GHOST-EYE: A journey into the unknown

If you really wish to enjoy Amitav Ghosh’s latest and his tenth novel GHOST-EYE, it will help if you believe in reincarnation and brought-forward ancestral memory from one’s past life, because reincarnation is a central theme of the novel. I don’t wish to scare you, but it would be a bonus if you believed in “metempsychosis” too. (If you didn’t know the word, no issues; it would just mean you haven’t read Ghost-Eye). Metempsychosis is migration of the soul from the body of a dead animal to that of a human or the other way round. For example, you were an otter in your last life and are reading this now! (I understand there are many recorded cases when little children accurately describe another place and family where they claim to have lived in their previous life. But I remain a sceptic. As I read Ghost-Eye, I carried the burden of my scepticism.)

Amitav Ghosh, a significant literary voice cautioning us about the climate disaster, has used the delicate ecology of the Sundarbans not just as a background, but as a central character in his novels THE HUNGRY TIDE (2004), THE GUN ISLAND (2019), and GHOST-EYE (2025). All of them carry strong messages about saving our planet. Another interesting aspect of Amitav Ghosh’s novels is the ease with which he moves between the past and the present and between continents! (In The Gun Island, between the Sundarbans, Los Angeles, and Venice.) His craftsmanship as a novelist is awesome; his language, captivating. Despite my scepticism, I got immersed in Ghost-Eye in no time.

Soon, I discovered that the arcane title of the novel comes from a protagonist, a Sundarban-based climate activist Tipu, whose eyes are of different colours. Tipu’s “ghost-eye” gives him the power to clearly see the past, the future, and also, things happening far away. And the phrase ghost-eye becomes the signature of a group of mysterious humans with similar abilities. 

Moving on to the story, like The Gun Island, Ghost-Eye too is narrated by Dinu, a middle-aged single man who lives in New York. Dinu tells us the story of Varsha Gupta, a girl slightly younger than him, and who grew up—like him—in Southern Avenue flanking the Dhakuria Lake in Kolkata in the 1960s, although they didn’t know each other. One day, Varsha stubbornly demanded to eat fish and nothing else. She also claimed that in her previous birth, she had lived with her fisherwoman mother in a thatched hut near a river. Both fish and poverty were anathemas for Varsha’s wealthy, strictly vegetarian family. Devastated, they got in touch with Shoma Bose, a clinical psychologist—who happened to be Dinu’s aunt—to counsel Varsha.

A parallel story begins when Dinu is confined in his New York flat during the COVID pandemic. Far away in the Sundarbans, a company is about to set up a large coal-based plant, despite warnings from environmentalists that it would be a disaster for the tidal archipelago. Tipu, who is among the people who are trying to block the project, believes there is a connection between averting the crisis and a former client of Shoma. Through video-calls across unstable connections, Tipu prods Dinu to trace that particular client of Shoma. Digging into his memories of Shoma and bits and pieces of clues, Dinu tries to identify the client like a detective, as Shoma’s professional ethics doesn’t allow her to reveal anything about her clients.

There are two ways of looking at the immensely readable novel. I feel that while Ghosh’s first novel based in the Sundarbans, The Hungry Tide, explores the intersection between nature, folklore, human survival, and science, in his latest Sundarban-based novel, while the first three elements remain, “science” has been replaced by the “paranormal”. Given the wiring in my brain, I cannot be happy about the shift personally.

However, you can also say that reincarnation has been used merely as a literary tool here, Amitav Ghosh—through folklores of the people of the Sundarbans—is actually looking at our past, and the disaster that our future is increasingly looking like

Bengaluru / 14 March 2026

Joining the Khan Market Gang

After an insanely sumptuous breakfast at our New Delhi hotel, my son Ritwik and I went to see the samadhi of a frugal eater who would go on fast at the drop of a hat. Rajghat was a few metro stations and a short autorickshaw ride away from our hotel.

Ritwik, who belongs to the cash-rich-time-poor generation of modern India, had come to Delhi for two days’ work, but didn’t have the time to visit home. So we decided I would spend a Saturday with him. Here is a brief note on the exhilarating day.

