A Princess and a Pauper

 

The happiest moment after beginning campus life arrived a few weeks after our academic term began. The sky was overcast that morning; a wet wind announced the onset of happy rains, blowing away twigs and shrunken leaves accumulated over a long dry summer. As we were reluctantly preparing for college, the news came it would be a day off for the entire university. Moreover, it would be a day of outing, an English word I hadn’t heard.

Soon, hundreds of boys and girls began walking away from the campus, along gravelled roads, across barren undulating red laterite grounds called the khowai, many singing in groups. Our destination was the River Kopai. The horizon beckoned us as dark clouds above turned the ground below into a darker shade of crimson. An outing was a part of the campus life in Santinketan. An event to usher in a new season.

Whoever had thought of the event was a teenager at heart. Apart from being close to nature, it was the first time I was in proximity with so many young girls. After nine years in a boys’ school that was as barren as the sands of a seashore, spending half a day with so many beautiful girls was a delight. Countless glances would have been stolen that morning, and I guess some hearts would have been exchanged, or just given!

I gave my heart to a girl who smiled at me. She was beautiful, slender, and exceedingly fair. Let me quickly add that she would have been beautiful in everyone’s eyes, not just to a seventeen-year-old yokel. She looked like a princess. Most unfortunately for me, she was actually a princess! Of an Indian princely state.

I never mustered up the courage to speak to her, though I rehearsed the opening lines of a never-to-happen dialogue in my head millions of times. There was some chemistry whenever our eyes met on the campus. There was also a hint of a smile on her lips, or maybe, I imagined it. In our dining hall, I noticed her a couple of times, looking dejectedly at the steel plate with rice, watery dal, postor jhol, and maybe, an egg. Her grandfather might have been an admirer of Rabindranath Tagore, but it would have been cruel to expose her to the food served by the kitchen of the university set up by him. She left after a few months.

A huge burden was off my chest.

Bengaluru, March 2025

Things India Has that America Hasn’t

An Instagram post of Kristen Fischer, an American mom living in India, has gone viral recently. It has been reported by Business Today, and I presume by others too. Perhaps more relevantly, it has been picked up by BJP’s cyber army and is being circulated by them. I received a WA forward from a patriotic friend before I got the newsfeed. What is there in the 84-second video?

Ms. Fischer records ten reasons why India is better off than the US. Here are the main points. 

• India has a hugely successful Instant Digital Payment system.

• AADHAR and PAN Cards are digital.  

• Autos and rickshaws are cheap and convenient.

• Doctors and medicines available freely; one can choose one’s doctor / hospital.

• Indians are free to hire helps and labourers; in America, it’s far too expensive. 

• Delivery systems – you can get anything in minutes. 

After watching the video, I wondered if Ms Fischer will ever apply for Indian citizenship! Jokes apart, it would be reasonable to think this video will reach millions of Indians and present a perspective that our saffron outfits would love to propagate. (No wonder they are amplifying it.) Therefore, it’s necessary to examine how valid her arguments are.

Of Fischer’s points, the Instant Digital Payment system in India (Paytm, Google Pay, etc.) is a tremendous achievement possibly unmatched anywhere else in the world! Kudos to the government and the engineers who made it possible. But the rest of the comparisons are—for want of a better word—bullshit.

It is beyond debate that the top 5–10% of India has a lifestyle comparable to or better than that of the middle class in the richest countries. India’s problems begin and end with the bottom 90%, who are actually worse of in New India, where investment is on glitzy superfast trains for the rich and not on replacing rickety old trains for the hoi polloi, where higher education is available to the highest bidder unlike in the past when rich and poor had almost equal opportunities as higher education was largely subsidized.

Therefore, Ms. Fischer is comparing the top 10% of India with maybe, the top 80% of the US, where a domestic help drives a decent car to my son’s home to do housework for a wage of $50 an hour. (She must be among the poorest in the US!) In Connecticut, I talked to a plumber in 2009 who charged $185 an hour. He might have been earning more than some high school teachers there. Dear Reader, please compare them with your domestic help and the plumber who fixes your bathroom fittings. 

Forget about the five trillion economy touted by the top guns of the government. The real issue today is fast-tracking income inequality, poverty, and unemployment. It is a good time to be rich in India. Greed is good!

In contrast, in the Global Hunger Index (GHI), India stands at 105th among 129 countries in 2024.[2] This is even after providing free ration to 80 crore people. 

