Subho Nobo Borsho
Yes ... today we are celebrating the Bengali New Year ... its the New Year 1415, and so I wish you "Shubho Nobo Borsho" 
Last year, on this day, I took you on a trip to Kolkata. This year let's go somewhere, far away from the city, to explore another facet of Bengal ... the rural Bengal !
The serene beauty of rural Bengal has inspired deep feelings in poets down the ages ... feelings which find eloquent expression in Jibanananda Das, who earned the appellation of "Rupasi Banglar Kavi" (Poet of Beautiful Bengal) ! Jibanananda wrote lovingly of the open fields, of the roads stretching far away, of the evenings lit by glow-worms and the mysterious nights broken by the shrieks of owls. Deeply rooted in the regional ethos, the poems are intensely Bengali in temper and tone ...
"Rupasi Bangla" (Beautiful Bengal), 1957, won spectacular popularity and commercial success. Among the 61 poems collected in this volume, 58 are sonnets, most of them conforming to the Petrarchan structure. The response to these poems, all celebrating rural Bengal, was overwhelming. Some years later, during the struggle for the liberation of East Pakistan, some of the poems acquired an unexpected political meaning. In particular, the line “I have seen the face of Bengal’ became charged with a feverish patriotism ! But interestingly, Jibanananda never apostrophized Bengal as a Mother Goddess. His Bengal, is earthy, concrete, pulsating and sensuous, redolent with myths, history and poetry, and lively and vivid with its trees and plants and birds and beasts.
To understand his world, one must first put into perspective the fact that he appeared on the Bengali poetry scene 40 years after Rabindranath Tagore, and comparisons are inevitable. When put side by side, Tagore is the "traditionalist" while Das is the "modernist", and while both poets are driven by an intense love for Bengal, the Bengal that is revealed to us in both cases is completely different.
Tagore eulogised Bengal in his poetry ... " Amar Shonar Bangla" (My Golden Bengal), 1906 cleary shows this. The word 'shonar' literally means 'made of gold', though in the song 'shonar' Bangla may be interpreted to either express the preciousness of Bengal or a reference to the colour of fields before harvest. The song was written during the period of 'Bangabhanga' (Partition of Bengal) to rekindle the unified spirit of Bengal. It is interesting to note that the first ten lines of this song were adopted in 1972 as the Bangladesh national anthem.
My Bengal of gold, I love you.
Forever your skies, your air set my heart in tune as if it were a flute.
In spring, Oh mother of mine, the fragrance from your mango groves makes me wild with joy.
Oh, what a thrill !
In autumn, oh mother mine, in the full blossomed paddy fields
I have seen sweet smiles spread all over.
Oh, what beauty, what shades, what affection and what tenderness !
What a quilt you have spread at the feet of the banyan trees and along the banks of the rivers !
Oh mother mine, words from your lips are like honey to my ears. Oh, what a thrill !
If sadness, dear mother mine, casts a gloom on your face, my eyes are filled with tears !
Reading the poetry of Jibanananda Das, however, is a different experience ... His poems have all the ingredients of the modern man's anguish: pain, despair, yearning, set against a familiar landscape of the eternal, the eternal in this case being his beloved birthplace of Barisal, East Bengal, now Bangladesh. In his poetry there is an overwhelming sense of longing to return — to that which is pure, to that which is the beginning, to that place which cannot be reached. Jibanananda's poetry becomes a search for awareness, for light in the darkness of modern existence, that is filled with half-truths, weariness and existentialist despair.
I share with you one of my favourite poems which celebrates his desire to return to Bengal through several births ... "Abar ashibo phire" (I'll come back again ... )
I'll come back again to river Dhansiri’s bank, to Bengal,
Perhaps not as a man, but as a white hawk or a shalik bird;
Perhaps as dawn crow, floating on the mist’s bosom to alight
In the shade of the jackfruit tree, in this autumn harvest land.
Or maybe I'll be a pet duck of a young girl, ankle-bells on her reddened feet,
Drifting on kalmi-scented waters all the day.
I’ll come this way again, for love of Bengal’s rivers, fields, crops ...
To this green kindly shore of Bengal, moistened by river Jalangi’s waves.
Perhaps you’ll see a glass-fly soar on the evening breeze,
Perhaps you'll hear a barn owl call from the branch of a shimul tree;
Perhaps a little child scatters rice-grains on the courtyard grass,
Or on the Rupsa’s turgid stream a boy steers his dinghy
With torn white sail — you'll see white herons flying through red clouds
to their nests, in the dark. Among them all is where you will find me.
