musings

listless drops patter by

sludge and filth are all that is left

anger and frustration mark the day

as the seeping sand escapes its bind

the city trudges wakes and moves

sans the breath of life

automatons all pushing ahead

sans the act of human soul

a heaving mass trapped in the everlasting mire

of sludge and filth

clay strapped butterflies who never learnt to fly

and yet you walk because you dream

a dream you have yourself forgot

what was it?

what that great hope that gave you life?

it is lost with the breath lost to the city smoke

where is life

i can see none here

A Hero on one knows

                                              

The very concept of Success is funny. We always do take a Material variation of it as a Measuring Stick. No matter whom you consider successful somewhere subliminally it is due to some profitable result of their action. So even though we find a dead Hector at the end of Illiad successful, it is due to the skill he showed in Battle and by the count of the heroes dead by his sword. In the film 3 Idiots the sacrifice of Phunsuk Wangdu meant nothing till he was shown as a World-conquering Scientist, similarly Bhagat Singh Batukeshwar Dutt’s sacrifice is highlighted due to the successful raids against the enemy, in this case the British. The concept of success today in ennobled by a materialistic need of tangible result rather than the simple act of living one’s life on their own terms. So Success is measured in what is done to others or in comparison to others rather than a finite achievement of happiness or a satisfaction in the face of the spectre of Death.

                I have chosen to reject this concept of Success as to me a Successful man is one who can go into the final embrace of Death with a smile on his lips. Bearing that in mind I have chosen to share the Story of Vallabh Kanu. A man I am pretty sure none of you have ever heard of. He was born in Habibpur in today’s Rajshahi District in Bangladesh sometime around the 1890s. He was by birth a Santhal tribesman and unlike many of his compatriots neither his Father nor he ever converted to Islam. They were maintained by the Zamindar of Pusa and as such were virtually his slave. Though the Muslims atleast had the strength of numbers the Tribesmen were quite simply slaves of the Brahmanical socio-economic state of the day and the Zamindar maintained an iron-hold on their life. The rampant sexual abuse the Women of the Tribes faced made it even difficult for the husbands to ascertain if the Child was actually theirs leading subsequently to absentee Fathers who turned to alcoholism and prostitutes to shed the miseries of their existence. Like all other children born of Tribal Mothers Vallabh, who was actually named after the contemporary Zamindar, found himself baptised in the furnace of hard physical labour while still at a tender stage of his life. He started working on the lands of the Zamindar at the age of 5 and like all tribals practiced archery to supplement the needs of nourishment and for entertainment. Being one of the best shots of the region and having aced at the Indian form of Wrestling, Kushti he joined the Zamindars veritably private army of goons who kept peace in the area within his control. He was not good at the traditional Bengali Martial Art of Lethel: a kind of stick fighting, that is useful against and with swords and spears too: and so he was solely used for clandestine murders when he used poison-tip arrows to decimate those who raised their voice against the Zamindar. However, though his own family was perfectly safe he found himself unable to accept the casual manner in which the Zamindar and the British committed atrocities on the common people, especially the tribals. Based on the recollections of my ancestor who was then posted there with the Police I gather that he had started grumbling against the zamindar and the British by the time he was 19. Around 1912, with the Partition of Bengal finalised he tipped over the edge. Scared of Islamists and riots he asked the Zamindar to issue guns to the tribals as well and not just the caste Hindus employed him but he was rudely spurned and asked to defend his little hamlet with the arrows he had made so famous. That day he walked out of the palatial haveli never to step a foot inside it ever again. When the riots started the tribals successfully defended themselves for 5 months and were about to be overrun when the local Police were reinforced with the 36^th Pathan Regiment from Lahore and they were effectively saved. However denuded of able-bodied men and still nursing rampantly raped Women they were in no condition to pay the regular Khaajnaa; the Land tax that the Zamindar demanded who was in turn getting pressurised by the British to pay for the allocation of the troops in his region. Finding the Tribals unable to pay the Tax the zamindar thought of the only way he could realise the money to pay the British; he leased out that piece of Land to a Scottish Entrepreneur who intended to start Jute Cultivation there to feed his vast Mills in Howrah near Kolkata. However the Tribals under the leadership of Vallabh were belligerent. They had no intention of vacating the land that they believed was theirs by right of Birth.

