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It seems pretty amazing. On Saturday evening, at Mrs. Perth's farewell party, I discovered that we had people from ten nations in a two-room flat. Felt oh-so international. And here's who we were: Indian, Australian, Canadian, American, British, Polish, Austrian, German, Bosnian and Uzbek. How I wish I lived in a world without maps or passports, just like we were that day, even if only for a few hours, in that small flat, eating, drinking and making merry!

BANGALI-NAMA

It seems appropriate in a sense that what I am about to convey in this post comes soon after my post on Chava Rosenfarb. In it I referred to Chava’s urge to translate her Yiddish works into English, which had stemmed from a painful realization that the language she was born into and grew up with was slowly dying. Professor Goldie Morgentaler mentioned in her lecture that Chava has always been a very forceful and impressive speaker. Her public lectures in Yiddish had always ensured packed halls and auditoriums. Yet, sometime in the 1970s, Chava’s lectures in Yiddish started attracting a way smaller group of audience than ever before. The reason behind this was simple. Yiddish language speakers in Canada and in the United States had dwindled in numbers. They were now speaking in the language of the land that they had adopted…or should it be the countries that had adopted them? Many of them were, in any case, second-generation Jews. Painful as it must have been for Chava, it was a truth that she would have to learn to deal with. And she did, although the sadness at the loss has not left her nor will it ever.

What is it with language, one’s ‘culture’, to put it broadly, I wonder, that makes so many of us want to preserve it zealously? And then again what is it with certain languages that completely subsume us, devour us even? But it cannot be the fault of any particular language. People, notions of identity, varying perceptions, market-driven economy and cultures, the language of pop culture, hegemony and discourse up the cool quotient of certain languages even as it dismisses the power of and the poetry in certain others.

Growing up in a middle-class Bengali family (all my references begin there), the first hegemonic onslaught that I was affected by as a four-year old was being admitted into an English medium school where for the next fourteen years I would know that English was the language my parents have paid for, for me to learn. Therefore, it was my solemn duty to learn to speak and write it as ‘propahly’ as I could. Mind you, this was not fed into my soul by my non-English speaking parents although it did become increasingly apparent that since my mother, like so many middle-class Bengali mothers at that time, suffered from a deep-seated inferiority complex because of a lack of proficiency in English, she did insist that I grow up to graduate in English. I have done that and much more, summa cum laude at that. Herein, I must add that this has in no way affected my love, respect and admiration, if I may say so, for Bangla, my mother’s tongue. I am aware of and extremely proud of my Bengali roots. In India, I would, in another life, insist on being born a Bengali again. However, I have seen so many in my own generation suffer as a result of an English education. A postcolonial hangover as it is, it has also come to mean a fear of the ‘juktakhhor’ at the school level, heebie-jeebies in the stomach before the Board results because poor grades in Bangla can ruin the aggregate, graduating to the development of the same inferiority complex, but inversely, that speaking too much Bangla instead of the preferred English makes one downmarket, and finally to a complete disregard for a language and legacy that Bangalis cannot escape. But then English education is not the only factor we can blame. With globalisation came ‘Star Plus’ and ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’. Being Anglicized was no longer enough. It was the beginning of American imperialism in India and so, Americans we would now become—with a vengeance, ‘gonna’ and ‘wanna’ soon being internalized by the new Benglish-speaking adolescents. And here, I connot help but thank Sumon Chattopadhyay, the Bangla music bands, and Rituporno Ghosh for bringing back to the urban Bengali, a sense of pride in all things 'Bangali', a sense that Bangla was as much a language of the urban Benglish elite as it was of the rural or small town Prasenjit-Rituparna-loving populace.

The next hegemonic onslaught that Bengalis in West Bengal came to suffer, was thrust upon us by Hindi. Media and money determined the rightness of things. Punjabis began being known as the only kind of Indians to the world. Karwa chauth became the in-thing to celebrate. Bollywood became synonymous with the only kind of cinema that India churned. Speaking and answering in Hindi (I am very respectful of the fact that it is my national language but there are 14 others that we forget) became the fad. Don’t get me wrong. All of these represent India. However, they alone are not representative of India. And my language of love and longing bled. From being the fifth most spoken language in the world (don’t forget the Bangladeshis), it has become the seventh most spoken language in the world. I still don’t feel threatened, though.

Now, more than ever, in a country that has been fed the same half-truths about India, I feel the urge to proclaim that I am ‘Bangali’ first, Indian later. I find it funny when Bengalis are called parochial because so many Bengalis I know, feel a sense of pride in their ‘un-Bengali’-ness. How I wish it were the other way around!...because what we have is so good, that it will be a pity to callously lose it all. What we need perhaps as Bengalis is the smartening up of our image, not by just going pub-hopping and disco-hopping, or by spending precious hours in metal-and-glass shopping malls, sporting brands but by shedding our legendary ‘aloshyo’, and ‘nyakamo’, by not trying desperately to become what we are not, by rediscovering beauty and significance in our liberal Bengali culture, by speaking and using the language and every time with immense pride, in reading more and showing off less and, by realizing and accepting humbly that there is no greater knowledge than the one which tells us that we are, ultimately,where we come from.

