Letter to Bengal

Dear Bengal,

There is a joke doing the rounds about you – that you are now spelled ‘Waste’ Bengal – and the Bengalis, non-Bengalis and I, have a good laugh about it. We belong to the glorious capital city, which I still like to call Calcutta, over Kolkata. I like the colonial flavour, it is characteristically you – intellectual, artistic and playful. A contest asked me to select a category in writing about you. I chose ‘Others’, but wished there was an option for ‘Everything’ instead.

Born in the tea-garden smelling town of Dibrugarh, Assam, my Assamese speaking skills are more proficient than my Bengali is, but, I dare not deny that I am bred in Bengal. Once I fled to Delhi. I returned. To despair. Everything about you is pessimistic, sad, what in recent vocabulary, one could call you ‘not-happening’. Each time I am back from any of my travels, your embrace repels me. Yes, I am speaking against you, but hear me out. I see cities doing so well, loved so well. In you and for you, I have a certain uncertainty. They call you the depot of nepotism. They call you coloured, sometimes red, at other times, blue. I call you mine.

In spite of all the gloom in employment, the bridges being built perpetually, and your desperate humidity, your warmth feels like all things known. Lanes, by-lanes, lakes, lies, liars make you, you. Your populace was once your glory, I would like to insist. The current generation only complains and finds flaw, including me. We hate the Bengali-mindset, whether the middle-class, or the elitists. We always have a problem with everything you humbly offer.

And we are not completely incorrect. Our fourteen forefathers and feminist mothers have painted an ornamental picture of you for me to grow up in. Now that I am living it, I find you strangely different from their tales. The mishtis and maach have remained, as have football and politics, but, a ‘but’ lurks. You do not inspire, anymore. There is nothing positive about you. Or, I am blinded by my beliefs. It feels bad, believe me, to not believe in you.

Not a champion who would herald the rights of a community or religion, I wish you were as glamorous as Delhi, or as cosmopolitan as Bombay. About the contest, I was convinced I had nothing positive to write about you. Then one day, as I drove on your roads, in a car your bank had sanctioned me the loan for, I asked myself if I was inflicted with your pessimism. Turns out, after a deep thought and a long drive, I was wrong all the while.

Our collective pessimism has made you far from positive. My pessimism about you – why blame others? I still share the ‘Waste’ Bengal joke, but having written this letter to you, I know only you can read it, feel it. No other city can.

I am writing to you, unable to resist myself from rewriting you.

Yours,

Kuntala.

I had participated in a contest with this entry dear readers, which asked me to speak positive about Bengal. The results were announced today. I expected a win, I will be honest. I did not. And now, sitting in my homeland, Dibrugarh, I am bitching about Bengal and 'Bengali mothers and their Bengali sons'. I find it befitting to believe that my letter had a capability to win. It did end on a positive note. But Bengal, now I have reason to understand that because you are you, you 'chose' not to understand its essence. That is what I hate about you, Bengal. You do not like change, you celebrate your stangnancy. I believe in myself, and work honestly towards my passion -- to write. To which, 'Bengal' cannot be a border to obstruct me. Oh no, no, no, don't think that I am taking out my frustration of not winning a contest. Today, I believe in myself, I repeat. The purity of the air here has contained me so much so that I am not even sad. I can only hope that one day, I will indeed 'rewrite' you.