No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main - John Donne.
For most of my life, I have believed myself to be a piece of the Bengali continent. This feeling, however, has been neither constant nor certain. As a child growing up in Bengali-speaking households in Hindi-speaking towns, my language - or, that quaint term, my mother tongue - sealed my identity. For the first seven years of my life, I had no cause to question it. Then, we moved to Kolkata and I met my third-grade (pun intended) Bengali teacher, Mrs. B.
In those early years spent outside Bengal, we spoke Bangla at home but I had received no formal instruction in the language. I could barely read it and my writing was worse - a fact that appalled Mrs. B. In my first-ever Bengali test - in a new school, in a new city - I scored an abysmal 14 out of 50. Mrs. B took my failure as a personal affront.
She summoned me to her desk and in front of the entire class, made my shame public. ‘Tumi Bangali hoy Bangla fail korle’ (You are a Bengali and you failed in your language). Pointing at one of my Anglo-Indian classmates, she continued, ‘Oi Christian chele ta ke dekho. O tomar theke besi nombor peyeche’ (Look at that Christian boy. Even he scored more than you). Nearly thirty years have passed but my memory of that day remains undimmed.
Regular readers of this newsletter will know I am not a petty man. I do not wish ill upon those who have wronged me. Are there times when I hope my enemies are waylaid by chronic diarrhoea during periods of acute water shortage? Yes, of course. But I strive to rise above those base instincts. It is the same with Mrs. B. No matter how deep the wounds she inflicted upon me, I bear her no malice. I hope she is happy and healthy, and has easy access to Loperamide.
Mrs. B was replaced by a succession of disinterested teachers in middle school and I made slow progress. My relationship with the Bengali script graduated from being terrible to tolerable. I was no longer failing exams, but I lacked the fluency (and, I suppose, patience) to read anything except textbooks. The world of Bengali literature was available to me only through English translations.
I discovered Feluda not in Sonar Kella but in The Golden Fortress (the translated novella). The only Byomkesh Bakshi I knew was the one who spoke English (translated short stories) or Hindi (the iconic Doordarshan TV series). This blindspot in my cultural education was not limited to books. Even the popular classics of Bengali cinema - from Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne to Dhonni Meye - were unknown to me.
But far worse than these literary deficiencies, were the aspersions cast on my oral competence. I thought I was a native Bangla speaker until my born-and-bred-in-Kolkata friends latched on to idiosyncrasies in my speech. There was something odd about my syntax, something foreign. My Bangla, they teased me, carried the whiff of Bihar - the land of my birth. (The Bengali’s disdain for the rest of the world is legendary. Humankind, according to Bengali anthropology, consists of two types of people: Bengalis and non-Bengalis; the latter word is used to refer to anyone who has suffered the misfortune of being born outside the community.1)
And the final damning piece of evidence, of course, was that not only did I not eat fish, I despised it. (Still do.)
If my Bengali-ness was found wanting on these counts, there were other areas in which I excelled. Thomas Macaulay had once described the community thus:
Whatever the Bengali does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in personal conflict.
It is as if the man knew me personally.
Who, then, has the truth of it? Macaulay and his prescient description of me or that neighbourhood uncle who believes you cannot call yourself a Bengali unless you’ve read Gitanjali?
Over the years, that niggling question - am I a good enough Bengali? - has lost some of its urgency. In the fifteen years I spent in Kolkata, I learnt enough of the customs and idioms of the city to make me feel like I belonged. And in the following near-fifteen years in Mumbai, I have allowed corporeal traits to entrench my self-identity. Now, my Bengali-ness is measured not by my familiarity with regional art, but by my love for egg rolls, phuchkas, and afternoon naps.
Yet, I have never been able to shake off the feeling that, as a Bengali, I am a work in progress. There continue to be vast chasms in my experience and appreciation of my culture that I need to address. So, a few days ago, when I was visiting my aunt and she suggested we watch The Apu Trilogy, I agreed. Not because she had been a gracious host and it would have been churlish to refuse, but because I’d always meant to remedy my limited exposure to Satyajit Ray’s filmography.
I quite enjoyed the three movies and upon my return, I kept the Ray film festival going. Over one weekend, I watched Kapurush and Charulata. I read a couple of fantastic essays written by Sohini Chattopadhyay - author of the wonderful book, The Day I Became A Runner - about Ray’s film-making and the absence of women in his writings. I even hummed some Rabindra Sangeet.
I was, all things considered, feeling 10/10 Bengali.
I called a friend to share these achievements.
“Ek er por ek Ray er cinema dekhchi. Nijeke besh cultured mone hoche.” (I’m watching one Ray film after another. Feeling very cultured.)
My friend laughed. “Ritwik Ghatak er boi dekhechis? Ar Mrinal Sen? Aage oder cinema tao dekh.” (Have you watched Ritwik Ghatak’s movies? And Mrinal Sen? First, watch their films.)
I murmured a reply, my enthusiasm dissipating.
“Dara toke kota boi recommend kori. Bangla boi, of course. Porte parbi toh? Haha.”(Let me recommend some Bengali books to you. Will you be able to read them? Haha.)
I maintained a stony silence.
“Naam gulo likhe fel…” (Write down these titles…)
With a sigh, I cut the call, opened a food delivery app on my phone and ordered an egg roll. Double egg, double chicken. Never fails.
In the marginal space between these two categories, exist the probashi Bengalis (those resident outside Bengal). For more on this, you may turn to The Bengalis: A Portrait of a Community by Sudeep Chakravarti.
My school had a version of Mrs.B who would start every Bangla class with "surprise" spelling tests. Students who failed the test were sent on a "walk of shame" through the corridors with her following us, chanting subtle insults such as "Ei dekho aamader Rakhi likhte paarena paakhi." I memorised the alphabets purely out of the fear of public humiliation.
Rohan this is LOVELY. Hilarious and poignant as always! Makes me want to write about my failings as a half-marathi, half-punjabi.