Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore), you bet, has not authenticated me to scribble my dirty hands on his far-fetched introspection into a mature India, an India without walls of self-centred sabotage. Even I haven’t been instructed to unveil the mist of false notion. I don’t know even the least little meaning of beyond-border existence. I know not what significance the word ‘philanthropy’ carries within. Only thinking has brought me here.
As I see, so I am. India tries hard to storm into a brain-churning world of vocabulary, where she catches with her angle the words related to ‘death, kill, lynch, assassination, trepidation, blood, gory, hopelessness, destruction, serial blasts, fanatic, militant, perversion, human trafficking’ and making a terrible brainstorm, fills in the blanks of the crossword puzzle with them. I can see the crossword puzzle drawn on the wide atlas, and oh! – the longitudes and latitudes appear to be the X and Y axes. As I am, so I see. Thinking makes me think. I’m trying to think. But thinking makes me think what I’m trying to think. I’m riddled.
My Poshchim Bônggo is gradually sinking into the state of stupor. What is stupor? The Merriam-Webster would suggest, a “state of extreme apathy or torpor resulting often from stress or shock”. The Wikipedia would show, “Stupor is the lack of critical cognitive function and level of consciousness wherein a sufferer is almost entirely unresponsive and only responds to base stimuli such as pain. The word derives from the Latin stupure, meaning insensible.”
If you ask me, I will say, I’m neither in a medical bend nor in a hurry of pathological criticism that I would gush out some inherited half-witted skill. I will say, stupor is like climbing up a watchtower and sleeping till one’s town is done over. I am sure you have already set up a settlement beside the Merriam-Webster dictionary as well as Wikipedia. No, they are right. They have worked out a nearest interpretation of biological/physiological stupor – ‘state of unconsciousness’. And/But (place whatever you wish) I am talking about a mysterious stupor.
Yes, it’s all about the intolerably mechanical torpor. The whole of India, especially the youths of West Bengal should arise from the state of mental inertia and awake. I again assert – I am, therefore I see – I see, therefore I am. So I should say and write what I see, just see.
Let us read the line, “Only a man harrowing clods”. We shall rend the sky by praising Hardy for giving us an enormous opportunity to break the token of sensitivity in “In Time of the Breaking of Nations”. Now, after a huge applause, we shall go a little ahead.
Now, let us roll our eyes over the line carefully, “Only a man harrowing clods”. Can you see any sign of Hardy? ‘NO!’ if truth’s to be told. See again, yes, the line has become yours. The yesterday-privacy of Hardy has become today-privacy of yours. It’s a queue, which extends from the days of yore to the days still-to-be-discovered in future. So, no property is mine, everything is yours. We understand something, as something, we cherish, to insert in the process of understanding for the generation ahead. So, we have come to this understanding that understanding regulates understanding. Every second reading is regulated by the first one. Following the same track, the ancestral understanding becomes the understanding of a modern man. There can hardly be any such word like ‘achievement’. Achievement is not a hunt for pleasure. It is no mere gold rush too. What we may achieve is but the knowledge of truth. And knowledge of truth gives you a holistic happiness.
Once in a few days in the past, I visited the Bagbazaar ghat, alone, with an aspiration for taking a look at the flowing Ganga (Ganges), the ferries, the slowed-down-at-the-quay bhutbhuti-s (engine-driven boats), the homeward galaxy of crows, the yellow watered down in the ripples of leisurely passing Ganga, the crimson diluted in the blue sky, the grey cloud of smoke bulging out, the white loin wet in the waters, and myriad indescribable colours. And I never rose from the stone stairs until all the surroundings came to be engulfed in murk. I sat there alone, alone with the opaque shadow of my own, to reconcile with the truth. Often I won the charm of Nature. Often was it all in vain. Still I believe, when my eyes became swelled up with tears for an unknown reason, I felt the natural go of life – the common folk passing their days, going to offices, lifting the shutters of shops, stirring the cups of tea, breeding, feeding their children, challenging everyday market, enjoying death, going down under the wheels of trains, committing suicides. I could easily perceive this all, the rough edges of human life. I saw Truth standing tall, wearing a technically brilliant smile that any Vinci would have portrayed bad pictures of it. Since the days tinted with every shade of RGB, I have been busy encoding existence into a life proper.
I felt an irresistible pull towards Rabindranath – the never-to-be-ignorable power – power, not of muscle but of mind. He won the Nobel Prize and brightened the face of India with literary effulgence, I’m sorry dear – I am least interested in chewing this addle cud. If you ask me who the Rabindranath is, I would spring up out of my being to declare that he is a lyricist of life, a composer of death as well as a singer of breathing. He gives me a holistic happiness.
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