Thursday, October 9, 2008

BI'JOY'A! But Without the 'JOY'

I am not a Bengali who wears my "bongness" on my sleeve...which I confess sometimes makes my regional identity a bit of a problem for people who meet me for the first time. Technically I didn't ever consider myself as a part of the big bong fraternity that drools over 'fish chop' and flutters their eyelids at the sound of Rabindra Sangeet. I grew up in a small town called Bhubaneshwar which is the capital of Orissa (located on the Eastern part of the Indian map) and well is the land of 'Oriyas'. I grew up with kids and neighbours who were anything but Bengali and apart from my Dadu (Grandfather) who tuned into the local radio station playing old Tagore and Najrul at night and his pronounced "shos"...'bongness' wasn't drilled into my head. But yes, I still use this defense tactic with my Cal bong friends. I spent summers reading Anandobajar's magazine and figuring out this cartoon called Montu, and twisted my tongue and scratched my head as I practiced the Bengali letters on my slate.

Turning eight I moved to Hyderabad where I spent the next ten years of my life mixing around with Telugu kids and neighbours. There wasn't ever any pressure to learn the local language because our maids and auto drivers spoke in a mix of old Hyderabadi Hindi and sometimes Telugu and well the local peopel themselves never had this "Speak our language because you are in our land" kind of attitude. "Unho idhari khadey they, idharich. Sachi !" (He was right here, right here. Really, I am telling you so).

But all this changed dramatically with my shift to Kolkata. It's quite funny. My early schooling was in Bhubaneshwar, mid and high in Hyderabad and Graduation in Kolkata. Three distinct phases of my life divided into 3 cities. So in Cal, I was sniffed up and down by bong 18 year olds who couldn't figure why a Bengali girl couldn't speak her own mother tongue the way she is "supposed" to, why were all my words in Bangla with "s" and not the pronounced - not to mention what my family poked fun at -- rolling "shos" (I would say "ekhaney boso", instead of "ekhaney bosho"). I guess somewhere the guilt and curiosity to be loyal to my bongness began within Presidency College's walls. I hung on to every single line my friends spoke, made them recite lines from plays, poems and in one case even made my new found crush at a fest (who I had invited home for the first time) read out "Aabol Tabol" aloud for me, that's the very famous book with funny verse for kids written by Sukumar Ray. I could go on and on about all the food, the way we wore our sarees and dhotis during Pujo, a Bengali boy who took my obession a step further... I even introduced myself to people as "Ronjona" as opposed to my earlier North Indian accented Ranjana (pronouced 'RUN JAN AAAA')..... a rebirth of sorts.

The long and short of all this is that I am a different person today thanks to my 3 years in the land of Tagore. And I am awfully morose at the moment, misery that only a true blue Bong would feel during Bijoya if he had to work, sit late night over an edit shift, eating pasta and reeling from the awful smell of some poisonous phenyl that's just been used to clean the office. Instead I should be with family and friends, laughing over scrumptous bhog and intoxicated by the heady mix of chandan, jhuno (frankinscence) and joba(hibiscus) phool. Instead of staring at cold gleamy phenyl mopped floors, my eyes should be focussing on soothing off white alpana patterns on red cement floors etched out lovingly by my Ma and Kakimas . This is my Bijoya in Mumbai away from Ma and Baba, away from the Bengali boy, my precious friend from Cal and the new ones I acquired in Mumbai in 1201 post one's departure...no sight of Godess Durga this year, no aratis, no being overwhelmed having your heart in your mouth as the dhak's rhythm grows louder......... I can't even shrug off with what my colleagues term as "This is life in the media so learn to live with it". My 'bongness' has begun to matter :)