Of systems, industry and profit

The influence of systems is deeply entrenched in our society. Man, however unwilling he may be to admit that he is not bound by those invisible fetters, has bruises all over him showing signs of defiance and escape, yet finally coming around and learning to live with it. So if this piece mirrors flippancy and crudeness on my part, ascribe it to the fact that I come from a professional background where fineness takes a back seat and man is taught to enjoy the groaning of machines as ballroom ragtime. I intend to shed my shallowness in near future as the caterpillar sheds its cuticle through moulting. But for now, I have not cast off my slough yet. 

Love and hunger are the two passions  man commonly shares, and in most cases the latter overpowers the former. Maybe it is the invisible fulcrum on which all other emotions are hinged. It is easier for a person afflicted with hunger to abandon dignity and allow nefarious emotions like jealousy and hate to slink into the human heart, in order to survive. For what value does dignity and self-respect hold other than the respect that he receives from his fellow beings, and how many of his fellow beings actually respect him when he is unable to provide food for himself? And so the chains of systems arrive, binding man's free will against the background of hunger, often making finer emotions redundant in life.

An industry is a congregation of hungry people, the only difference being that the system is being worshipped here instead of a deity. From the light of dawn, man is numbed by this routine of playing pawns at the hands of magnates who promise him food. But what is most haunting is the way his pride is made malleable. The act is carried out with such diabolical precision that you almost come to admire it's sheer artistry. Greed is being fed in a systematic and orderly manner, the image of going up the social ladder appeasing his material needs shining in his mind with respectable regularity. And through repeated distortions, this greed becomes mechanized, sparkling with the lights and gushing hot metals and roaring with the machines, transforming men into insentient, vast grotesque beings like the undead Orcs of Uruk-hai, scoffing brutishly at the fragility and innocence which once made them more human like. They repeat what the Dark Lords ask them to repeat, fight for mere appraisal points, bicker and bemoan about life like an animal tortured. 

But the consequences of this can only be described as the worst things happened to mankind. After some time, they actually take pride in this living, celebrating by surrounding themselves with material luxuries and ready to destroy anyone who does not conform. Their successes are attuned to the success of the system, which can be described by one word only- Profit. For profit they toil, for profit they manipulate and for profit they sacrifice. Polestar statements like "respect for human dignity" and "honest, decent and fair behaviour" are made a mockery of. In all fairness, the behaviour is fair, as you can see the same behaviour existing uniformly, but it can hardly be called honest and decent. As Thoreau rightly says in Walden, "And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?", man's entire life is spent in getting the extra fraction of the appraisal point to pay the extra EMI at the end of the year. Thus houses are bought and souls are sold. All for the sake of hunger and greed.

Of course there are Smeagols, who still have doubts whether this is the way man  intended to lead his life, who try to keep themselves untouched, but isn't the resistance too feeble? Liberation from systems , injecting objectivity in human lives and going out of the way to extend your hand without an outcome is Utopic, but not a harmful thing to pursue. At least it is more human, instead of pursuing customized goals which fills the world with sardonic horror.

শ্রদ্ধাঞ্জলি

To write about a person about whom everything good has already been written is not exactly my cup of tea. I, undeniably, get influenced by all those good view points and do not seem to add anything new to the already welled up ocean. But when the ocean is as big as Tagore, every individual bubble sparkles distinctly, refracting lights of greatness coming from deep inside and converging ethereally to illumine the outside world. For such a person whose works are repositories of every human emotion possible and much beyond, expressing the significance and wholesomeness of Tagore with my frugal and blunt tool of words is a travesty. I would rather take recourse to plain recollection, of three seemingly ordinary yet unforgettable incidents in my life till now, which I deem appropriate to put forward in order to commemorate his birthday today, and to pay my humble respects.

(a)   The cool spring morning, 2000:

I was only twelve years old then. My school had given an extra holiday which preceded the festival of colours. As for Tagore, I had been only formally introduced to him till then, as a poet who writes poems which are given much importance in exams and are quite difficult to understand. Needless to say, I did not have a favourable opinion of him and ignored my grandfather’s sneers when I showed more inclination towards listening to Sonu Nigam instead of Debabrata Biswas.

On that morning, when I was sitting on the sofa after my breakfast and was getting ready to hear from my mother how I was getting lazier every day when it came to completing studies on time, I saw my grandfather go slowly to the room where the gramophone was kept. After almost 5 minutes of a habitual whirring, it started playing “Mor bhabonarey ki haway”. Though I would have preferred a Mohd. Rafi cassette anytime over Tagore back then, this song was somehow unusually overpowering. Even though it was expressing happiness in alternating low and high notes, the profoundness of Debabrata’s voice elicited a different degree of power. And yet how delicate, how delightful it was, and how it pervaded!  It was a song of unstifled mirth, the waves of which stirred throughout the body, beginning from the soles of the feet. The description of the bright blue sky and the wild scent of spring would be superfluous here; the song itself is more than enough.

Mor bhabonarey ki haoay- Debabrata Biswas

Happiness had never been so commanding before. I confess to have switched loyalties from that day onwards.

