Shubha Nababarsha / Happy Bengali New Year to all my friends, associates, comrades-in-arms and fraternal souls in kinship across the world! May the blessings of the Almighty be on all and may He, who is the source and sustenance of all that is, but for whose divine grace everything would fall apart, may that supernal light lead all unto humanity's eventual destination, the realisation of the reality beneath the surface cover of things material, the essential spirituality of existence!
At this juncture of our national life when factious and fissiparous forces threaten to tear the country apart and render the fabric of our integral national being hollow, it is pertinent to send a wave of goodwill across the peoples of the world by way of a gesture signifying that every celebration of festival or occasion otherwise, carries with it a necessary adjunct of universal fraternal feeling beyond the limiting scope of the culture to which the festival is specific. And in keeping with this universal spirit of all that goes by the name of Bharatvarsha (India), I send forth in the ten directions the newborn fruition of love, the pulsation of my heart's ardour for my sisters and brothers across the world to make this local affair a universal festivity of colour and joy.
Bengal beckons all this day to join in with her in this auspicious moment of the birth of her new year. Political boundaries are man-made for convenience of control of the masses, separated as they are by mores and modes, means and methods, morals and motivations. But the peoples cannot be contained within specific bounds, fluid as they are in cultural outflow, caressing and coalescing with siblings across the lines, transforming and being transformed in creative contact lending loving associations to lonesome schools to forge fraternal links across the human divides. Thus flows on culture from clime to clime, creating, coalescing, conforming, conditioning, converging and why? shamefully, converting too. This overflow, this diffusion, may neither be stifled nor stilled through whatever injunctions that may be levied against their spontaneous movement, for it is in the nature of things to seek expression through intermingling and intercourse and no amount of imposition may succeed in stemming this surging flood which keeps humanity, despite differences, united. India detected this unifying impulse of the human soul ages ago and set about calling in the whole of humanity to abide in a single nest, a la global village in pristine poetic terms.
It is, thus, meet that in consonance with this age-old spirit of eternal India, I send forth my love and friendship (maitree) across the horizons where kindred souls, suffused with the sweetness of the universal feelings of fraternity and a like love, will receive them to bond into a common mass of empathising humanity. And so, it ends here. This simple ceremony of love and light that Poila Boishakh is, it ends here with the passage of the day unto the awakening dawn of Doshora Boishakh. My heart opens to all in this festive mood, ushering in the new-sprung season of hope and aspiration for a brighter morrow to follow. Shubha Nababarsha!
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