It seems we are living in a world that has gone topsy-turvy. There was a time when the printed word was considered as holy as the scriptures and as powerful as the sword. Now it can be twisted in ways that can have different nuances and meanings. Similarly, it is not true any more that a picture cannot lie. It can be doctored in a hundred different ways to mean a hundred different truths. One upon a time, January 1 being the beginning of the year used to be observed as a holiday for all normal activities, including banking. Now it is not.
It was not always so. Time hardly seemed to move. Space appeared limitless. Villagers gathered and listened to the village chief read out the news from a bi-weekly newspaper from Calcutta (now Kolkata). At night, almost the entire village was shrouded in darkness, with only one or two lanterns burning here and there to make their presence felt.
Durga Puja had not become as widespread an event as it is now. Only one Puja used to be held in the village to which the entire community would throng. There was music and dancing and singing in which everyone participated with equal fervour. As others have their own new year's days, for Bengalis around the world April 14/15 (Poila Boisakh) has been the traditional beginning of the new year.
However, as I walk the back lanes of memory, it is Benares (now Varanasi) that stands out most in my mind. That was where I first came as a little boy with my parents, went to school, and spent most of my growing-up years. We were living in the Shivala area. My father was a professor of modern European languages at Benares Hindu University. Every noon he would ride his bicycle to the campus that Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya had established as an institution of higher learning. We lived in a two-storeyed house with a quadrangle in the middle, the overhead opening guarded with iron grills where clothes were hung out to dry. Our house was next to the Sanyals'. Mr Sanyal was a friend of my father. The house had a wide open space within its front compound. Children and grown-ups used to play all kinds of games there such as badminton, tennis and cricket. One day we were playing cricket. I was batting. All was going well. Then, as I started, I heard the batsman at the other end call out, "Run Rana (my nickname) run."
As I started to run back again, I heard a shout, "Out." I was run out before I could reach the other end.
I remember aubergines the size of a small football from an islet across the river that children kicked around and played with. In the middle of the game, the fruit would come apart and the boys and girls would burst into laughter. That was their fun. In the early morning, the river flowed sleepily. Long stairs led to the edge of the river. Bathers took long dips in the clean water. Others did their exercises wielding heavy cudgels, making sounds like "hei-ho" and "hai-hu" in rapid succession and stopping every now and then to feel their upper arm muscles. Once, I stood there, watching. One of them looked at me and said, "Want to try?" I gave him a coy smile and a shrug to say no. A few houseboats rested here and there. Music floated in the air. Some people experimented with musical tunes in different ways, first raising their voice to a high pitch, then letting it taper off, or chanted their morning prayers.
There was Bharat Mata's mandir, with hanumans revered by Hindus snatching food from unwary visitors. There was Dasaswamedh Ghat (named after the legendary slaying of 10 horses) and Manikarnika Ghat where bodies were cremated and the ashes thrown into the river. At Bisweswar mandir people prayed and made their wishful offerings. But the temple was hardly crowded. In fact, the entire city had a quiet rhythm of its own. A sleepy kind of peace reigned over the place, as if walking on tiptoes, without any concern for time. At ease with itself.
The railway bridge to the right of Shivala Ghat, which crossed the river and brought trains into or took them out of Benares, was visible throughout the day. That was the bridge that Apu was seen crossing with his parents Sarbajaya and Harihar, an itinerant priest, after his elder sister Durga died in their ancestral village in Satyajit Ray's film Aparajito (The Unvanquished). Years later, that was also the bridge that would take them back as they left to return to their ancestral village. But the Ganges today is not at all at ease with itself. It is in a topsy-turvy condition. It remains holy in spirit, but pollution has been ruining it for years. Nobody takes long dips in it anymore. People throw their marigold flowers and garlands into it. These are collected from time to time, as are bamboo stakes supporting idols. But effluents from mills and factories on both sides of the river bank keep degrading the water quality. So far, the Save Ganga campaigns have had no effect at all. That's the unfortunate part of the story.
This is one of the last two columns Barun Roy sent us before his death on December 14. The next one will be carried in January 2016
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