At the place where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated in Rajghat, a low rectangular black marble monument has been built. It was designed to be minimalist and simple to reflect the values of the great man. The not-so-great men who killed Bapu are our rulers today. But they haven’t messed with his samadhi, at least not yet, unlike the vandalism they have done in Jallianwala Bagh. Lata Mangeshkar was singing Gandhi’s favourite Gujarati bhajan, "Vaishnava Jana To” when a pleasant breeze blew over the green lawns shining bright under a clear sky in the late-winter morning. Some visitors—Indians and foreigners who incidentally hadn’t come on tourist buses—were sauntering past the memory of the greatest son of modern India. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi still draws people. I am waiting for the day when he reclaims his place in the public life of India.

From a sad landmark of modern India to the beginning of the Indian civilisation. The section on the Harappan civilisation in the National Museum was overwhelming. I had no idea that their pottery was so large, in such varied shapes, and with such intricate designs. When their seals with right-to-left writing come out of pages of books and present themselves in three dimensions, it’s an indescribable feeling for the viewer. Unfortunately, the two most relatable artefacts of the period, the dancing woman and the bust of a bearded man, are in Pakistan. But what is in India is no less remarkable.

What bowled me over completely was a woman’s skeleton excavated in Rakhigarhi in Haryana between 1997 and 2000, which is incredibly undamaged. In his book EARLY INDIANS, Tony Joseph has written that only one of the fifty to sixty Rakhigarhi skeletons (c. 2600–2200 BCE, the Mature Harappan phase) offered DNA good enough for genetic analysis. And that skeleton (not the one in National Museum) settled one question finally. The Harappan civilisation happened before the steppe pastoralists migrated into India. the two groups had no shared genes.

As I looked at the woman wearing shell bangles on her left wrist, she opened a window to my distant past. She reminded me that we are descendants of an incredibly brilliant, peace-loving, mathematically gifted people. If young Indians are a force in the world of technology today, maybe, 5,000 years ago, the woman lying before me had passed on some of the genes that made it possible?

It was lunchtime and after walking many miles, the breakfast was almost forgotten! We weren’t far from Khan Market, where we went up a narrow staircase to reach Khan Chacha’s eatery. I am sure I had done a few good deeds in my previous life which entitled me to savour such a delectable combination of rumali roti and mutton at Khan Chacha’s. Must visit the place again because I doubt if there is a comparable place in heaven, which anyway is an unlikely destination for me.

Khan market, named after Gandhi’s friend Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was set up in 1951 to rehabilitate Punjabi refugees from West Pakistan. Over time, thanks to their enterprise, it has evolved into a first-class commercial hub frequented by politicians, journalists, diplomats, and other well-heeled Delhiites. For this reason, the Sanghi types coined the derogatory term “Khan Market Gang” to describe people who wear Western clothes but not a tilak, who read books, speak English, and are generally unaware of the original phase of the acche din two millennia ago. I noticed that the incorrigible Khan-Market crowd is yet to soak in the “sanskari” vibes and many of them still enjoy meat and reading. (Also, women’s clothes showed a distinct lack of disinclination towards the decadent West.)

To cater to readers among them, there are wo terrific bookshops in Khan Market: Bahrisons and Faqir Chand. We happened to walk into Bahrisons, which had books stacked from floor to ceiling, where Ritwik and I got exactly the books we were looking for. (Faqir Chand, a few blocks away, looked almost identical.) On top of that, there were copies of Amitava Ghosh’s latest novel _Ghost Eyes_ signed by the author. Ritwik grabbed two copies, one for a friend.

By then, I was quite tired and wanted to retire. But fortunately, I remembered that the National Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA in short) which we had crossed in the morning wasn’t far away. For a long time, I had wanted to see Tyeb Mehta’s Human Landscape once again. And a Hemen Majumdar painting of a woman who was startled and embarrassed, presumably because someone had seen her while she was undressing.

Ritwik hadn’t visited NGMA, which has the finest collection of modern Indian art from Rabindranath Tagore to Bikash Bhattacharya. For the following three hours, Tagore, Abanindranath, Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, Binode Behari Mukhopadhyay, Amrita Sherghil, Maqbul Fida Hussein et al took us to another world. I saw Tyeb Mehta’s painting again and was as amazed as I was the first time, but I couldn’t find Hemen Mazumdar or the large canvas of Jogen Chowdhury. (Why?) I was transfixed as I stood before a simple FN Souza drawing of a man in a few strokes. His haunting eyes gobbled me up for a while. It is a shame that NGMA doesn’t allow photography and hence I cannot show you the picture.

