(no subject)
Everyone who knows me decently enough knows how I habitually thump my chest in pride at having been born in Calcutta and not Delhi. I'll throw in remarks about Calcutta/ Bengal and wait for people to ask how I know that so I can say, quite casually, "Well, I WAS born in Calcutta, you know." after which I expect them to start to admire me as though I were made of Hooghly-mud. Unfortunately, most Bengalis I know rarely live up to my expectations of what they should be like. I mean the students at my university. A cultural disappointment, the lot of them. The two on my f-list thankfully help restore the faith and keep me from suffering complete disillusionment.
It's rather like those white people at ISKCON who think Hinduism involves dressing up in orange, chanting Hare Krishna at every opportunity and growing a shikha (that little clump of hair on an otherwise bald head that brahmins keep/ not the twenty-year-old idiot you know so well). In other words, I'm a pretentious twit completely infatuated with the superficial aspects of the Bengali culture. I expect all Bengalis to have a cultural liability to be extremely well educated, dhoti-clad, tea-drinking communists- all bhadralok and rabindra sangeet. (I realize that my ideal Bengali, though stereotyped to the point of caricature, is masculine, and I apologise profusely. I do wish sometimes that I had some female role-models but I just haven't been looking hard enough.) And when people like Utpal Dutt reaffirm my chump-like expectations, I sigh happily and want to eat cream buns till I explode.
I used to have a comic about Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki when I was about seven- it was an Amar Chitra Katha, I think. That might be somewhat responsible for my warped ideas about what Bengalis do in their spare time. I'm sure not all of them make bombs/ kill British people/ become philosopher revolutionaries/ publish nationalist prose and poetry. Jolly exciting, I always thought. What capital fellows! Despite the fact that I go to Calcutta every year, it's been hard letting go of this silly idea. Think of it. Sitting in the dark with a lantern, surrounded by wires and packets of tri-nitro-toluene, calmly discussing the next issue of the Svatantra Bharat Patrika or something like it, when a stray beedi (or a blundering chump like me tripping over the lantern in excitement and spilling hot kerosene all over the naked explosive) could blow everyone into millions of little, unrecognizable bits of char. Journalism is a risky profession.
All this doesn't mean that I like every Bengali on sight, just because they happen to belong to a culture that gladdens me with its lack of marwari-like opulence. Because you don't see Bengali families teaching their children that education is for other people- Wait long enough, beta, and somebody will leave you pots of money in an inheritance, making sure you never have to use your vestigial brain ever again. Thankfully, I was spared this. My father told us very early on that if we thought we were going to join his business after we graduate, we had another thing coming. So we knew we had to get a decent education if we were going to get anywhere. But it does mean that if I hear Bangla spoken when I'm not expecting it, my eyes go glassy and I start to salivate rather disgustingly. I'm currently in the process of teaching myself the language. This I do, when I'm home, mainly by listening to my pater talk on the phone when he calls Calcutta and, while at university, asking people to translate stuff I want to say/ listening to Bengali radio channels online- they play reasonably good Adhunik that I told Aishwarya reminded me of waking up in the Howrah Rajdhani on my way to Calcutta, when I was a youngster/ watching the odd Bengali movie. It's jolly hard doing it like this, but I hope to be able to speak it fairly well in about a year.
If the Bengalis on my list think I'm a wally, they're welcome to do so. Actually, I’m not half sure they don’t already.
It's rather like those white people at ISKCON who think Hinduism involves dressing up in orange, chanting Hare Krishna at every opportunity and growing a shikha (that little clump of hair on an otherwise bald head that brahmins keep/ not the twenty-year-old idiot you know so well). In other words, I'm a pretentious twit completely infatuated with the superficial aspects of the Bengali culture. I expect all Bengalis to have a cultural liability to be extremely well educated, dhoti-clad, tea-drinking communists- all bhadralok and rabindra sangeet. (I realize that my ideal Bengali, though stereotyped to the point of caricature, is masculine, and I apologise profusely. I do wish sometimes that I had some female role-models but I just haven't been looking hard enough.) And when people like Utpal Dutt reaffirm my chump-like expectations, I sigh happily and want to eat cream buns till I explode.
I used to have a comic about Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki when I was about seven- it was an Amar Chitra Katha, I think. That might be somewhat responsible for my warped ideas about what Bengalis do in their spare time. I'm sure not all of them make bombs/ kill British people/ become philosopher revolutionaries/ publish nationalist prose and poetry. Jolly exciting, I always thought. What capital fellows! Despite the fact that I go to Calcutta every year, it's been hard letting go of this silly idea. Think of it. Sitting in the dark with a lantern, surrounded by wires and packets of tri-nitro-toluene, calmly discussing the next issue of the Svatantra Bharat Patrika or something like it, when a stray beedi (or a blundering chump like me tripping over the lantern in excitement and spilling hot kerosene all over the naked explosive) could blow everyone into millions of little, unrecognizable bits of char. Journalism is a risky profession.
All this doesn't mean that I like every Bengali on sight, just because they happen to belong to a culture that gladdens me with its lack of marwari-like opulence. Because you don't see Bengali families teaching their children that education is for other people- Wait long enough, beta, and somebody will leave you pots of money in an inheritance, making sure you never have to use your vestigial brain ever again. Thankfully, I was spared this. My father told us very early on that if we thought we were going to join his business after we graduate, we had another thing coming. So we knew we had to get a decent education if we were going to get anywhere. But it does mean that if I hear Bangla spoken when I'm not expecting it, my eyes go glassy and I start to salivate rather disgustingly. I'm currently in the process of teaching myself the language. This I do, when I'm home, mainly by listening to my pater talk on the phone when he calls Calcutta and, while at university, asking people to translate stuff I want to say/ listening to Bengali radio channels online- they play reasonably good Adhunik that I told Aishwarya reminded me of waking up in the Howrah Rajdhani on my way to Calcutta, when I was a youngster/ watching the odd Bengali movie. It's jolly hard doing it like this, but I hope to be able to speak it fairly well in about a year.
If the Bengalis on my list think I'm a wally, they're welcome to do so. Actually, I’m not half sure they don’t already.