[Reader-list] tarapadobabu kothay jachchen?

[Swadhin Sen]

Thank you, Debjani. The piece was illuminating as well as critical.
 
Swadhin Sen 
Archaeologist 
& 
Assistant Professor 
Department of Archaeology 
Jahangirnagar University 
Savar, Dhaka 
Bangladesh 
Ph. 88 01720196176 (mobile)

----- Original Message ----
From: debjani sengupta <debjanisgupta at yahoo.com>
To: reader-list at sarai.net
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 10:42:59 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] tarapadobabu kothay jachchen?

A few days ago the poet Tarapada Roy (b 1936) died in
Kolkata. Curiously for the past week even before I
heard the news, I have been reading his autobiography
'Tarapadababu Kothay Jachchen? (Where are you going,
Tarapadababu?) describing his first twenty odd years
as a young boy in Tangail, (now in Bangladesh) and
then his sojourn in Calcutta from 1951. Tarapada Roy
was a poet, a very good one although he was very
modest about the epithet. He often said that when he
saw an envelop marked in his name with the words, 'the
poet' he felt a deep thrill. He was also a wonderful
short story writer, many of them satires or plain
'hasyarasatyak' in the vein of Shibram Chakraborty or
Syed Mujtaba Ali.But to me Tarapada Roy was also
something else. He was the author of some of the most
poignant poetry and stories on the Partition of India
that he had witnessed when he was just ten. In a story
called 'Joe' he talks of a horse that he and his
brother had looked after and that he had to abandon
when they left East Bengal for ever. And in a short
poem written in 1967 the poet describes his first view
of the city where he comes to live:


 Do you remember, Kolkata
That green passport, my dark green shirt;
Arriving, drenched, at Sealdah Main
That day on the train from the border
I saw a shoeshine boy for the first time in my life.

It was a thrill, my dream city,
My first tram-car, my earliest first-class,
First class Kolkata,
Where pet clouds hover over every roof.
Within every window 
A mystery of darkness and light. 
My green shirt, my ragged shoes,
Fear in every step.
Madmen with beggars, beggars with drunks,
Processions, rainbow hued, horizon stretching.
The crowded teashops, the futile mob on the road.
On windy afternoons dry leaves scatter,
In the sunlight, tram tracks glisten 
Pale as ivory,
Reaching nowhere.
Sometimes I feel,
I am no longer within your limits,
Nowhere can I find that city of mine
Where, between two lamp-posts, in a long penalty kick 
Someone sends the football moon to space
While shadowy figures in the gallery yell, Goal,
goal.

These twenty years, 
I have found nothing in common with you, Kolkata. 
My torn dreams, my ragged pieces of poetry
In dirty paper bags the tramps
Have collected them all. 
Those dream-words
Have been sold like rubbish.
Not a single mystery window opened anywhere
Nowhere could I reach the clouds on the roofs.
Only the color of my shirt, 
My shoe size changed,
Needlessly.         

(That Green Passport: Tarapada Roy)

It was also curious that two days ago I heard Etienne
Balibar speak on citizenship that he locates within
the fundamental right of circulation. Balibar stressed
how the notions of a 'citizen' was being transformed
within the ontological paradoxes of globalization. In
post national times, borders have become blurred,
meaningless and ubiquitous populations have emerged
who are truly citizens of the roads. They are citizens
who are partially free from territoriality, a new
class of transnational performers who are nomadic. I
couldnt help but think of Roy's poem when I was
listening to the exposition. Borders have a real
presence in so many of our lives, more so when in our
minds they dont exist at all. The underclass of
refugees who came to West Bengal in the aftermath of
the Partition had few political rights. Theirs was a
right to live but that right was circumscribed by the
politics of space.Tarapada Roy belonged to such a
nomadic citizenship marked by belonging and not
belonging.  The question 'Kothay Jachchen
Tarapadababu?' thus has a special resonance in my mind
today; it is question that I catch myself asking
often. Where are we off too?
                









      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Tonight's top picks. What will you watch tonight? Preview the hottest shows on Yahoo! TV.
http://tv.yahoo.com/ 

_________________________________________
reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Critiques & Collaborations
To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>






       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/