While our taxi went through a tree-lined avenue with embassies on either side of the road, I thought the areas we covered yesterday, i.e., a triangle with Aerocity, Rajghat, and Khan Market at its vertices, was possibly one of the finest urban landscapes of our time.

To wrap up, let me not forget say that contrary to popular belief, the Delhi people we met were almost epitomes of politeness. None of the three autorickshaw drivers we met tried to fleece us. Rather, they asked for modest amounts. Once, when we had to travel much longer than what the auto driver had initially anticipated, he didn’t grumble. And he was visibly pleased when I paid him for the extra distance without his asking for it. The oldest among the three, sixty plus Suresh Pandit, a proud brahmin and a true vegetarian, drives 20+ kilo metres from his East Delhi home to the Khan Market auto stand. Pandit said he was struggling to make ends meet because the app-based taxies were driving auto rickshaws out of Delhi roads. I was tempted to ask him if he realised that the political party he supports is doing exactly the opposite of what Gandhi prescribed, they are making life more difficult for the people who are already vulnerable.

 
I didn't ask him the question and he smiled warmly when we parted.

.

 Bengaluru / 08 February 2026

 

My Friend Pradip

 Last Thursday evening, as I sat through idleness and incessant rain outside, there was a phone call from an unknown number. It was one of those Bengaluru days when dampness reigns supreme and you tend to look more inward than outside. The call was from Kaberi, my friend Pradip’s wife. Kaberi said, ‘Your friend has left us today.’ The line was bad; I could catch little of what else she said.

I hope I won’t live long enough to receive many more such phone calls. But I won’t say it came as a shock, neither will I say I was devastated. What I can honestly say is this: since that moment, a dull, impalpable sadness has been hanging around me like the all-encompassing mist in rural Bengal in an evening in Hemanta, the often-unnoticed season between autumn and winter.

The phone call took me back to an indeterminable date in mid-1969 when Pradeep and I sat in the same classroom for the first time as undergrad students. Pradip, good looking and exceedingly fair, was mostly in kurta-pyjamas-slippers. His kurtas were invariably in light pastel shades, I didn’t see him in flashy clothes even as a teenager. We became friends easily, although we were very unlike. Pradip was quiet, never gloomy or angry, and always smiling, none of which adjectives fits me. In Bangla, Pradip means an earthen lamp. It won’t be an exaggeration if I say Pradip radiated happiness, which too is a kind of light. I believe Pradip never fought with anyone. I haven’t heard anyone say one negative word about him. That, in substance, was my friend Pradip Brahma.

While I lived in hostel, Pradip lived in a rented house with his mother. For some reason, I never visited their house in Santiniketan, although after graduating, I went to their Dhakuria home a number of times. It was a simple no-frills middleclass home.

Pradip was a disciplined hard-working good student. He did well at studies, but his BSc marksheet was unspectacular, as far as I can recall. After graduation, he didn’t join the Master’s course like most of his classmates. He did want to study further, but his family couldn’t afford it; he had to find a job quickly.

Back in the early 1970s, job opportunities were a negative number in West Bengal, which was going through the bloodbath of a failed revolution. Simultaneously, several economic factors including militant trade-unionism combined to drive away capital from Bengal. Major, century-old companies shifted their base away from Calcutta: Britannia, Brooke Bond, Lipton, ICI, to name a few. Thousands of manufacturing units, including a leading company, Metal Box shut down. The once thriving industrial estates in Howrah, which had begun under pioneers like Alamohan Das in the previous century, was turning into the death-valley of small industries that it is today. “Wagon breaking” would soon become an industry in itself. In front of their Chowringhee head office, jobless Metal Box workers sat under a red flag on a rug, shaking Bourn Vita tins partly filled with coins with a slit on its lid. Bourn Vita boosted their lives in the most perverse way then. They sat on the rug until death did them part, while the states whose names uppity Bengalis pronounced with disdain moved past. “Madrasis” had stopped coming to Calcutta for penpushers’ jobs; the reverse migration of Bengalis to South India for livelihood was yet to begin.

