ALL IN GOOD HUMOUR

ALL IN GOOD HUMOUR

IN RESPONSE TO MY DEAR FRIEND CHAPALES BANDYOPADHYAY'S SUSPICION AS TO MY INDIANNESS POST MY BIRTHDAY CAKE-CANDLE CELEBRATION

No, no,

Chapales

. There you are selling me short. I am more Indian than you suspect I am despite the annual aberration of the celebration-cake which is upon familial affectionate pressure and nothing beyond that.

This defence of my Indianness would be a long personal statement, so, I will desist from making it beyond stating just this much that the blood of the Rishis runs even fresh in my arteries as much as they run in yours. My writings over the years ought to have impressed upon you about my truest credentials and my identity thereof. Never thus run into hasty judgement from a clause or a phrase unto the content of an entire treatise for such fractional understanding is bound to be erroneous and one lending massive injustice to your subject of analysis and comprehension.

God bless you !

You see we are culturally caught in a universal web from which there is no respite at times. But the tenor of one's character ought to come out in one's thoughts as they do in my voluminous outpourings on the many national and human issues that I habitually lend my keypad to expressing.

My mother used to remonstrate about the 'cake-candle-celebration' and always exhorted us to go for 'payasam' (rice pudding) by way of birthday celebration but then times have changed and the younger generation affectionately lead us unto these European delicacies of delight to celebrate our day of arrival in this Occidental way.

But let me let you, Chapales, by way of passing remark that I did celebrate birthday the pious way too with the payas but there were no photographers available to capture the moment.

By the way. Ought I now to take recourse to writing in Bengali alone to prove that I am doubtlessly and not dubiously Indian? Ought I to renounce the language of Shakespeare and Shelley on account of it being Occidental, not that I do not delight in my occasional reverting to my mother tongue to give vent to my feelings? What do you say?

It is the heart, dear friend, beating to the pulse of the Ganga and the Sindhu-Saraswati and the sweeping winds of freedom blowing across the Himalayas and not the external attire or the occasional intake of a choice delicacy western that ought to determine as to who I am. I am more Indian than you suspect or even I, perhaps, suspect. I am Indian to my very marrow, to the soul that sustains me and sustains the whole of world civilisation. The world is but a subset of the universal set that eternal India is. Vande Mataram !

Written by

Sugata Bose

P.S. :

@

Tamanna Sharma

: No, no, there is a deeper connotation to what Chapales implies. This is in regard to an earlier post of mine on westernisation of the mind as being opposed to spiritualisation of it. The context is lost here as usual. Chapales raises a worthwhile point to which I have afforded him with a somewhat satisfactory defence. A broader delineation would demand greater and a more elaborate effort which I could not spare for the moment. But I will in my future essays address this cultural cross-fertilisation issue for sure. It is a most pertinent point that Chapales has raised.

Photo : Unto him I belong.

10Sharmistha Chatterjee, Riya Bhattacharya and 8 others

5 Comments

Like

Comment

Share