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And then there is this magnificent Writers' Building(s):
http://urbanruminations.blogspot.in/2011/05/brief-history-of-writers-building.html
This morning, at 4 AM, I woke up, sweating and panting, from a nightmare:
Apparently I was revisiting my Calcutta and discovered that the "Writers' Building" has been renamed: "Dadaar Bari"; and the "Victoria Memorial", "Dideer Bari".
I cried.
Like I cried, while awake, I revisited my Calcutta of the 1960s in the 1980s to discover that "Dalhousie Square" had been renamed, "BBD Bagh".
This cult of renaming streets, bridges, buildings and monuments for our favorite politicians and freedom fighters only betrays our Colonial Complex. I cried also when the "Mount Road" of my Madras of the 1950s was renamed, "Anna Salai" of Chennai.
And this making and breaking of statues.
The fact of the matter is that India is and has ever been a subcontinent of plurality and no amount of tinkering will change its composite history. It is unfortunately true that the man in the street in 2050, born and brought up in Kolkata, would, when asked:
"Who built our Dadaar Bari?"
would most likely answer:
"Benoy, Badal and Dinesh; don"t you know this simple thing?"
And when asked:
"Who built our Dideer Bari?"
would blush and keep silent.
Before changing names to get rid of our 1000 (or 2000 or 3000) year slavery, let us ask if we have a bestseller on Kolkata or Delhi or Chennai with such paras as this, going back 1000 years:
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"Government has not done enough to prevent the auction of Gandhi memorabilia":
....Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of M. K. Gandhi
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And then there is this magnificent Writers' Building(s):
http://urbanruminations.blogspot.in/2011/05/brief-history-of-writers-building.html
This morning, at 4 AM, I woke up, sweating and panting, from a nightmare:
Apparently I was revisiting my Calcutta and discovered that the "Writers' Building" has been renamed: "Dadaar Bari"; and the "Victoria Memorial", "Dideer Bari".
I cried.
Like I cried, while awake, I revisited my Calcutta of the 1960s in the 1980s to discover that "Dalhousie Square" had been renamed, "BBD Bagh".
This cult of renaming streets, bridges, buildings and monuments for our favorite politicians and freedom fighters only betrays our Colonial Complex. I cried also when the "Mount Road" of my Madras of the 1950s was renamed, "Anna Salai" of Chennai.
And this making and breaking of statues.
The fact of the matter is that India is and has ever been a subcontinent of plurality and no amount of tinkering will change its composite history. It is unfortunately true that the man in the street in 2050, born and brought up in Kolkata, would, when asked:
"Who built our Dadaar Bari?"
would most likely answer:
"Benoy, Badal and Dinesh; don"t you know this simple thing?"
And when asked:
"Who built our Dideer Bari?"
would blush and keep silent.
Before changing names to get rid of our 1000 (or 2000 or 3000) year slavery, let us ask if we have a bestseller on Kolkata or Delhi or Chennai with such paras as this, going back 1000 years:
I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called in the days when Saxon "kinges" were crowned there. Great Caesar crossed the river there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Caesar, like, in later years, Elizabeth, seemed to have stopped everywhere: only he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at the public-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen. There is scarcely a pub of any attractions within ten miles of London that she does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time or the other.
Well, well, we won our Freedom. We did. To do what? Let me quote my own light verse of more than 3 years ago:
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Gandhi's Auction
"Government has not done enough to prevent the auction of Gandhi memorabilia":
....Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of M. K. Gandhi
Gandhijee, O Father of our Nation!
We all vow to stall thy auction,
We swear by Thee
Who made us FREE
To loot this nation
We all vow to stall thy auction,
We swear by Thee
Who made us FREE
To loot this nation
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I didn't know then that everyone had his (her) hand in the till. I have stopped reading newspapers for over a year...just a look at the headlines to make me sick enough for the day...for, not only our ministers but also our bureaucrats are making a beeline for the jails...
"Jail Bharo!!!"
"Jail Bharo!!!"