FEELING GREY...OR SHOULD IT BE THE USUAL 'BLUE'

Have been feeling grey since the last two days. Mucky kind of grey. ‘The Gift of the Magi’-sixth paragraph-kind of grey. Not good at all. And all this for a couple of people I will very likely never meet in my life again. No matter how much I keep my fingers crossed, hope still slips away through the paper-thin gaps between my crooked fingers. I will never meet them again. One is Mrs. Perth. She is leaving Sarnia for good. Home beckons, and so there has been a flurry of dinners and farewells and coffee-sessions. She was the one to welcome me with a tub of gardenias, moving on with time to give me books and magazines and contacts but what I will remember most about her is that she tried. She tried so tirelessly, so unfailingly for me, trying for me even when I had stopped.

The other Sarnia institution I will so dearly miss is Gregory Peck. Handsome, grumpy, never one to learn the spelling of my name, never reluctant to incite the feminist in me, too set in his ways, too gentlemanly Gregory Peck. My ultimate Hollywood hero. Seeing him leave has left a void which can hardly be filled because whoever’s, destiny it shall be to fill it, he/she has a tall task ahead. Gregory came up to my flat on Monday evening to say goodbye. He has given me two books to read and throw away. I know I will keep them forever, in memory of a time that will never come back, in defiance of a time that will never permit that we meet Gregory again. I don’t know whether I will ever go to Ireland, to Galway or Dublin but I know in the deepest recesses of my mind and in the core of my heart, that every time I will ever read Yeats’ love poems celebrating Maud Gonne, every time I will ever walk in my mind, in the by-lanes of Joyce’s Dublin and every time I will ever go fishing in Synge’s Aran Islands, it will be with a very special friend, Gregory. I wish we could let him know adequately, how much we have grown fond of him, how much we will miss him, how his old-world Irish-ness has rubbed off on us, how much he will always remind us of vintage wine and rainy-afternoon classics, how special and rare he is because he is old wine in an old bottle. We love you, Gregory. And no matter, how hopeless hopelessness can be, we hope that someday, we shall meet again, good, old neighbours and even better, good, old friends.

Until then, Sarnia will not be the same.

AD-LIB

Interesting. Very interesting. The divorce rate in Poland is very high. However, this is hardly interesting. What is is the fact that during the communist years the rate was rather low. Ask why? Arre baba, divorce hoyega to ghar chorke kahan jayega?? One flat per family. No place to move out to, so stay put and stay married. This reminds me of a line I read somewhere, 'I am dead but I am home.'

AND NOW...THE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

The first image uploaded here is of a painting that I absolutely love. It is a photorealist portrait named 'Lesende' by Gerhard Richter.

The second one below it, on the left is 'Kathryn's Pasttime' by Joseph Ogle.

The one to its right is 'Girl with Cat' by Merle Keller.

The next four images are of paintings by the American artist, Karen Cooper. I love them. They are called 'A Paperback-Novel Kind of Day', 'Reading in a Red Dress', 'Amantes Dispuetos' and 'Elementary School Readers', respectively.

The next is an image of a painting called 'The Reader' by the American oil painter who uses the 'verdaccio' technique of the old masters, Roger Ehmpke.

The next one is an image of a painting by Mark Sasha and is called 'The Beach Reader' .
The one following it is by Sheri Lynn Boyer Doty.

The next one is by Felicia Marshall and is called 'The Reader in Red'. Felicia incidentally blogs and her blog is called 'An Artist's Journal: Daily Paintings'.

The last image in this post, way below, is of a painting by Margaret Harris. I uploaded it here because though it looks very different from the others here, I found it rather cute.

READERS AND READING IN PAINTINGS

Since I claim to be an avid reader, I thought of looking up some paintings of my favourite painters, both European masters and more contemporary American and European artists who have portrayed readers or/and the act of reading in their paintings. I choose to upload quite a few of my favourite paintings in this post just so I can look at them, all in the same place without running a google search on the painters everytime I want some aesthetic pleasure. I will not upload them in chronological order. However, I do intend to group the masters and the contemporary artists separately in two separate posts.

The first painting is by Van Gogh and is called 'The Novel Reader'.
The second one also called 'The Novel Reader' (1853) is by Antoine Wiertz.
The third is a Monet, simply named like so many others, 'The Reader'.
The fourth is a Renoir.
The fifth is the 1880 painting by Anton Weber and is called (no surprises) 'The Reader'.
I currently have no information on the sixth one that I have uploaded but will have to look that one up.
The next one is the 1631 oil on panel by Rembrandt called 'The Prophetess, St. Hannah'. It also has a second title called 'Rembrandt's Mother'.
The young girl in yellow is 'The Reader', an oil on canvas in the style of the Rococo period by Jean Honore Fragonard (c. 1770-72).
The last one uploaded here is interesting on two accounts. First, because it is also referred to as 'Rembrandt's Mother' apart from being called "Reading Old Woman' and secondly, because this one shows in great detail what the old woman is reading.
My favourite contemporary artists will take all the space in my next post.