Sanatan Ghosh: An Obituary

Now, I don't expect you to have known him. But let me tell you that he deserves more than the passing tribute of a sigh. Though all nature would not stand up and say 'There was a man', he was great in his own way. Most of his days were spent in teaching (free of cost) the poor boys and girls of Rajhaati, a remote village in Hooghly, near Khanakul where Rammohan Roy was born. He inculcated in the local boys and girls a taste for literature and other cultural pursuits. He was one of those 'communists' who could express his views without consulting the party office. And he was humble only before those who were worth it. His death has virtually orphaned hundreds of poor students. I cannot express how much he loved me and how I esteemed him. I cannot help writing a few words about him, knowing it well that words are, after all, inadequate vehicles of emotion. Long live 'Shonakaku'!

A Postmodern Celebration of Fragmentation (of Patella)

This is to inform all admirers of the versatile genius Muktiprakash Roy that he has recently (14 July, 2008) accomplished an almost Humayunish feat by falling from stairs and experienced a fragmentation of right patella. The fall, which could have been a tragic one, was, still, due to hamartia, i.e. he had slippers on, which, as their name suggests, have a propensity to slip. Thus, his slippers slipped on the stairs, made slippery all the more by the rainwater running down them. Perhaps there was hubris as well, since the almost-tragic hero had thought conceitedly that he could tackle such a hostile consolidation of fatal forces against him. So, having undergone an operation on 15 July, he now rests at his own Dwaipayan, like Duryodhan, with a postmodern smile of defiance on his chubby face.

Leisure

How many seas must a small boat sail, before she sleeps in the sand? Now, I hope Bob Dylan won't mind if I tamper with his lines a little. Let's call it 'personalising Dylan', eh? I found this boat at Taalsaari, a seaside tourist spot near Digha, where the Bengalis go to booze and die in the sea, or to have some quick illicit f**k. My visit was a relief from a hectic schedule. So, I couldn't help identifying with this boat, resting after some hard wrestlings with the sea. Queer, isn't it? She had to come up on land to rest, and I chose to plunge into water! I have named this picture 'Leisure'. Look at it and feel the mood of soothing relaxation creeping up your toes. Only if you have worked really hard to earn it, you would know what leisure means. As this boat seems to know!

Homecoming

Ugliness is but a nightmare.
The tawdry tinsel, paint and mask
vanish bahind the final curtain,
The Closed shutters
Of all shops in this market square.
The lights on the wares flicker no more.

The performer, with his paint off,
Runs up the way he had walked down.
The painted woman returns to her motherly self
From the public light to a private dark

Where embrace drowns the stink of gutters ...
Where kisses are not for sale ...

Sisyphusing My Time

It is really unbearable—this feeling of isolation. Don’t you think that behind our social or familial existence there is an untrodden territory of loneliness? Untrodden, because none but ourselves roam about that desolate place, knowing fully well that neither can we share, in the real sense of the term, the feeling or destiny of others nor can anyone else share that of ours. Does it really matter? What does it matter if we live in our capsules of consciousness? But humans love to socialise. They don’t relish the idea of being locked up in narrow prison-cells the walls of which are too thick to let any noise through.Yet, I cannot help sensing the impossibility of complete self-expression. How do I communicate my today’s melancholy to you?
In Bengali there is a peculiar expression—“Mon kemon korchey”—to portray such an inexpressible feeling of melancholy. Has anybody hurt me? No. Am I in some kind of trouble? No. Have I done something wrong? No. May be, it makes me melancholy to feel that I am wasting my time. Life is very precious in the sense that it is not going to last. So, I must make it really worthwhile. But, at present, I am doing something servile. Sisyphusing my time. I am wasting every precious minute of my life in drudgery. I must shake slavery off. Otherwise who is going to lend me an extra second of life when mine is over?
But, again, humans do not survive on enjoyment alone. I cannot be Maugham’s Wilson, the famous lotus-eater, who relinquished his drudgery for a life of supine sensations (and pathetic death). Even he was calculative, though his calculation was not foolproof. I dream of a life of blessed idleness, spiced with reading, writing (not answers for students this time) and listening to music. I am tolerating my drudgery only because it helps me store up for my arcadia that lies near the horizon. Sorry Mr. Kierkegaard, I will not ‘leap’ up to God.

After Some Fresh N Fruitful Showers on My Sunburnt Brain

It is 8 May 2008, Thursday. I am in Kolkata. Is has rained in the evening. So, the weather has cooled down considerably and I feel like writing something just to celebrate the relief after a day of sticky heat. Why not ‘flirt’ with philosophy? With due respect to the wise reader’s scornful smile and legitimate feeling of irritation at my intellectual pretensions, there is reason to be optimistic, eh? Whenever the heat becomes unbearable, rain follows. So, I feel violently tempted to using clichés like silver linings to every cloud. Or, cloud-lining to every sultry day!
It follows that nature takes care of everything, if we don’t interfere much in the process. If one understands this, one feels relieved of the painful task of making one’s own choices and suffering the consequences thereof, like a devoted Nietzschean. One can leave the entire thing to nature, or to the mysterious power one calls God, for a more skilful management of life’s business. Bad faith? May be. But what relief! And who could handle one’s own business before birth or after death? Can we oversee the decomposition of our own bodies and distribute the elements properly or reassemble them to make another being with a new composition of old elements? Let Him/ Her (lest the feminists should take offence) who looked after my foetus and would supervise my decomposition, take care of the interim, i.e. my life.

