Bengalis and their ‘dada-giri’ lifestyle

Bengalis have always been very much ahead of other communities because, as the famous saying goes ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. These famous words were uttered by none other than Gopal Krishna Gokhale and, appears to be valid even today – may not be in the way Gokhale had envisaged but Bengal does take the lead in all fields that require less of brawn and more of brain.
Bengalis love to write poems and have invented a concept called ‘little magazine’ – some of these are ‘little’ in size as far as the number of pages go. When these little mags came on the scene in the 1960s, it was the age of letter press printing. And, sometimes a couple of individuals, caught by the writing bug, would pool their financial resources to get a little mag printed. The contents would be poems dedicated to the girl who remains in their imagination.
The little mag would be a method to get it out of the system and, the novelty would wear off once he young man got hold of a job.

Another proof of Bengalis are the innumerable tea stalls at every street corner – the owner opens the shutters at daybreak and shuts down at night. And, as long as he is awake, he is kept busy serving out tea to his clientele.
Usually, most of them are locals and known faces. They will drop in, snatch the day’s newspaper, glance through the headlines, select a topic and proceed to create a storm in the teacup.
The topics could be anything from Tasleema Nasreen to Narendra Modi, from football to tennis, from the rising prices of onions to the murder of a local ‘dada’. ‘Dada’ means ‘big brother’ and, Bengalis all over the country are known as ‘dada’. It is believed to be a respectable address unlike in some parts of the country where ‘dada’ means a rowdy character.
Of course, ‘dada-giri’ is a different kettle of fish altogether – especially, after the popularity it has gained as a gameshow on a TV channel, thanks to Bengal’s blue-eyed boy Saurav Ganguli. (to be continued …)
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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1994 was a good and bad year

By the time 1994 came around, the magazine and the compilation of short stories had begun to pay dividends. The first two volumes of short stories had stories of the three of us but, the next one was a selection of stories contributed by other writers of little magazines of Bengal. They had submitted their stories in our stall at the Kolkata Book Fair in 1993.

Yes, we had attended the Kolkata Book Fair in 1992 and 1993 but could not do so in 1994 because it was a year when I ran into trouble in my professional life. It was directly related to my boss. He was a Bengali but his wife was a non-Bengali who loved to try out her hand at writing in Bengali.
It was OK so long as her literary exploits were restricted to the local get-togethers where the audience loved to applaud her efforts but, when it came to writing for a magazine that was going places, we had to take care to ensure that the quality of the writings did not deteriorate. Obviously, someone would have to sit with the handwritten manuscript, decode the squiggles to make sense and then get it into the magazine.
Unfortunately, none of us had that much time at our disposal and the result was that her stories continued to lie in waiting and, she did not like that.
And, my boss, God bless him, decided that I was not fit for promotion.
Why he took such a decision is not nown but, he graded me as ‘below average’ in the Annual Confidential Report and I was transferred out to another department.
The worst part is that I came to know about my ‘below average’ rating only after joining the new department. As per rules, any officer who is assessed as ‘below average’ is not eligible for promotion for 3-years. I had already lost 6-years waiting for my promotion and this ‘below average’ rating meant I would have to wait for some more time. It was akin to hitting below the belt.
Well – I took it in my stride as I have always taken the good with the bad. And, in the new department, I came across a totally new set of bosses who helped me to change my outlook on life. I realized that there are always some good men among a whole lot of bad ones. (to be continued …)

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Little magazines of Kolkata and Bengali magazine from Nashik

It is a well-known fact that Bengalis are poets at heart and they understand the intricacies of not only politics but also of football, cricket and the fine arts. They believe in the age-old maxim of ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. As a result, they suffer from a sort of superiority complex and they will never admit it.
Anyway, when some Bengalis get together and they have a common bond of writing either poetry or prose, there would be an automatic desire to see their names in print. The Bengalis in Nashik were no different and, I was one of them.

I had already been writing in a few magazines of Kolkata and there was another gentleman who wrote poems – he had managed to get a footing of sorts in the little magazine sector. This little-mag sector was unique to Bengali culture and had been born to allow up and coming writers to try and secure a toehold in the highly competitive world or writing.
Believe it or not, there are established writers who had graduated from little magazines to big magazines and, finally, became big names in the literary world.
Incidentally, little magazines hold a special place in Bengali culture and, in the annual Book Fair held in Kolkata, a separate section is reserved for Little Mags.
Then there was an elderly woman, the wife of one of our colleagues, who was an established writer with a few books to her name. And, along with her, there were some more Bengalis who were poets or writers at heart.
Well – all these faithfuls of Bengali literary world decided to meet one evening every month and read out our literary creations and allow others to comment and criticize the outputs. (to be continued …)