fifteen stars. The rest I leave to the reader who buys and devours the book because I recommended it. I end with a sigh: why haven't I met such women in such a long and inquisitive life? I wish someone would write a book about 15 women who have worked wonders to improve India since 1947... and I shall still lament that I haven't had the good fortune to sit at the feet of any of them. Some females asked with reference to this blog many years ago about me... 'Does he respect only strong and determined and socially beneficent women'? Yes, guilty as accused. It's the same way I think about men, you see... all the rest, just making a living, raising families, thinking of nothing beyond the animal appetites of themselves and their families, I have always sneered at as polluters of the world... they eat, shit, breathe out carbon dioxide, preen over their cars, phones and kids' marks in school, grow old, sick, die and are quickly forgotten even by their own families within twenty years at most. What do they matter? And why should I 'respect' them... just because they look human? Since when did respect become so cheap?

[The Fifteen, by Angelica Aribam and Akash Satyawali, Hachette India 2024, pp. 310, Rs. 371 on Amazon]

Sundarban Safari

Last week, I finally toured the Sundarbans after having wished to do it for more than four decades. Much of my to-do list has now been checked. And, owing to the delightfully congenial company, this was one of the best vacations I have ever had, which is saying something, because I have travelled so much for so long with so many people to so many beautiful and interesting places. 

Having first gone off to Calcutta, we set off for the jungle on the morning of Wednesday, 25th February. There was my friend Saibal the wildlife enthusiast and his wife Kulbir ji, with whom I had travelled to Kanha a year ago. They had made all the arrangements, so I didn't have to lift a finger. Pupu and Swarnava went along without having to be persuaded too hard: I was thrilled, for this was the first time I was travelling with them since they became an 'item' (I hope I am using the word in the correct Gen Y/Z sense). There was Pratyush, who revels in our company. And there was Shoumo the actor (to me, who has actually seen him growing up before my eyes, he will always remain my beloved nitbor). It was a three-hour drive along the Basanti Highway to Gadkhali, across the water from the much better known Gosaba, where we parked our cars and boarded the launch Delta Queen, which could at a pinch seat 40 plus, at a quarter to twelve. The afternoon was already warm to hot, but balmy. The boat was very well-appointed, with clean little washroom and beds, though we, it goes without saying, spent almost all the time lounging on the deck as we manoeuvred between the mangroves along the distributaries with pretty names (like Vidyadhari), some of which were bigger and deeper than many rivers I have seen inland (and so green, so green), keeping our eyes skinned in the hope of catching fleeting glimpses of all sorts of wildlife, and knowing that tigers in hiding were very likely keeping an eye on us. 

No, we didn't see any tigers. Which certainly didn't disappoint me, firstly because I have seen enough in the wild already, secondly because the locals say only half in joke that it is best not to see one, the first sight being quite likely to be your last, since virtually all Sundarban tigers are maneaters, and essentially because I love the forest and the water for their own sake, and don't belong to that class of tourists who go around the Himalayas for days and lament that they 'saw nothing' if they couldn't catch a glimpse of Everest or Kanchenjungha. Lunch was delectable and sumptuous; we were dropped off at evenfall at a nice little riverside resort with large rooms and ample beds. We found a lot of friendly to ecstatic canine company, which, for the likes of us (Shoumo is an animal rights activist among other things) is always a welcome bonus. The evening was spent the way we like best, drinks and snacks and a lot of adda and laughter, slowly dozing off, somehow dealing with dinner (no slight to the cook), then off early to bed and sound sleep.

Swarnava, Pupu and Pratyush hate waking up at daybreak even more than I do, so we were all groggy and grumpy when boarding the boat (this one was named Sher Khan!) at 6.30 next morning. But the beauty of the sunrise through the mist and the chilly wind quickly stirred up everyone's spirits, aided by a hearty breakfast. I don't know how, but everyone had already become garrulous friends with everyone else (I believe I was the quietest of all), and it is unbelievable how fast eleven hours passed, with lunch in the middle and some of us dozing off for short spells now and then. The cameras were worked like crazy: we eventually figured that more than a thousand photos had been taken, making me sigh to remember the days when we took along film rolls in modest quantity, and worried about making every shot, every frame count. We saw all kinds of things, from myriad species of birds (including a rare sort of eagle, besides egrets, kingfishers, adjutant storks) to huge crocodiles, monitors big and small, swamp deer, wild boar, otter, mud skippers, monkeys, snakes ... and miles and miles of dense, unspoilt jungle. What dismayed was the factoid that the sea is encroaching ever deeper inland, so the waters have become brackish, and as a result the sundari tree, after which the forest is named, is becoming scarce - most of the flora is of the garjan and hental variety. Oh, and in the early morning we had stopped at a site which offered a watchtower, a shrine to Bonbibi and Dakshin Rai, a large freshwater watering hole and a botanical garden designed to educate us about the local vegetation.

Next morning, Swarnava, Pupu and I cried off the boat trip, I because I was exhausted after waking up so early three days in succession, and S and P because they had work to do online (the internet connection, weak to non-existent, had been quickly restored the first day itself). Pupu and I have done this more than once - we need time to unwind very slowly; that is essential to full enjoyment of any trip. Shoumo and Pratyush went off with Saibal and Kulbir for another eleven hour sail. Frankly, I enjoyed the day quite as much as all the other days, doing absolutely nothing: a bit of reading, playing with the dogs, delicious lunch of lobsters, and Pupu came to sleep beside me while Swarnava was working through the afternoon. Late in the evening, we went for a walk up to the edge of the jungle to catch sight of spotted owls across a rutted path over an embankment in deep darkness. A few of the doggies accompanied us, heaven knows why. Pupu walked with her arm entangled with mine. Bliss.

On Saturday we boarded the boat for the last time at about 8.30, and, after another five hour cruise and a hearty lunch, we were dropped off at Gadkhali. By that time, the boat manager and guide had become friends: 'Do come again', they urged. We set off at around 1.15, took the road through Baruipur and Kamalgaji, and were back at home at around 3.40. I heard later that Shoumo, who dropped off Pratyush later, was discussing how lonely they would feel after four days of such jolly and close camaraderie. All of them have since thanked me for coaxing them into making the trip, despite all their work and engagements, so that's a small victory I think I can be proud of. I want to make loved ones happy, and cannot have enough of their thanks when I succeed. I missed Sunandini and Koushik and Aveek badly. God bless you all.

To all readers, I shall urge: make this trip, but do ensure that you do it with true loved ones.

Finally, two things that impressed me: the authorities were very strict about not carrying disposable plastic water bottles on the boat, and not one of the numerous boats we saw, some crowded with passengers, was playing earsplitting 'music' on so-called DJ boxes. More power to the elbow of the Forest Department, and may the tigers live in peace.

Back in Calcutta, I went to renew my passport. The hassle was absolutely hateful, especially the coldness or downright bad manners of everyone except the final clearing officer. Then imagine queuing up for visas every time like a beggar, then the expense, then long layovers and not being able to smoke for hours and sitting cramped inside a tin tube for 7, 10, 15 hours at a stretch and often not even being able to talk much with the locals because of the language barrier... so much for the 'joys' of travelling abroad, and I thank my lucky stars for YouTube: I can do all the foreign travel I want from my bedroom, at virtually no expense and trouble at all. If I cannot travel abroad like a VVIP, to whom no rules apply, I am better off without trying. I do hope, however, that I can see more of my vast and still in places charming country before I die.

For photos, click here.