1.
There was a time when Englishmen came hard looting our destiny, our pride. No doubt I am talking about the time when Clive conquered Bengal in the battle of Plassey. English colonial glory in Bengal galloped from then on. One is but forced to recall W B Yeats’ Leda and the Swan. Zeus disguised as the swan consummated the mortal Leda, thus giving birth to Hellenic culture. Or this is what Yeats wanted to tell us through his poetry. English colonization as I see it was such an act. A violation of mortal well-being as the gods often did in the older times.
Colonization was a burden. The heaviest of burdens are destined to transform human destiny. Defeat, the tragedy of betrayal gave rise to a new consciousness. And lo! emerged out of the wasteland Henri Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutta and Raja Rammohan Roy. They were wondrous visionaries. And here they were before my eyes
acting as if turned into Renaissance gallant glowing with potency. .
Visionaries are always defamed, destined to face retribution and no doubt, burdened at times by the weight of their greatness. They are simply far ahead of their time. And cursed in a manner relevant even to this day.
No effigies are burnt. Only a handful of misery....
2.
Henri Derozio walked out of the Hindu college with a heightened sense of pride. He had done it. Persuasion is not always the easiest of jobs. Yet the day was one of success. The principle has finally allowed his methods of teaching the students. He can now be as free as a bird. Quite an exception with the norms of Hindu college.
‘How could the young lad defeat me with arguments’, thought the Presbyterian gentleman.
Derozio was unstoppable today.
‘Why can’t I teach my students humanism, the essential call for freedom of man’, he said boldly.
‘Our students must be taught the way it is fit for India. They must adhere to the college policy. And serving the British Empire will be the motive of their teaching’.
‘I cannot but only proclaim the glory of man. I must teach them Rousseau though they
are not bound to know him. They must know what “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” mean
to the world’
‘You are taking your arguments too far young man. You are not the person to teach
them life’
‘I think I am’
The principle would not argue further with this talented teaching stuff of his. Losing him will be disastrous for the college.
Derozio went back to the classroom with his lips still murmuring "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.
3.
Madhusudan loved to party. He was the metro sexual of a society plagued with Victorian morality living an auspicious life in their jaminder house. He entertained friends as gaily as he could. The best of French wines felt an astounding presence in his room. They indeed flowed as did profligacy.
He loved to recite poetry to his friends and was wedded to the poetry of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Pope and the likes and dreamt of attaining greatness following their footsteps.
‘Drink to me with thine eyes’, he would tell his friends hesitant to be alcoholic as he was.
Drunkenness led to recitations-
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,- could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
Only his friends knew how much he liked Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He dozed off as alcohol gradually overwhelmed him to the utmost.
4.
The year of our Lord 1828.
The Brahma Samaj is formed.
Raja Roy sits with a hookah pipe with his friends. A cool autumn breeze blows overhead.
Over the last few years he had done what few Indians would dare to do. He has crossed
the Kalapani, came up with reform bills for the widows and what not. But now intentions were more daring, enraging even to an extent. He changed an age old tradition, a tradition dear to the public.
Derozio also longed for such a change; a destruction of the old tradition like the annihilation of ancien regime.
Then I asked myself a rather difficult question. What about 1867? The rebellion against the colonial forces.
What would have happened if the course of history were altered?
Hamlet would readily answer such questions, “Maybe it was good; maybe it wasn’t.”
Then he would have come with an ominous inquiry, “How you assure yourself of the
men being reformists rather than propagandists. History is not always true.” and added,
“Speak to him Horatio. Thou art a scholar”.
5.
Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Then the door bell rings.
I hurry myself to open the door.
I see Derozio and Madhusudan standing at the door.
‘Come in’, I lead them rapturously to my monkish retreat.
I discover them to be souls rather than the being what they were. Becoming I suddenly
recall.
It is important to know the difference between being and becoming. Philosophers have
long been rambled with these ideas.
Now, there is an ominously tentative pause. Would they speak first or it is I who has to
speak.
The wait ends as they spoke with their voices sounding like muffled drums.
‘Where on earth are we?’
'Have we left the deathless world we were living? Indeed this is no resurrection. We see no chaos around us. It’s only a small room’
‘You are now in Bangladesh’, my voice sounded like that tarot lady in the lower streets.
‘Lot’s have happened since you were gone, perished by death. The British are long gone. India is divided. More importantly Bengal is divided. And that is in the line of religion. We the predominantly Muslims are burdened with Bangladesh and the predominantly Hindus are embroiled in a new India charged with ethnic turmoil’, I said.
Of course I knew history better than some of my friends did. I knew what had happened
in 1947, in the nights before and after August 14, 1947 and I knew what Mahatma had
fought for. But I put off those sad things and in a word I described them our present
existence.
Burden is the word that time and again haunted me. Of course we here in Bangladesh are burdened, burdened with the weight of history, burdened with price hikes, load shedding, zealots, corruption and then those ugly looking tentacles called poverty, disease and famine.
The souls of Derozio and Madusudan tried to grapple with my squeamishness. They
might have thought visiting here is a big mistake.
‘We would like to know more’.
Suddenly I became Swift’s Gulliver, detailing the affairs of the world. I told them all, all that were there to be told. Gulliver in the end to me was unlucky. How could a man stand his subservience to Houyhnhnms? They weren’t even passionate, was barred by Nature to enjoy the whipping sex we did. Gulliver was frustrated but certainly not a pessimist till the end he thought it was better to live under the wings of horse-like creatures. He forgot how the human civilization gradually came to rise. Pockets of civilization Monsieur Gulliver, pockets of civilization and that ended in the whole institutionalized world which never befriended a skeptic like you.
Leaving aside the ghost of Gulliver I answered their inquiries head on. I told them about the changes man has experienced since they lived all those years ago. We defeated the horrors of apartheid, saw through the nihilism of two world wars and a despairing cry of human equality started in the form of Marx ended rather sadly with the fall of the Berlin wall. Man landed on moon in 1969 and then they are dreaming of exploring the universe.
Cholera has fled but a new disease AIDS haunts us day and night.
More importantly the world no longer remembers the problems Plato and Aristotle had
grappled with.
6.
They convinced me to leave this world. And away I flew to the tarot Lady, selling my
soul for a brief moment and discovered myself amidst the old parts of 19th century
Calcutta.
And here I was standing in front of a palatial building at dusk.
Jhun, jhun,jhun...
They must be the dancers I thought. And I was summoned in by a lady with a lamp
wearing I must say a ravishingly transparent saree. I could feel the trembling within my heart.
But then arrived Derozio looking raved. He led me out of the trance of sensual music and of course dancing.
I arrive in his Lyceum.
But suddenly came thrusting an eagle, taking me in it’s claws dropping me on the roof
of Madhusudan’s house. I lurk downstairs and find myself amidst Madhusudan with
his friends.
7.
I wake up suddenly amidst an appalling hullabaloo.
Two burly women are making their voices heard in the neighboring slums.
The bed sheet is soaking wet, books and DVD’s strewn all over the carpet.
Not so far from my bed lay my English 306 text Banglar Jagoron and the monitor of my
computer shows Aamir Khan’s Lagaan awaiting to get started.
Oh shit! I had drunk simply too much.
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