time of my life

Not to write, not to breathe

Life longs for a halt after forty years of pain

“Mr. President”, he wrote…

“I love Life, Life is a woman who loves you,

But Life is also a woman

Deceiving you and leaving you high and dry”

Piergiorgio was a skull without the breeze

Trapping ailments, singing murder, setting a death map

All for himself…

Somewhere in
Italy, an Italian poet, Piergiorgio Welby wished for death.

Euthanasia. Not to write or breathe, but simply halt after forty years of pain.

He died at 60. Life for him, was no more an evening stroll with a friend, rather it was cheating on him, scaring him and had held no promise of spirit. Therefore, after a prolonged period of muscular dystrophy, he willed death. The Vatican has opposed euthanasia and has finally refused Welby’s family the opportunity to have a church funeral. Mario Riccio, an anesthetist, sedated him and removed his respirator, after Welby had been asking to die for the last 88 days, Reuter reports.

Way back in the 80s, I had a friend, who used to visit me almost every second day with a long face. I routinely asked him what caused his grief. He too, routinely spoke of a friend who was suffering from multiple sclerosis and would eventually struggle with his speech and die. His friend was a great looking guy, had lovely set of parents who spent their time doting on their only son, brilliant medical student who was giving in to the irony of the situation. Sohel wished to die. My friend and I would, often, once again, routinely plan of easing his pain. We never found a good one, though. Finally the best one came from his side and our friend finally blurted out what Sohel had shared with him: “Help me die, sedate me, save me.” I wanted to lose touch with this game plan as soon as I had heard it.

After all, I wanted no part in this and did not want to be an accomplice. But one night, I wore Sohel’s shoes and tried feeling stifled to death. It worked. I played dead and survived my conscience. A week later, Sohel had his way. My friend grew sadder with the days of winter and often chose an escape mode alien to my frame of mind. He opted to be bitter. He cursed, swore and writhed with an inner pain which eventually led him to  end his own life. He was neither bankrupt, nor friendless. What had prompted him to a noose, till date, remains a mystery. He wasn’t a poet, wasn’t much of a writer, wasn’t anyone close to excessive sensitivity, but he was a man who had helped someone die. He was a Mario at the beginning and had finally done a Welby on himself.

We choose and suffer paradigm shifts all the time. We choose silence over conversation. We choose violation over a promise. Our reasons are ours. Our paths remain our own. The question whether a Vatican or a Mullah should or shouldn’t be allowed to play God when we choose to play dead-is irrelevant.

Die-as-por/ Diaspora?

Take a look at the group photo in my photo album please. The young guy is Gilgamesh alias Gilgoo, an Indian pilot getting married to a British woman, Meg. The bride’s 8 years senior to the groom. There’s excitement in the air. The Indian bites the gold dust feeling. Mind you, I have nothing against mixed marriages. Think Asian women do see the white male as the savior (Spivak) and I think Bengali men crave Shetangis, the white women. No harm done, rather it paves way to give birth to lovely looking kids. Love pretty babies anyway.

However, when it comes to wedding, somehow, I treasure the mushy sentimental touch of the bride wailing away in the car while the mother joins the competition and the father just quietly walks away. Our fathers don’t hand us, their daughters, to their husbands by walking the aisle, rather there’s an unspoken threat to the latest invader on how/why the little princess should be nothing less than a queen in his life. Times have changed. Agreed. Girls don’t cry anymore. Celebration dries tears up fast.  But there’s still a Qazi, there’s still the vedic ceremony, there’s still the ‘bodhu’ who we all queue up to see. Yet, at the risk of sounding selfish, petty, negative, I have however announced that I will not celebrate my children’s marriages to their partners till they have crossed 10 years together and till I see my grandchildren going to at least the fourth grade in school.

The amount of money spent in the weddings these days are phenomenal and our entire family could do ‘around the galaxy in 640 days’ with Us Vernes any time and over and over again. The urban flannery has upgraded us. We are better talkers, we know more about malls and museums. Nothing surprises us. Divorces happen routinely. Rituals are unimportant. But I am talking about
Bangladesh.

But what about a Muslim family living in Kolkata? How’s the wedding taking place there? Jaythima’s grandson (a junior friend’s son) Mr Goo’s  tying the bondage with Meg, the doctor girl from England. She sounds lovely and has a docile appearance. Jaythima has been given the royal responsibility of doing ‘bodhu baran’ or rather welcoming the bride. I help her, bring her to speed and arrange her flowers, food and even the coconuts that were facing the West as per Hindu tradition. The couple comes in and someone’s making the noise. Ulululululu…

I also see the practice of pouring honey into the bride’s ears so that whatever her in-laws shower her with, it will, forever remain uncontested! Gilgoo remains completely silent and hardly talks as if he has won the ultimate trophy. None disturb the Western bodhu as she’s new and needs privacy. Agreed, all agreed. The bidushi-bideshi comes out and here we go…Jaythima’s suddenly resorted to a strange language, reciting mantras and waving her hand with a magic wand all around the newly weds. Clink-think-think-ththink…trink..trink shhsssshhh..there’s a crash.  I see Jaythi breaking the small pots over the girl’s head. The living room is filled with flower petals, pieces of glass and strange fluids all over the place. The bodhu has seen the Indian tradition.