The table above sums it up. Here are the main takeaways. 

1. The country which is 119th in terms of GDP (PPP)[1] in the world has the third highest number of dollar billionaires. 

2. We have more dollar billionaires than what Germany and the United Kingdom, the two largest European economies, have together. 

3. On the other hand, Bangladesh, which has per capita GDP (PPP) not far below India’s, has just one dollar-billionaire, indicating that our neighbour has far less wealth disparity than we have.

To sum up, India is a poor country of grotesque inequalities, where government policies help the super-rich, while a vast majority languishes in poverty and hunger. In any structure, when the top becomes heavier than the bottom, it collapses. What, do you think, is India’s future?

12 March 2025

POSTSCRIPT: What makes our rulers so desperate that they need certificates from sundry Americans? 

*

An explanatory note and the sources of information (All websites accessed on 12/03.2025):

1. GDP (PPP) is the nominal GDP adjusted for the cost of living in each country. India’s estimated nominal per capita GDP is $2,940. But a dollar in India buys about 4 times what a dollar can buy in the US. Hence our per capita GDP (PPP) is about 4 times the nominal GDP. Obviously, the GDP (PPP) is a far more accurate indicator of the actual level of prosperity in a country.]

2. [https://www.globalhungerindex.org/ranking.html]

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_countries_by_number...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_countries_by_GDP...

Something to cheer about at last!

The morning today brought two pieces of brilliant news, something that happens rarely. Eighteen-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju has become the youngest world champion in chess, a game that was invented in India. The second piece of great news is a sensitive matter, let me quote The Telegraph, Kolkata:

“The Supreme Court on Thursday [12 Dec 2024] restricted courts in the country from passing any orders on disputes relating to places of worship till its next hearing of a challenge to a 1991 law that prevents one religion’s sites from conversion to another’s. … The bench also barred the registration of fresh lawsuits relating to such disputes, at a time when Hindutva groups have been filing cases demanding the handover of the sites of various mosques and dargahs they claim were built after demolishing temples.”

I will come back to Gukesh in a moment, but first, what is the “Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act 1991” and why is it at the centre of our attention today?  

The government of Mr Narasimha Rao (blessed be his soul!) through this act of 18 September 1991 froze the religious characteristics of every place of worship in India as it had been on 15 August 1947. In simple English, if a place of worship was a mosque at the time of our independence, it would continue to be a mosque for all times. It couldn’t be changed, etched in stone! Ditto for churches, synagogues, temples, and so on.

The only exception to the law was the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya because a legal battle about its ownership had begun even before independence. Let us park the sad story of the Babri Masjid and move on.

Thanks to the 1991 law, there was no legal battle to change the status of any mosque, although the Hindutwa brigade claimed  several mosques in North India had been built on the ruins of temples destroyed by Muslim invaders. The law stood as an impenetrable barrier against starting more demands of conversion of mosques into temples. And thus avoided new communal flashpoints. 

This was the situation until 13 October 2022. On that day, our Harvard educated brilliant former Chief Justice of India made an oral observation in an open court that opened a Pandora’s box. He said although that there were laws to maintain the status quo in places of religious worship, there was no harm in checking their history. How charming!

There was no written order, but the oral observation by the highest court was good enough for the saffron brigade to demand “surveys” of many important mosques, from Gyanvapi in Varanasi to Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan, which had nothing to do with Muslim rulers, but is a tomb of the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishti (and one of the holiest places for pilgrimage for Muslims the world over).

Recently in Shambal, Uttar Pradesh, one fine morning, a local sundry Hindu leader dreamt there was a temple buried under the 16th-century Jama Masjid, a Mughal-era mosque in the town. Within hours of the “revelation” a local court ordered a survey of the mosque. It led to an agitation by Muslims killing of at least four of them, many arrests, and a communal strife that brought the town to a halt. However, being the law-abiding citizen that I am, I believe the former CJI DY Chandrachud cannot be connected to the loss of four innocent young live in Shambal.

By its proclamation yesterday, the Supereme Court of India Bench comprising of the CJI Sanjiv Khanna, Justice Sanjay Kumar, and Justice K.V. Viswanathan has temporarily stopped the attempt by our ruling party to create endless tension in the country which will offer them electoral dividend maybe, for decades. I do hope the honourable justices will make the stay permanent.

