If one comes to think of it, we do have three years loaded within a year much like the legendary .303 rifle. The difference lies in the fact that while the sturdy rifle could fire only one shot at a time after which the barrel needed to reloaded by pulling the bolt in preparing for the next shot, a year comes preinstalled with three years inside it and all within a quick span of just four months! Let me explain this!
In a global village that we live in, there are no boundaries when it comes to communications and associations, thanks to the electronic technology that is constantly shrinking the world around us. As a citizen of such village, our modern new year day celebrations begin on January 1 which emanate from Roman God Janus. Most of us ensure we do not doze off so as to miss the clock striking twelve on a 31st December night as that may mean being left out of fashion and certainly not the way how one would like to enter a new year! If you are working in an organisation (in India) which follows an April-March calendar, each year 1st of April which resonates with world fool day brings in another new year, this time in the disguise of a financial or fiscal year. A new set of casual leaves, another year of elevated expectations and nail biting performance appraisals to follow! To many of us, this is no less important year to begin as this means a probable change (for good) in the pay slips which for most Indian men (and women) remains an extreme guarded secret! In spite of your organisation going ‘benevolent’, if you still feel deprived, please blame your cataract infected eyes if increments and bonuses goes unnoticed, which is the case most of the times! And then there is the third year within the year,which India has in several colours. Rongali Bihu in Assam,Puthandu in Tamil Nadu,Vishu in Kerala,Pana Sankranti in Odisha and closer to heart that ‘Poila Baisakh’ (first day of the initial month of Baishakh of the Bengali solar calendar) in West Bengal and all Bengalis (third largest ethnic group in the world) spread across the globe! Unlike the other two years which you look forward to in some way or the other, this ‘year’ comes silently and sits on your sofa before you realise its here! No count downs, no anxious waits and no surprises either. Like mother visiting her son.
For many people like us, we have hardly delved deep into the start of the Bengali calendar. It is said that King Sasanka of Gour developed the original Bengali calendar in 593-594 AD which later was revised during the Mughal reign, by Emperor Akbar. The wise king wanted to make tax collection easier by making the tax paying season coincide around the time of harvest. The calendar thus devised, became a combination of Hijri (Islamic calendar based on Moon) and solar calendar which while maintaining the timeline of lunar year also corresponds with the harvesting season. Neither the able King in Akbar nor his Navaratans could ever envisage that tax collection from its citizens after a couple of centuries will become a yearlong mundane affair as each day citizens will have to cough up different taxes in different forms, seldom realising what it is paid for! All of us keep paying such taxes while we order a pair of slippers, or packet of Habib bidis or while crossing that wooden bridge which shakes both ways in that sleepy village of Bharat! But that is for a different day! What mattered, since then, Poila Baisakh has become a ritual and it remains the only day in the Bengali calendar, when an average Bengali like me can tell the Bengali year with accuracy without google support!
In our growing up years, Poila Baisakh meant so different than what we see now. We exchanged hand made greeting cards among friends and kept a count of it. The afternoons were Pulao-Mangsho in most Bengali households as you hear pressure cookers whistle together in neighbouring houses. The evening meant wearing new clothes and reaching out to invitations, for shops being inaugurated in the auspicious day in the neighbourhood or attending a ‘Haal Khata’ (the traditional red cloth hand bound copy, also known as Kheror Khata) where traders close their old ledger and open a new one. Armed with a food packet (after gulping down some colored Sarbat)containing a solitary laddoo, a sandesh, a vegetable chop, few potato chips and a nimki would wrap up the day with a moglai paratha, a fish fry followed by a lemon squeezed half glass water (and a chew-able Jelusil tablet later!) After a hard day, you return home with complimentary burps and couple of Bengali wall calendars. Elderly women at home ensured that a copy of the ‘panjika’ (Hindu astronomical almanac) is collected from the nearest book stall and check the Austumi Anjali (considered most auspicious of all) timings while office going men would check if an interim Sunday has played spoilsport during the Puja days robbing him off a ‘hard earned’ holiday!
But then, life was simple, expectations were limited and perhaps, people were less overbearing. However that never was a damper to the spirit of Bengali new year as local clubs organised football tournaments during the day braving the rising mercury and cultural programmes in the evening where Rabindra Sangeet was belted out by Dhuti-Punjabi clad male and female singers draped in white saree with red border and an equally matching 3/4th sleeve red blouse. The Bengali newspapers carried a supplementary copy on ‘Nobo borsho’ where eminent authors and poets dazzled in their love for the language.
With advent of time, the simple days of dimpled smile has been replaced by hard hitting consumerism. We have embraced so many changes in our daily lives and are comfortably(?) dabbling with a variety of interests. With increasing nuclear families, the love for quick food of pizza and pasta and the opening up of the global window had completely changed even the innocence of a small town. A typical Nobo Borsho now means a 45 minutes wait at any Bengali joint of repute for the traditional sukto, mochar ghonto and its ilk which of late seems fast disappearing from the Bengali kitchens. Who knew a neglected sukto, a typical vegetable medley of forgotten childhood would come to haunt us at middle age in the wait for a table to gulp a Bengali lunch on a poila baisakh day! A Bengali waiting for a Bengali cuisine to be served to him is perhaps the biggest price we are collectively paying for a fast fading Bengali nostalgia! Prabhat Pheri (early morning round welcoming the first day of the year with songs and poetry), an integral part of the day seems to be lost in the nail fitted tall walls of high rises and cacophony of outside traffic.
But deep within, that something is different with the day reverberates in the heart of all Bengali speaking junta even today. We may collectively miss the days gone by and be critical of what we see around, but the fact remains that this day carries a certain essence which is hard to ignore. For reasons unknown, unwittingly we bring out that kurta from the closet which we forgot when we wore it last. Or readily settle down to a conventional Bengali lunch conveniently forgetting the eternal Chinese and even the mighty muscle flexing biriyani for a day! We remain conscious of what we speak in bangla. As most of modern lives revolve around high rises and condominiums, as the world seems to settle there, some mothers , still today, send their kids from their ninth floor flats to twenty third floor to touch the feet of elders in the Mukherjee/Dasgupta/Ghosh household to seek blessings! The otherwise Hindi speaking son of the Sengupta family recites a Sukumar Roy in the community hall while a you tuber lady in seventh floor attempts a Rabindra Nritya to the tunes of ‘Eso He Boishakh Eso Eso’, which, surprisingly, comes out well. Not to be left behind, otherwise pipe smoking Colonel Banerjee who begins the day with ‘The Statesman’ even today, wearing that black wool blend flat cap, recites few verses from Jibonananda Das stunning everyone, including himself!
At the cost of sounding parochial, Poila Baisakh remains a grim reminder to our very roots which we are indebted to. If nothing, it at least unites minds and language. For a day,we proudly wear our ethnic identity in our sleeves. Many learned men has raised apprehensions that the language is losing relevance at the onslaught of ‘phoren’ invasion. Of late, there has been raging debates over increasing dominance of English medium schools and how fast the generation Y is distancing themselves from their mother tongue, but then that is a debate which remains ever inconclusive. Such altercations will however continue alongside the fact, that the language which is more than 1300 years old has seen enough of such seismic movements and has survived all.
So, not a Happy New Year…..that is for Jan 1, for today let it remain Subho Noboborsho way! And deep within we know how both are so different!
Always has been. Always will be.
শুভ নববর্ষ
পয়লা বৈশাখ,১৪২৯
Pic: Internet
Dabbler's Diary 