                It was around this time that the Administration and the Zamindar realised that during the fight against the Muslims, Vallabh had first become the Maddi of the tribe, a priestly Warband leader and had then become the Morol of the tribe, the Chief of his people. So they were not arguing with a rebellious youth but with the Chief of his people. At first the Police and Zamindar Vallabh Kanti Sen kept returning to the hamlet to try and talk to Vallabh to get him to listen to them. Mr V.B. Sen also went to the extent of offering him one of his houses in the area free of Charge while the Scottishman whom unfortunately my ancestor refers to only as Kincaide promised him that all the tribals would be employed by the Firm. He started softening up when the Zamindar Mr. V.B. Sen started speaking about restoring the pride of his glorious people and suitably mollified him by gifting him a relic of a gun. He also promised to uphold the honour of Tribal women and keep them safe from the predatory intentions of the Caste Hindus and British Citizen something which was concurred by the British District Magistrate, a Mr. Vaughan Rose. With the Tribals suitably mollified the land was handed over to the firm of Mr. Kincaide and there was a great celebration in the Zamindar’s haveli to which many of the Tribal Elders went though Vallabh Kanu stayed back with his people for some religious celebration to mark the hand-over. In the midst of revelry some of the Junior White Officers came upon a young tribal girl and in some drunken moment of viciousness raped her till she lay dead in a small clearing. The News reached Vallabh and he considered himself betrayed and realised the futility of dialogue with the people he considered hostile to his people as a race. In a moment of Passion he called upon his warriors and attacked the camp of the Pathan Regiment and in the fight concentrated their zeal on the Officers’ Mess. The ferociousness of their attack took the Drunk Army by surprise and the massacre was satisfying. They especially having heard that the Whites had raped the Girl ensured that every White Officer they met was slaughtered but they fought with bows, arrows, swords and scythes against an Army that carried 15 Vicker Machine Guns. The major section of the Young Male Population had already been decimated by the time Vallabh Kanu ordered the retreat. He was himself injured and by that night saw to it that as many women as could ran away from their village towards Kolkata.

                There is no happy ending to this Story. Within three days under a Sikh Zamadar Officer the Regiment decimated the males of the tribe and raped the Women that were left till they were glutted even though the Local Police and Civil Administration tried to stop them. Some of the White Officers made the youngest boys run in the Agricultural Fields while they targeted their heads with rifles in something resembling human hunting in its most violent Post-apocalyptic form. The Zamindar Vallabh Kanti Sen felt such remorse that he left social life to take Sanyas while Mr Kincaide brought in more amenable labourers in the form of Muslims from Eastern Uttar Pradesh area of today’s India to work in the fields and drive the Trucks to Kolkata. The section of the Population that managed to flee to Kolkata suffered unrecorded Hardships but I know many of them even today almost generation-wise have served in Kolkata Police from the roles of Constables to that of Sub-Inspectors. Vallabh Kanu was caught alive but died of Gangrene in a Prison in Dhaka. Before being taken away some of the White Officers had forced him to see as they had raped his sister. That is the summarised story of Vallabh Kanu.

The natural Question anyone will ask is where is the success in that! All we see is suffering and it is not like I disagree with them. All the Biography has here is suffering but as I stated earlier Success is not always measured by that which is won but by that which satisfies us. Vallabh towards the end of his life confessed to my Ancestor that he carried no regret in Afterlife because if the girls were raped, they were getting raped anyway but he said when he will meet his Gods he can look them in the eye and say “I am just the man you made me. You gave me problems and I faced them and at the end I did the only thing I could, I died with honour and if you ask me what did I do in my Human Incarnation I can tell you I have come to you happy; Because I never stopped Fighting”.

A lost Chance

Listless Sand breaks and bends
Freed from the twining arms of the Hourglass
A second a minute an hour a Day is lost
As each waves crests and breaks on the Shoal
At the end of it we turn back to look at the all Work done
And see but the vast that is still left undone
A sad penny drops
A drop, a dew burns
Where is this end?
The Horizon that goes further still
Where is that which will matter
Where is that which brings life back
As the sand slips from listless fingers forlorn
I look and Life; why is it still alone!

The Lonesome Beast

A ripple is cast in the Pool of Life
When you yourself do not recognise
A panting breath as you land in midst
With wild eyes and bleary view
And see the reflection of a new beast
Absent reason, cause, instinct or pain
And then you look at the eyes of the Beast
And see yours staring back again
For the ripple is you sans fur, claws or teeth
Absent cause yet filled with savage glee
When did you lose your way
Absent of mind found none to hold you in sway
And then scratched in the Forests of the Night
Found bleeding here to stay
When did you lose yourself
As the Boatman of the twilight sang his song
And you saw you being taken by
When did you lose what in you was best
And are now a Beast
Absently scratching by

An Article I posted in The Hindu long ago

What Democracy!