Moving back to chess, Gukesh has achieved something that no great masters could achieve. Even Bobby Fischer, considered the greatest chess player verifiable history, became the world champion at the age of 29. That might help us to put Gukesh’s achievement in some perspective.

Some people might say that Gukesh’s victory in the final and deciding game was scratchy as his opponent’s blunder presented the game to Gukesh on a platter. But isn’t luck a necessary ingredient to every victory in sport? Who cares if the tennis champion got a favourable net cord at a crucial point?

Congratulations Gukesh! After Neeraj Chopra, you will surely inspire Indian sportspersons to become world champions. Actually, you have even inspired this 70+ year old writer to take his work more seriously, to strive for the best. Thank you Gukesh Dommaraju. <>

Friday, 13 December 2024

 

A photograph of Barkat

 Shamsur Rahman

 

বরকতের ফটোগ্রাফ / শামসুর রাহমান >>>

[Twenty-five-year-old Abul Barkat was one of the language  martyrs of 1952 in Dhaka when he was a student of Dhaka University. He had been born in Murshidabad in undivided Bengal in 1927. It has been a pleasure to translate this moving poem by one of the finest poets in Bangla. I hope you will like it.

The original in Bangla follows.]

 

A forgotten tract of ancient grassland,

A palace of bushes and weeds, a glittering sky,

A veranda before an unseen room,

A mother who never steps out looks on

She hadn’t got any signal sent out by history.

The early-morning breeze hasn’t ruffled her hair.

 

As she looked ahead,

Did she think the dawn was like a sibling?

I wouldn’t know, I would never know.

So many years have flowed upon her

Like waves. The most faraway star in the sky,

A magpie, a river, the new moon,

Clusters of fireflies, and a sunbaked highway

Marked her as a bright fragment of history,

But she didn’t know; she never realised.

 

Had she ever written letters to someone

Late in the night in a script of affection?

As she dipped her toes

Into the dark waters of the lake,

Did her afternoons fall towards the skyline

As the long wait raised her heartbeats?

Had she read political pamphlets thoroughly?

Had her name been jotted in fat notebooks

In police stations? Even if I exhausted myself

By asking the tree bending over my window

again and again, I would never know.

 

I didn’t expect an old photograph of Barkat

To land up in my hand in the late evening.

From the cosy shelter of his mother, it’s now

Found the warmth of my palms. It’s not easy

To look away. If I said there was

No spell of wonder, no grand revelation,

There was nothing to be thrilled about,

It was only a chapter of history

That soared out of my vision and merged into

The blue firmament, would I be

Spreading falsehood?

Flowers fall on the meadow,

Flowers fall on the meadow,

Flowers fall on the meadow.

A faraway star wants to rush in

From the sky and kiss

The earth covered by grass and flowers.

 

You can stitch together a delectable story

With the photograph of Barkat at its centre

Adding a little seasoning of middleclass sentiments,

The vows of the 21^st February,

The vows of the flaming palashes in spring.

But I’ll do nothing of the sort.

No one has given me the right

To bury the pristine virtue of a sunrise

Beneath dark clouds,

Beneath a mist of garrulous words.

The fleeting moments of a tenebrous evening

Tell me, ‘Keep looking at the photograph

In silence. Let time flow

Like the meditation of a saint,

Like the ripening of a fruit.’

Barkat’s old photograph

Beneath a sheet of glass with etched motifs

Is faded, dirty from the dust strewn

By the hooves of a galloping time.

I swear in the name of my language,

I do not know how a million sparks

Spiralled out of the photograph

And spread everywhere.

I cannot say why in this late evening

I am drowned in an ocean of light.

 

Translated in Ooty

07 December 2024

 

***

 

বরকতের ফটোগ্রাফ

শামসুর রাহমান

 