As unemployment stared at me, I had no idea how I could even look for a job, barring responding to rare adverts of job vacancies. But Pradip believed it wasn’t a problem. One just had to try hard. I was with him in one of his acts of trying hard when he and I barged into the office of the India Meteorological Department in Alipore with our CVs in plastic folders.

Although we were unsuccessful that morning, Pradip did find a job by trying hard. I don’t recall what kind of work it was, but I am sure it would have been one of the lowest paying sit-down jobs an educated person would accept. [After reading this, Pradip's daughter Rupsa told me that her father actually worked in a rice godown. It was far away from Jadavpur University, where Pradip would attend classes after his day's work. Rupsa also told me that her father had never even scolded her.]

Many in such a situation would spread roots under their desk and retire as a grumpy old man after wasting 35 years of their life. But Pradip enrolled for a three-year part-time MSc in Physics at Jadavpur University where he attended classes in the evening. If you don’t know how enormously difficult commuting was in Calcutta then and how tough physics is at the Master’s level, you won’t perhaps appreciate what impossible an unspectacular Pradip achieved in three years of work plus study.

Then he did his PhD from—if memory isn’t playing me false— the Indian Institute for Cultivation of Science in Jadavpur. He joined as a lecturer Sir Gurudas College in the city, from where he retired 10 years ago. There too Pradip showed his academic commitment. Instead of watching TV serials in the evening, he kept working on Solid State Physics through his college job and even after retirement, when he once told me, ‘I have published at least one paper every year since I began research.’

He need not have.

My transferable job took me away from Calcutta and I lost touch with Pradip soon after graduation. We picked up the thread in 2000, when I left my job and returned to Kolkata. Pradip was happily married then, his wife Kaberi, herself a highly competent person, too taught at a college. Their daughter Rupsa studied engineering and got a job at campus placement which took her to Japan. She and her husband work and live in Singapore now with their little son.

While Pradip did exceedingly well in his career and personal life, a neurological condition troubled him in the last inning of his life. Neurological medicines, which are invariably toxic, slowed him down and added kilograms to his once fine body. When I saw Pradip moving with difficulty, I recalled he was one of the finest table tennis players among us. And like in his life, he was never aggressive while playing table tennis. He would block all your smashes with infinite patience until you hit one into the net or go beyond the table.

He blocked the relentless aggression of a neurological disease for ten years or more until 7 August 2026. But ultimately, everyone has to lose the last match.

Goodbye, my friend. At last, you have managed to draw a few drops of tears in my eyes.

Bengaluru / 12 August 2025

 

WHY KOLKATA?

Although I am an authentic mache-bhate Bengali, more than half my friends are from South India. Incidentally, many of them have lived in what was then Calcutta for at least a few years; three among them were born there and studied up to primary school to university in the city. One among them, Ramachandran, is the worst Calcutta fanatic I’ve come across. He says Flury’s makes the tastiest pastries in the world, Nahum’s, the richest plum cakes (of course, in the world), and you get the juiciest beef rolls ITW at Nizam’s behind New Market. I have at times wondered why every one of them is such a passionate lover of the dying city where you sweat 24X7 for eight months, a city that routinely goes under water at least three times between July and October, a city that is perennially dirty and overcrowded. … How on earth can you fall in love with her?

I reckoned they are in love with the metropolis because most of them lived there in the 1960’s or before, when Calcutta was actually one of the finest cities in the world. In the late 1950s, and even in the ’60s, every morning when I waited for school bus around five-thirty,  the roads used to be washed with water jets. There was a separate network of pipelines all over the city for drawing water from the Ganga for this purpose! (On our terrace, there was a topless tank to store the untreated river water that was used for cleaning etc.) There were hardly any taller-than-three-storey buildings; the sky was much bigger. Roads were well maintained. Buses were crowded; trams were spanking clean. It was unthinkable to get cheated by a Calcutta taxi driver, particularly if he was a Sardarji.  Hawkers hadn’t taken over the pavements along every major throughfare. The cinemas in upmarket Chowringhee were a treat. Even in the late seventies, you could enjoy a relaxed drink at the uncrowded, beautifully furnished pubs in Globe, Light House, and Metro after watching a John Ford or Clint Eastwood Western. In Metro, we would walk unsteadily (even without a drink) as our ankles sunk in the soft carpet. Usha Uthup used to sing at the Trincas. The television hadn’t arrived.

