Ulat Puran

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During my Donkey's Years at KGP, I must have toured Victoria Memorial a dozen times; surely more than any Calcutta student of mine did.

July 1, B C Roy's Birthday is the best time to visit V M. Monsoon has just set in, it is drizzling fitfully, but not yet dark and damp, Sun and Cloud playing hide and seek, Greens are as green as they come, the Fat Girl in Stone drenched and dripping deliciously, winding water bodies full to the brim, Bakul trees lining them shedding silver drops on couples huddled beneath; Oh, well, When all the World is not yet too Old, it is the one place as none else.

I am as fascinated as any Saratchandra girl when I happen to pass by a Bakul Tree. There are half a dozen of them lined up in a row across the Director's Bungalow at IIT KGP. The tree's canopy is a perfect hemisphere. It is like a Nature-Made Umbrella, better than any of Pal Brothers. The leaves are just the right size and shape; let's not talk about the tiny tot flowers drenching the road. Their cute shape, color, scent; everything is perfect. Hundreds of poems and songs must have been written and sung in Bengali romancing these trees and flowers

But, as they say, I must not tarry, for, I have promises to keep. It has long ben a passion with me to straight go the interior section of the dark and deep cells of V M to peek at the facsimiles of the letters written by the Bengali Renaissance Greats to the Governors-General and Viceroys of the Empire urging them to let Indian students learn Western Science rather than just preparing them to be their perfect Writers, fed to their teeth in English language and Literature, great though it is.

The White Man discovered his best Place under the Sun in India to root his Empire in.

While he had to 'Kill and Till' to make his Home in the New World, and Pray and Feast on Thanksgiving; in India he had the Granaries all ready for him to 'Loot and Scoot'. A fertile land under cultivation and a civilization a few thousand years older than his.

Just bump off and steal and ship it Home.

Make no mistake, there maybe individual exceptions, but as a policy matter, the Brits had no other business in India than to enrich themselves come what may, by plain and simple looting. Telegraph, Telephone, Railways, Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, Cities, Ports, Mines and Industries were all started to get a permanent grip on the Empire and get it going with as little British Manpower as they could afford.

Unlike the other looters who looted and fled, or looted but settled here, the Brits just looted, shipped, looted, shipped and intended to loot and ship ad infinitum till the land bled as white as their freckled skins.

The Great Men of the Bengali Renaissance realized this. And tried by sweet or sour methods to beat the 'System' the White Man built like a Fortress.

Well, rampant looting goes well only till other thieves get jealous and enter the arena. Then we have Gang Warfare and World Wars till each one emaciates the others till they all fall down like Alice's Pack of Cards.

We then celebrate that we fought for and achieved Independence.

Around the time my father was enrolling himself for B A in the Christian College at Madras (1929) so that he can help run the Wheels of the Empire smoothly, Parashuram wrote one of the Greatest Political Satires ever written.

I didn't know of it till Shyamal gifted me the book of that title translated by Sukanta Choudhuri and Palash Pal, a couple of years ago. I read the other stories once, but 'Ulat Puran' (The Scripture Read Backwards) many many times.

It is a Wonder! In 1929, there was no hint of the mighty British Empire collapsing like dominoes 20 years hence.

And the Empire Striking back a century later.

He satirized the Birth of the European Union half a Century before any Europeans could have dreamed it up. Europe was then disintegrating and getting Balkanized. Everyone fighting everyone else to their heart's content.

As Parashuram predicted, it is the fear of subjugation, economical and political by the Rest of the World that led and is leading to the Loveless Euro Union.

And, as Parashu whimsically wrote, my nephew working for the National Health Service in a modest town in Northern England says that all the Doctors there are expected to follow and speak Gujerati and Punjabi. Not out of Love for the 'East India Company Running Backwards'...but just so they can get their next meal after their Glorious Empire with India as Her Crown Jewel vanished into thin air as their Bard 'predicted' long back:

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Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

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And how poignant that this Indian-born Doctor who studied in the Medical College and Hospital set up by the Brits so their Army Personnel can be in fighting shape, should get the 'Officer of the [Defunct] British Empire' from Her Majesty the Queen of Hearts a hundred years later!

How prescient that just as the First British Traders were pleading for trading rights with the Mughal Emperor, Britain's Greatest Poet and Dramatist should foresee the End of their Empire two or three centuries later!

And the way Parashuram ridiculed the tin-pot Indian Slave Kings paying obeisance to the Emperor in His Durbar with strictly limited competing gun-salutes; and Her own shameless mouth-piece The Statesman descended from her so-called Friend of India are just MARVELOUS!

I am sure I will read this Parashuram Piece as and when I get a chance.

The Man is truly 'divine' in the word's verbal meaning: "to discover by intuition or insight"!

Thank you Shyamal!


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