Photos : The Net
Last year, on this day, I took you on a trip to Kolkata. This year let's go somewhere, far away from the city, to explore another facet of Bengal ... the rural Bengal ! The serene beauty of rural Bengal has inspired deep feelings in poets down the ages ... feelings which find eloquent expression in Jibanananda Das, who earned the appellation of "Rupasi Banglar Kavi" (Poet of Beautiful Bengal) ! Jibanananda wrote lovingly of the open fields, of the roads stretching far away, of the evenings lit by glow-worms and the mysterious nights broken by the shrieks of owls. Deeply rooted in the regional ethos, the poems are intensely Bengali in temper and tone ...
"Rupasi Bangla" (Beautiful Bengal), 1957, won spectacular popularity and commercial success. Among the 61 poems collected in this volume, 58 are sonnets, most of them conforming to the Petrarchan structure. The response to these poems, all celebrating rural Bengal, was overwhelming. Some years later, during the struggle for the liberation of East Pakistan, some of the poems acquired an unexpected political meaning. In particular, the line “I have seen the face of Bengal’ became charged with a feverish patriotism ! But interestingly, Jibanananda never apostrophized Bengal as a Mother Goddess. His Bengal, is earthy, concrete, pulsating and sensuous, redolent with myths, history and poetry, and lively and vivid with its trees and plants and birds and beasts.
To understand his world, one must first put into perspective the fact that he appeared on the Bengali poetry scene 40 years after Rabindranath Tagore, and comparisons are inevitable. When put side by side, Tagore is the "traditionalist" while Das is the "modernist", and while both poets are driven by an intense love for Bengal, the Bengal that is revealed to us in both cases is completely different.
Tagore eulogised Bengal in his poetry ... " Amar Shonar Bangla" (My Golden Bengal), 1906 cleary shows this. The word 'shonar' literally means 'made of gold', though in the song 'shonar' Bangla may be interpreted to either express the preciousness of Bengal or a reference to the colour of fields before harvest. The song was written during the period of 'Bangabhanga' (Partition of Bengal) to rekindle the unified spirit of Bengal. It is interesting to note that the first ten lines of this song were adopted in 1972 as the Bangladesh national anthem.
My Bengal of gold, I love you.
Forever your skies, your air set my heart in tune as if it were a flute.
In spring, Oh mother of mine, the fragrance from your mango groves makes me wild with joy.
Oh, what a thrill !
In autumn, oh mother mine, in the full blossomed paddy fields
I have seen sweet smiles spread all over.
Oh, what beauty, what shades, what affection and what tenderness !
What a quilt you have spread at the feet of the banyan trees and along the banks of the rivers !
Oh mother mine, words from your lips are like honey to my ears. Oh, what a thrill !
If sadness, dear mother mine, casts a gloom on your face, my eyes are filled with tears !
Reading the poetry of Jibanananda Das, however, is a different experience ... His poems have all the ingredients of the modern man's anguish: pain, despair, yearning, set against a familiar landscape of the eternal, the eternal in this case being his beloved birthplace of Barisal, East Bengal, now Bangladesh. In his poetry there is an overwhelming sense of longing to return — to that which is pure, to that which is the beginning, to that place which cannot be reached. Jibanananda's poetry becomes a search for awareness, for light in the darkness of modern existence, that is filled with half-truths, weariness and existentialist despair.
I share with you one of my favourite poems which celebrates his desire to return to Bengal through several births ... "Abar ashibo phire" (I'll come back again ... )
I'll come back again to river Dhansiri’s bank, to Bengal,
Perhaps not as a man, but as a white hawk or a shalik bird;
Perhaps as dawn crow, floating on the mist’s bosom to alight
In the shade of the jackfruit tree, in this autumn harvest land.
Or maybe I'll be a pet duck of a young girl, ankle-bells on her reddened feet,
Drifting on kalmi-scented waters all the day.
I’ll come this way again, for love of Bengal’s rivers, fields, crops ...
To this green kindly shore of Bengal, moistened by river Jalangi’s waves.
Perhaps you’ll see a glass-fly soar on the evening breeze,
Perhaps you'll hear a barn owl call from the branch of a shimul tree;
Perhaps a little child scatters rice-grains on the courtyard grass,
Or on the Rupsa’s turgid stream a boy steers his dinghy
With torn white sail — you'll see white herons flying through red clouds
to their nests, in the dark. Among them all is where you will find me.
Photos : The Net
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