And while others are preserving their historic ruins for sight-seeing, we are converting our historic palaces into ruins (for night-peeing)...just visit the old City of my Hyderabad.
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Oh, what a rant!!!
Sunday Blues...
I heard of 'writers' before I heard of their fashionable synonym, 'clerks'. My HM Father at our school in Muthukur had a young chap who must have just passed his FA before being recruited as our school's writer. I was friends with him and he used to give me his spent carbon papers and pencils for my recycling pleasure.
Now for the colonial education.
First you do your 'matriculation' which had First Class, Second Class, Third Class and Fail.
Then you enroll in the two-year FA. Then the 2-year BA. Then your 2-year MA. That was about all. The one thing common in them was the second letter, 'A' for 'Arts'. There were no 'sciences'; B. Sc. was a later and minor infringement. When you next visit Dideer Bari, don't while away your entire time on the benches under the bokul trees lining the water-bodies (unless you have best company). Walk straight into the inner sanctum and turn left and go to the dark nook where they have, hanging on the wall, the letters written by our ancient freedom-fighters from Raja Ram Mohan Roy (onwards) to the British overlords urging them to impart science education to our natives, not just stopping at Eng Lit and Law. For, the British had no use for her natives other than as Writers (Clerks)...and our army and our police to fight us and baton us.
To take dictation in English. For this, they taught the natives short-hand. I saw the Pitman Short Hand Book in the racks of my grandpa. He started as a steno...one step above the mere 'writer':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjoigPf4IzE
I asked my Father what the FA meant because I knew that BA stood for Bachelor of Arts and MA for Master of Arts (since they survived till my time). He smiled and said: "Father of Arts". And I believed him and wondered how a Father can turn into a Bachelor and then into a Master unless something went wrong with his life-cycle. It was only much later that I learned that my Father pulled a fast one on me and that FA stood for the unglamorous, "First Arts".
My HM Father wrote wonderful English but never used to dictate so fast that his writer had to be an expert in short-hand. Most teachers don't. Apparently Bureaucrats do. And also Ministers of the golden times.
Some writers were snobbish and thought they knew more English than their Ministers and corrected their English while transcribing His Master's Voice. There was a chap called M. O. Mathai. He joined as Nehru's Writer (Assistant) and outlived him by a couple of decades. When Nehru's doughty daughter was out of power (shortly) he wrote his reminiscences about his Nehru years in which he claimed that the famous Tryst With Destiny speech of Nehru on our Freedom at Midnight was vetted by him. In particular, he claimed that Nehru dictated it as his 'Date' with Freedom but Mathai Babu corrected it as 'Tryst' since Date was too American a word (Mathai was working for the American Army in India before he joined Nehru).
That truly is what I indelicately call:
"Kicking a Corpse"
I asked my Father what the FA meant because I knew that BA stood for Bachelor of Arts and MA for Master of Arts (since they survived till my time). He smiled and said: "Father of Arts". And I believed him and wondered how a Father can turn into a Bachelor and then into a Master unless something went wrong with his life-cycle. It was only much later that I learned that my Father pulled a fast one on me and that FA stood for the unglamorous, "First Arts".
My HM Father wrote wonderful English but never used to dictate so fast that his writer had to be an expert in short-hand. Most teachers don't. Apparently Bureaucrats do. And also Ministers of the golden times.
Some writers were snobbish and thought they knew more English than their Ministers and corrected their English while transcribing His Master's Voice. There was a chap called M. O. Mathai. He joined as Nehru's Writer (Assistant) and outlived him by a couple of decades. When Nehru's doughty daughter was out of power (shortly) he wrote his reminiscences about his Nehru years in which he claimed that the famous Tryst With Destiny speech of Nehru on our Freedom at Midnight was vetted by him. In particular, he claimed that Nehru dictated it as his 'Date' with Freedom but Mathai Babu corrected it as 'Tryst' since Date was too American a word (Mathai was working for the American Army in India before he joined Nehru).
That truly is what I indelicately call:
"Kicking a Corpse"
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