কবেকার ঘাসঢাকা এক টুকরো জমি, ঝোপঝাড়ের
খাসমহল, ঝকমকে আকাশ
অদৃশ্য ঘরের বারান্দা, অন্তরালবর্তিনী
মায়ের তাকিয়ে-থাকা
ইতিহাসের কোনো ইশারা দেখেনি। সকালবেলার হাওয়া
অবিন্যস্ত করেনি তার চুল। তার দৃষ্টি ছিল
সামনের দিকে, ভোরকে সে সোদরপ্রতিম ভেবেছিল?
বলতে পারব না, আমি বলতে পারব না।
তার উপর দিয়ে ঢেউয়ের মতো গড়িয়ে গেছে
বছরের পর বছর। একটি দোয়েল,
আকাশের সবচেয়ে দূরবর্তী নক্ষত্র, নদী, অমাবস্যা,
জোনাকিপুঞ্জ আর রৌদ্রদগ্ধ রাজপথ
তাকে চিহ্নিত করেছিল ইতিহাসের উজ্জ্বল অংশ হিসেবে,
সে জানতে পারেনি, বুঝতে পারেনি কোনোদিন।

 

সে কি কখনও রাত জেগে কাউকে লিখেছিল চিঠি
অনুরাগের অক্ষর সাজিয়ে? দিঘির জলে পা ডুবিয়ে
তার বিকেল কি সন্ধ্যায় ঢলে পড়েছে
হৃৎপিন্ডের স্পন্দন বাড়ানো প্রতীক্ষায়? সে কি রাজনৈতিক
ইস্তাহার পড়েছে খুঁটিয়ে খুঁটিয়ে? তার নাম কি
লেখা ছিল পুলিশের স্থুলোদর খাতায়?
জানালার দিকে ঝুঁকে-থাকা
গাছটিকে প্রশ্ন ক’রে ক’রে ক্লান্ত হ’লেও জানতে পারব না।

 

ভর সন্ধেবেলা বরকতের পুরোনো এক ফটোগ্রাফ
আমার হাতে এসে যাবে, ভাবিনি। তার মায়ের
যত্নের আশ্রয় ছেড়ে সেটি এখন
আমার হাতের উষ্ণতায়। সহজে চোখ ফেরানো
যায় না, যদি বলি, বিস্ময়ের ঘোর নয়,
কোনো চমৎকারিত্ব নয়,
কোনোরকম রোমঞ্চও নয়, শুধু ইতিহাসের একটি অধ্যায়
আমার দৃষ্টি থেকে ছুটে নীলিমায় মিশে গেল,
তবে কি মিথ্যাকে প্রশ্রয় দেবো আমি?
ঘাস-ঢাকা মাটিতে ফুল ঝরে,
ঘাস-ঢাকা মাটিতে ফুল ঝরে,
ঘাস-ঢাকা মাটিতে ফুল ঝরে।
সুদূরতম এক নক্ষত্র আকাশ থেকে ছুটে এসে
চুমো খেতে চায় ঘাস-ঢাকা, ফুল-মাখা মাটিকে।

 

চমৎকার একটি গল্প বানানো যায় ফটোগ্রাফের
বরকতকে কেন্দ্রবিন্দু ক’রে
মিডলক্লাশ সেন্টিমেন্টের ভিয়েন দিয়ে।
একুশে ফেব্রুয়ারির শপথ, শপথ এই
ফাল্গুনের গুচ্ছ গুচ্ছ পলাশের,

আমি সে রকম কিছুই করব না।
সূর্যোদয়ের মতো পবিত্রতাকে মেঘাচ্ছন্ন করার,
অক্ষরের প্রগলভতায় কুয়াশাচ্ছন্ন করার অধিকার
কেউ আমাকে দেয়নি।
‘এই ফটোগ্রাফের দিকে তাকিয়ে
নীরব থাকো, সময় হোক পরিপক্ক ফল, সন্তের ধ্যান’,
বলল আমাকে সন্ধেবেলার মুহূর্তগুলো।

নকশা ঘেরা কাচবন্দী বরকতার পুরোনো ফটোগ্রাফ
সময়ের ছুটন্ত খুর থেকে ঝরে-পড়া ধুলোয় বিবর্ণ,
অথচ আমার মনে হলো, সেই ছবির
ভেতর থেকে জ্যোতিকণাগুলো
চক্রাকারে বেরুতে বেরুতে নিমেষে
ছড়িয়ে পড়ল সব খানে। শপথ বর্ণমালার,
কী ক’রে ভর সন্ধেবেলা আমার চতুর্দিকে
আলোর সমুদ্র, আমি বলতে পারব না।

* আবুল বরকত ১৯৫২ র একজন ভাষা শহীদ। জন্মেছিলেন অবিভক্ত বাংলার মুর্শিদাবাদে ১৯২৭ এ। শহীদ হন ঢাকায়, বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে পড়াকালীন।