(b)  The terrible Physics Exam, 2004:

 Board exams are always tough, especially when thunderclaps plan to make merry on a disturbing afternoon swarmed by unknown questions and confusing answers to the known ones. Those were days when the Xth standard exams were not made optional, instead a tortuous pathway to even higher studies. And when your ship is sinking ignoring the laws of floatation in the physics exam with thunder rumbling outside, you feel like a defenseless soldier at the mercy of the rough blows.

I came back home devastated, neither knowing, nor even wanting to know the possibly dreadful outcome of the previously happened massacre. While speculations in the house extrapolated the ramifications and equated them with a bleak future, I chose to turn my tape recorder on to drown the disappointments. Yes, gramophone had become fully obsolete by then.

This time Debabrata did not distil drops of happiness excessively and vociferously like before, instead a soothing glow of contentment came from within as I listened to “Aji Hridoy Aamar”. The languid rhythm of the song and yet the blithe promenading of the heart in the land of clouds searching for the unknown, as the lyrics suggest, was the perfect antidote to the vicissitudes of exam days. I closed my eyes and listened again.

Aji Hridoy Aamar- Debabrata Biswas

Fortunately, I did well in the Chemistry exam the next day.

(c)    The last conversation and goose bumps, 2009:

By this time even audio cassettes had become out dated. CD players were more of a sensation, so were affordable laptops. Attuned to the changes of the world, I had travelled with one to my grandfather’s in my winter recesses. By that time, age had taken it's toll and it was quite difficult to put things across him. It was not an easy task to trace out his feelings and responses and to observe and define them was similar to reconstructing a fortress from a view of it's grey and broken ruins. But on that wintry afternoon when he asked me to play "Probhu Aamar Priyo Aamar", it was unmistakably clear. I turned on my speakers to full volume in the hope of him receiving at least a fraction of it. It was Debabrata again.

I saw a light flicker in his eyes accompanied by a faint smile. That's it. The rest of our conversation remained silent except for that one flicker. This communication with the person I respected the most coupled with a voice dripping with graveness left me bereft of any verbal subtleties.

Probhu Aamar, Priyo Aamar- Debabrata Biswas

My grandfather passed away two months later.

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P.S.: Today, believing myself to be an invaluable instrument of the invisible hand of justice, I  bunked half of my office hours and listened to "Ei to bhalo legecchilo" and many more. And once again, I lived a little bit more.

Thank you, for being there.

A Ripple

"Leftovers in their visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart".

                                                                                                                                     -Thomas Fuller


“Hello? Can I speak to Sarla di?


“Yes, speaking.”


“I’m calling from your uncle’s house in Dum Dum.”


“Oh... what’s the matter?”


“Can you please come here? Your uncle passed away at 9.30 this morning. I called Girish da. He is in Guwahati now, so it will not be possible for him to come immediately. Since there is no one here and I don’t know anyone else, so......”

                ***************************************************************************************

It’s been almost 10 years. What’s the name of that house again? Yes, “Chhaya”. That’s what was written, as far as she can remember. For the middle aged Sarla, it became difficult to magnify past incidents clearly with the telephoto lens of her foggy memory. But she could remember the road which led to the house, mostly covered with red clay and measled with pebbles. The well-trodden road was mostly unadopted that time, witnessed by a pond on one side, and the house on the other. She used to come here every year, accompanied by her parents and sometimes by her brother, older to her by 4 years. The area, though officially a part of greater Kolkata, was located in the outskirts of the city and cannot be exactly termed as a benchmark of development. The state government's apathy towards the region was somehow a blessing in disguise for Sarla and her brother, as the air was not choked by the sounds of horns blaring. For a child's mind resides in a dome of innocence, seeking peace and imagination from less-noticed properties like the stillness of water or the blue of the sky. The thought of visiting her uncle's house fascinated her always, she being constantly pampered there, and the collectibles which her uncle brought from England seemed like mysteries to her, belonging to an unknown world. The rather boyish photograph of her uncle in the passport, the tales manifesting the rich heritage of St. Paul's Cathedral and the hubbub of Piccadilly Circus kept her oblivious of the fact that worldly problems like division of property, land and other assets do exist in middle class Indian families, enough to breach the dome of innocence illuminated by stories from a make-believe world. So one day while she was dreaming of a cookout with everyone, and her father and her uncle were having an "argument" inside, she was unaware that her father would suddenly storm out of the room and say to her : "We are leaving now"....... 


Things were never the same again.


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Memories peeped out of her indistinct recollection like the treacherous sunlight peeking through the leaves of trees hurrying past her as she looked out of the window of the taxi. It wasn't difficult to recognize the house, only this time it had a few visitors waiting outside. Warriors who fight the battle of Life along with it's aide Loneliness never get a square deal, for they are always unsung. The clay bathed road and the pond lined with weeds seemed only remnants of a man who was once close, only to become a stranger through time.


"Oh, you have come. I am quite relieved to find a relative at this juncture. The thing is, we are short of money to proceed any further and.......". The words seemed to come from a distance, almost drowned in the silence which can be fathomed only by a gloomy mind, clouded with memories amidst all the murmurs of the visitors.


Tears left trails on partially wrinkled cheeks while a fish made a ripple in the pond.