"WHO IS KK?" -- WHITHER VANITY, BENGAL? WHITHER SANITY, BENGAL?

"WHO IS KK?" -- WHITHER VANITY, BENGAL? WHITHER SANITY, BENGAL?

Many of us are coming to a sense of late realisation but right realisation, nonetheless, in the wake of yesterday's mismanaged show at Nazrul Mancha that in the opinion of many may have precipitated the perhaps avoidable death of KK.

This is the latest in an unending series of uncivil treatment to which Bengalis have historically subjected their own greats like Rammohan, Vidyasagar, Madhusudan, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Rabindranath and a whole host of luminaries. In this case, though, the artist was not a son of the soil but the characteristic carping remark did come from a son of the soil with scant apology following the unforeseen sudden demise of the victim in unseemly conditions. 

Bengalis revel about their culture and it is true that their is much in Bengal to rejoice about. But that is the enlightened Bengal which forms the creme de la creme of cultured society and not this degenerate mass who are the epitome of aberration of culture that masquerades, nonetheless, as ambassadors of the same with foolish popular following that can scarce look through the hollowness of these pretenders to artistic prominence.

There are, as perhaps in every society in greater or lesser degree, two distinct strata of people -- one that forms the enlightened section in truest terms and the other that resides at the base with equally base culture which through popular acceptance is sanctioned as art. These two strata, not in socioeconomic terms but in cultural and aesthetic terms, can never meet. The one gives food for the soul while the other supplies fodder for the body, each to each contributing its culture, refined and coarse, to the body politic of the race.

So, I say, that, historically and now, we have much to rejoice about, much to be humbled by such seminal attainments of our greats instead of arrogant basking in their glory, and much more that should put us to shame that despite it all we have not grown in character that can attribute to us fundamental decency, decorum and the instinct of delight in others' attainments, be they home-bred hither or home-bred thither, for all of humanity by our own constant and vociferous assertion is one.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : courtesy, internet.