But all those were merely on the surface. I believe those who knew the city intimately also experienced non-transactional, much warmer one-to-one relationships with the people around, something that might not have existed elsewhere. Also, Calcutta didn’t look down upon the poor. Rather, she had space for everyone. That tradition continues. Presently, in my three weeks stay here, I’ve had a few glimpses of that egalitarian warmth.

In the much better organized city and the tech capital of the country where I spend half my time these days, changing a watch battery costs ₹800+ at the nearest watch shop which happens to be in a swanky shopping mall. Therefore, I was delighted when my Casio watch stopped during our flight to Kolkata.

Next morning, I went to our local watch-man Aseem, who has been running a road-side kiosk for 20 years near my home. Aseem showed me a Maxell battery and put it in the watch for a hefty sum of ₹200. (Before writing this, I checked online. Aseem Banerjee matched the price offered by Jeff Bezos.) Then I sheepishly fished out an Allwyn watch that had been dead for over 10 years. I hadn’t thrown it away only because it was a gift from my beloved (and only) wife. (Those days, the price of a quartz wrist watch was half my monthly salary and more than what she earned as a school teacher in a month.) Aseem opened the case and fished out a black mass. He said he would replace it with a new movement which would cost ₹550 including the battery! … I am sure you will find people like Aseem in less prosperous areas of Bengaluru or Hyderabad, but the difference here is, it’s the norm in Kolkata. But there is a flip-side to the story.

Aseem has been selling his expertise for 20 years. Nothing has changed for him in these two decades except that he has become older.

The next story was narrated by a friend, S. S’s Man Friday Dilip (name changed), who is about 60, suffered a massive heart attack not long ago. After a few hits and misses at different hospitals, S managed to get Dilip admitted to RG Kar Medical College, one of the oldest, largest, and filthiest government hospitals in Kolkata. (As you would know, RG Kar has been in news recently because a trainee doctor was raped and murdered in its premises and the powers that be have been largely successful in burying the case.) My friend said it was past midnight when they reached the hospital which was unbelievably overcrowded and unclean. Stray dogs seemed to have 24-hour passes at the hospital. Lots of patients were in the Emergency ward and outside it. Sitting, lying down, on benches, on the floor. Through the chaos, a group of men and women (more women than men) in white coats ran around, not walked, and treated patients. My friend was amazed to see that the doctors actually treated patients in such an environment. Dilip was admitted and brought back from the brink. (He would have died if medical help was delayed by a few more hours.) Later, a stent was implanted in his heart; he was discharged in a week’s time. The cost of treatment? Zero rupees, as Dilip had been wise enough to acquire a free Sastha-Sathi insurance card from the Government of West Bengal.

The third anecdote too is about sickness, but on a much smaller scale. the main protagonist in this story is a fiftyish woman whose name I do not know. We call her Neera’s ma (name changed). Neera’s family irons our clothes and her mom comes to collect and deliver clothes. She is not a particularly busy person; whenever she comes, she sits down for a chat, which is pretty long when my wife Arundhati (name unchanged) is present. We too love to track the career paths of her three daughters. The first one is a trained nurse, the second, a commerce graduate, packs materials at an Amazon godown for 12 hours every day. The third, Neera, is studying nursing and midwifery. A competent mom has seen to it that her daughters stood on their own feet in a country where millions of graduates are unemployed.

Over time, Neera’s mom has become a family friend. She came in the evening one day and sat down. Arundhati was limping a bit; Neera’s ma quickly diagnosed the problem and before leaving, prescribed what to do.

Minutes later, she came back with a pain spray and said it had reduced her  ankle pain. But, ‘You must take paracetamol along with this.’

Besides reducing Arundhati’s pain, Neera’s mom demonstrated why Kolkata even now is the most charming place ITW.

Kolkata / 21 May 2025

The Princess and the 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।