Meanwhile, I heard that back at their own home, the bride and groom have gone through a Muslim tradition and recited the Quran and were duly/unduly married by the Qazi. Then it was time for celebrations…and it was evening time. We had all gone to the Trolley Club and by the blast of the music, I knew that we were in for further trouble. Here we would probably be breaking the stage with our traditional fat. What a sight! I saw lovely White women wearing Choli ghaghra, young men wearing sherwanis and the Natives all holding on to their champagne out in the open, under the lovely lit sky of December  the 18^th. Music belonged to the mushy Eightees. The Kolkatians were wearing dark winter suits. The women luckily, were wearing heavy saris with their awfully traditional jewelry. Very, very colonial… Role reversal was at work partially. After all, the Empire had clothed them back at least.

I never quite got to read the groom’s mom psyche though. She looked excited about having the wedding attended by 40 whites straight from Europe. That seemed to be the high point in her life. The daughter who teaches Eng Lit in Oxford looked happy but no different than the rest. Literature had not changed a thing. Years of diasporic experience had done nothing to her.

 Glad they did not play Bismillah Khan. Gladder they decided to do the Indian thing for the couple. Gladdest they did not have the Kazi out in the public. Music, Culture and Religion tread on extremely sensitive grounds these days. It’s best to dilute them with globetrotting potion, lest we get tied to our own roots and curses.

Think it’s best to write in Bangla. It’s just functional to be writing in one’s own tongue. For example, “lej shamlaytey shamlaytey mukh bhaigga jaye”. How on earth do you say that in the langue d’Empire? Just made the Bangla proverb up, though, but please admit that this is what’s happening with most of us, who are sandwitched in surreal layers, running from one land to another, missing excitement at homeland and being late with currency in the next. We end up missing all the happenings and we miss out on being a part of them. Sure, what would I do if I were an observer of the Discovery team that’s taking a second Indian onboard this time?What would I do if I were a witness to the historical moment of Hasina declaring the ceasefire ? What would I do if I were in Singur right now, watching Mamata Banerjee and Medha Patekar exhausting their lungs in favor of the farmers, opposing Buddhadev and the Tatas of India? What would I do if I played an active part of the Oborodh in Dhaka or the Bandh in Kolkata? What the hell would I do? Discussing the times we are in, I was simply voicing out my exasperation on wars to Professor P.Lal the other day. He looked at me and coolly said: “Excuse me, but were we better off earlier? Even a century ago, my ancestors had slaves and had the freedom to even kill.” True they never slaughtered the poor like we do now. But the system and the opportunity for those who wished to avail-always existed in one form or the other.

The out-of-touch feeling, of being invisible to those who matter most to you when you’re not there in person, is a killer. Bangladesh dumps me the minute I take off with GMG(never BG, thank you); the Kolkata that I come to,has a disruptive unfamiliarity that hampers my comfort. I mean, I seriously don’t know the system. I still don’t know the Bhelpuri Wallah by name; I still don’t know that nearest florist; I still don’t know the Mishtanna Bhandar’s well enough; I still don’t know why Roma’s home in Shiuli is a lot colder than the Bright Street area that houses me. But what strikes me are the common voices of the Bengals…

Yesterday, fatigued after a 2 day run on Southasian-ism (an entity was just formed) and a day at a store chasing books and correspondences related to Anglophone poetry, I was in no mood to be charitable. The yellow cab was comfy enough, the temperature cooler than usual and at a traffic red light, a hand zigzagged its way to me, dodging the half open window. Must say that I haven’t learnt to say “no” very well, so in a stressful situation which demands a Gandhian “Neti”, I focus on staying still, as if fitting a mould of Parisienne Plaster, trained to stay loyal to immobility. Had no option but to adopt that same old proven mode. So I stayed still, with unblinking eyes, straining to fit the plaster size and refusing to open my purse. Mr X with his hands, unimpressed by my stance, cursed me his way: “aksho bish degree Jor eshey gachey…hoooh” … Guess what happened next? I ended up with a 105 degree last night. Mr X is no prophet, but the cries often touch surreal levels and we all come down with a fever or two.

Just hoping that with Mamata Banerjee’s Bandh, with the poor farmers wailing in Singur, with CPM’s obstinacy,with Oborodh’s in Bangladesh, with killings, with days without work, we won’t come down with the plague of the century that’ll wash all our wealth away, put a zero against Mittal’s steel empire, royally f… the billions of the Zia’s in the east. I survived with a burning forehead last night. Many may not.