[Reader-list] tarapadobabu kothay jachchen?

Thu Sep 20 20:23:55 IST 2007

dear debjani,
  thanks a lot for your posting on tarapada ray after his death. i wish we could have make him  known among the sarai readers, as his writings on the city (both poetry and prose) are superb. however, even in kolkata, apart from  cursory obituaries in the newspapers nothing serious came out about one of the finest bengali writers of the seventies.
  best
  amit

debjani sengupta <debjanisgupta at yahoo.com> wrote:
  dear dhatri, kothay jachchen has been translated in
the piece as 'where are you going'. it may also be
marathi as you say. i have no knowledge of marathi so
cannot comment. the piece is not about east bengal's
history it's about the death of a poet. some deaths
diminish all of us. this death does so too. that's why
i thought i 'll share my feelings with all of you in
the reader list. warm regards, debjani
--- we wi wrote:

> as per my knowledge 'Kothay Jachchen" is pure
> MARATHI word. but tarapadobabu east bengal 
> history???
> 
> 
> debjani sengupta wrote:
> 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?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>
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