The Value of Silence: A Blogger's Dilemma

Whenever I am told to write anything I cannot help remembering a story included in my school syllabus. Thus the story runs. One day a man goes to a forest and finds a human skull lying on the ground. In a perverse mood of humour the man asks the skull what it is doing there, and much to his shock, the skull replies, “Talking brought me here.” The man runs to the king and reports that he has found a talking skull. The king sends two soldiers with him to see if what he says is true. The soldiers are also given the secret order that in case the man proves a liar, he is to be killed on the spot. Now, when he reaches the spot, the skull refuses to answer back in spite of the repeated queries of the man. He is beheaded. When the soldiers have left, the skull asks the man’s severed head what it is doing there. And it replies, “Talking brought me here.”
So, talking has always been a dangerous thing. And my personal experiences have taught me that blessed are those who can keep their mouth shut even in the most provoking circumstances. In this respect I can tell you what I heard from one of the senior teachers of a local college. There was some kind of meeting once on the college premises where distinguished guests were invited, including the formidable political figures. One of such political veterans had the temerity to say, while commenting on the miserable condition of education in our country, that he doubted there were lecturers, even in the English Department in that college, who could speak English. Now, there were people who could challenge him on the spot and prove the reality to be otherwise. But, their prudence prevented them from doing so. Therefore, if the senior teachers choose to use silence as a defence mechanism, it is not advisable for a part-time lecturer to be much outspoken. To blog or not to blog, that is the question!

Writing from the Farmhouse

This season they have sown no seeds.
The old stubbles stand,
waiting for further progress to weed them out.

The sun melts down the horizon
The field lies supine like a corpse clothed in red mistrust.

Heroic Couplets, Celebrating the Victory of Mr B over Literature

As Eternal Providence ordains all
And Nature responds to the Master’s call
Every sapling towards the sunlight grows
And every mind some development shows.
The Genius must be one who does rebel
And dim the diamond and polish the pebble.
So, Mister B was on a dark night born
By Infernal Decree to cloud all morn.
Stupidity blessed him as his height grew
His hollowness none matched, his hunger few.
Learning he despised but earning he loved
And that aim he fixed, though his brain Age robbed.
Literature was his chosen victim
Of such war Lady Lit could never dream.
His head she smites, impregnable as rock
Easier it is to move a wood’n block.
One by one fail all her weapons of sense
He stands immune e’en to grammar and tense.
His mighty company politics keeps
From his dread name the Superhero peeps.
So, all appeals of sense he treats with scorn
Fallen angels with clubs his sides adorn.
From the Government’s guesthouse, known as jail
Millions more in encouragement rail.
Giving up hope Lady Lit sounds retreat
Captured is she from her glorious seat.
Chopped into pieces on a four-legg’d block
Her flesh is sold to the following flock
That does not eat but sells the flesh again
For such scanty price as four out of ten.
The hero triumphs and shakes off worry
Celebrates victory with mutton curry.
O hail the Victor! Prince of Darkness rules
Who has banished wisdom and honoured fools.
My verse his vices rare shall eternise
And celebrate his victory o’er the wise.

Part-Time Lecturers in West Bengal, India

A Short Note on Part Time Lecturers in West Bengal, India.

I do not know why I am scribbling about the part-time lecturers in West Bengal, all of a sudden. Why should people like to know about this melancholy band of neo-proletariats? But, what if somebody does? If not today, may be, in some distant future someone might come across, however inadvertently, this small article of mine. Then perhaps, much like the cave-paintings made by some whimsical savage, this writing will become an important piece of social document!
This is obvious that the part-time lecturers, referred to as ‘part-timers’ (for contempt as well as convenience), are those fellows who teach in a college ‘some’ days in a week, meaning, they do not have to work for ‘the entire duty hours’ or on ‘all weekdays’. But, whatever is ‘obvious’ is not always ‘true’. Part-timers is West Bengal often work five days a week and take as many classes as the so-called ‘full-timers’. But see the discrepancy in the pay scale. While the ‘full-timers’ get nearly 20000 bucks a month, the part-timers are paid less than 4000 for the same work and with the same qualification! Though the U.G.C. recommends that all part-time lecturers should be given 4000 rupees for only ‘six’ classes a week, the colleges compel them to take 10-12 classes a week, and yet, refuse to pay as much. In addition to that there is outright show of disrespect from the full-time teachers to the part-time colleagues. Even the clerks or peons look down at these unfortunate young men—an unorganised band of cheap labourers. Only the students do not discriminate between teachers. They only classify teachers as the good/useful ones and bad/useless ones. They would treat a teacher scornfully, even if he/she were a full-time one, if he/she failed to command their respect with skill, knowledge and proper guidance.
Moreover, there is a feeling of insecurity. Any part-timer may lose his/her job, if he/she displeases the college authority. Some colleges even cut down the scanty pay of part-timers in ‘slack sessions’ when there are fewer classes. So, the Marxist system of thought is queerly applicable to explain such exploitation of these educated young men in a ‘communist’ state. The government is a capitalist here, education being its business and the colleges being the ‘means of material production’. The part-time lecturers are the proletariat who do not own these means and, therefore, are exploited mercilessly for the profiteering motive of the government. I wonder how shameless people can be. How can people draw a whopping 20,000 as salary and offer 2000 or 3500 rupees to fellow workers?

Mama-Bhagne Rocks

This is a place I took my students to, for a picnic, on 2 Jan this yr. Mama-Bhagne Pahar. In Bengali 'Mama' means uncle (mother's brother) and 'Bhagne' means 'nephew'. Nice place, but looks unimpressive until one is suddenly exposed to the weird stretch of huge chunks of stone. So far as I remember, it is in Birbhum, West Bengal, India. Looks awesome, doesn't it?

Son-Shine

This is my son. Just eight months old. Shouldn't I be proud to be his father? His name is a bit difficult though. 'Swastyayan', meaning 'a ritual that exorcises evil'. Nice name, eh?