I stand in a unique position to evaluate what is being considered as the greatest internal security threat to the Democracy of India. I am the scion of a family that once had ruled over a race of indigenous tribes in Harishchandrapur for 150 years giving me an understanding of their troubles but I am also the descendant of the same people who ultimately ensured mass conversions to Islam to escape from Religiously sanctioned extortion and coercion that amounted to torture. However my family who were zamindars were replaced with Democratic Bureaucrats whose Actions did not vary. The tribals even in Independent India have faced a continuous and unabated stream of apathy and at times outright animosity. While Minority Groups have had their rights protected by the Government and their representatives and there has been a steady development among the Scheduled Classes the Tribes remain even today bereft even of basic primary education due to reluctance in the administration and severe economic disparity in the Country and thus fail to even take advantage of the Reservations allotted in higher education.

It is unfortunate that a section of the population with an enviable physicality and mental resolve are today in the garb of terrorists instead of adorning our Military and Police Services or bringing glory in Sports. The simple Physical Conditioning of the Tribal Individual is at par with the needs of the National Defence Forces but their regressive existence where they lack exposure to the Modern World render them unfit for such duties. Perhaps Recruitment Cells in the Tribal Areas for the Army and the Police could germinate the seed of ambition in the Tribal Youth to take the path of Patriotism instead of Leftist Extremism. Moreover like among the Santhals in West Bengal a fear and hatred for the Police could be mitigated by the Induction of the tribals in the same, a project the British had started with Induction of the Athletic Santhals as Constables in the Calcutta Police Force after the Santhal Revolution.

However no manner of economic reforms could successfully bring the spectre of Extremism to extinction unless it was followed with social reforms. The average Bengali barring the large number of practicing Communists, veterans of many revolutions, even in today’s world suffers from a sense of a superior state of existence to the tribals and the same is true in every state of the Country. The Social Isolation of the Tribal Individual added to the deprivation suffered at the hands of the Social forces finds no release in special committees like those made for the Religious Minorities due to their non-viability as a Vote Bank. Moreover the lack of Basic level of Education, which is due to a lack of Governmental Schools in these regions, ensures that they are unable to access any private means of Income while the path to Government Services is barred as aforesaid due to the same. The simple desperation leads to the extreme attachment to their land which it appears always falls in Areas of Importance for the National Economy or Ecology. There are greater Policy Makers than me but these seem to be the factors that give birth to Incidents like the Slaughter of CRPF Jawans in Dantewada after which the plight of the Tribals become a fashionable topic of discussion for a time being and is then forgotten by both the Policy Makers and the Population and a part of the National Citizenry continues to live in a state of existence sans electricity sans education sans regular Nutrition even and continue an existence dependent on Charitable Institutions and other NGOs and Socio-Religious Institutions like the Ramkrishna Mission.

In such a situation where generations have taken birth under the shadow of oppression and depression the path to Violent Revolution must seem inviting to the Tribal youth which is complemented by the Romanticism of the Communist Dream of a classless society. Perhaps like in North East and Kashmir the Children should be taken on a tour of India to show them that there is a life beyond the smell of Gunpowder they have grown up with and perhaps then we will have a better World for them and for us.

ESCAPE

funny i know it may seem and to think so is well
but i wish to sleep closing myself to all travail
i know my work is not done and her i will get only with its end
yet now to my will i do not seem to bend
i only wish to close my eyes and wish all troubles away
and calmly slide in gentle sleep and slide in its sway
to snugly fit against soft where they make a pretty cleft
and thus ensconed allow sleep to use its talent deft

for only with the portals closed is she truly mine
in my arms i get her only away from the bright sunshine
i have her yet i have her not as fate plays its own toss with me
is it too much to ask of it to let me in her arms be
till it does i have my sleep bereft of any rest or wish to ask
for only there does my soul in its true sun of her eyes glorious bask

Life

what is life sans soul bereft of pleasure or pain
akin to a pot with neither worth nor use
helpless and mewling in the maelstorm in vain
what is life with neither purpose nor honourable ruse

flailing in past hurtling to future dark
is that reality a path to the skeleton stark
the ever present omen the fear of death
it is so scary yet has seductive stealth

a fear of death is right so instinct says
yet how it is the fear with temptation does mate
is that right? a part of human ways
where the death scares yet brings all expectations met

what is it that i do want
my life or the death i shunt