The Hungry Tide

A standout amongst the most excellent books, I’ve ever read. In the event that there’s any individual who can paint a photo with dialect, it’s Amitav Ghosh.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/asiasociety/3113817593/
Amitav Ghosh (Image source)

Each page makes you encounter an uncommon situation; you’re discovered between needing to clutch each word and the avidness to dive more profound into the story.

The Hungry Tide brings out the magical universe of the Sundarbans exceptionally well. It is set amongst the little, poor and confined groups of the Sundarbans, the mangrove marshlands that assemble at the mouth of the colossal Ganges Delta. Sunderbans mean the beautiful forest.

I like to quote here beautiful lines from the novel

‘we who have always thought of joy,

as rising….feel the emotion

that almost amazes us

when a happy thing falls. ‘

The Plot is interesting, amazingly woven between the two lead characters of Piya and Kanai. Nirmal’s notebook particularly adds a kind of a mystery to the water mazes of Sunderbans.

With Ghosh’s narrative, you could envision, for a case, each drop of water that spouts into eyes and mouth, and hotly fluttering legs before you see a man suffocating. While reading, I was for all intents and purposes transported and lived by the Sunderbans’ unbounded water channels, viewed the dolphins in the winter chill and survived its violent winds. The explanation of the exotic, whether scientific, geographic, or historical can be as engaging as the lives of the characters.

Ghosh hypnotizes you with the excellence of the scene, its waterways and tides, mangroves and thick woods. The author leaves a few different points of interest with little esteem to the general plot and a few remaining details loosened. He perhaps anticipates that mature reader will envision their own rendition of untold stories.

Generally speaking, The Hungry Tide: A Novel is an extremely tasteful excursion. It positively swept me away into an abstract sea, and I am now a fan of Amitav Ghosh who looks forward to his novels.

Remembering Tagore on Independence Day

On the eve of India’s Independence Day, Tagore’s contributions to the nation cannot be overlooked.

  • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee composed the national song of India with a title “Vande Matram”. The national song was first sung by Rabindranath Tagore by setting heart touching glorious tone to it. The song was first sung at the session of the Indian National Congress in 1896. Shri Aurobindo translated the national song in the English version which is considered as official and best as per Bhavan’s book, Vande Mataram by Moni Bagchee.
Vande Matram
Image source

The translation in English is as follows:

Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,
When the sword flesh out in the seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and
stored,
To thee I call Mother and Lord!
Though who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foeman drove
Back from plain and Sea
And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Though art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nervs the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,
Dark of hue O candid-fair

In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!

  • His poem on freedom

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,
breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning
call of the future;
Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith
you fasten yourself in night’s stillness,
mistrusting the star that speaks of truth’s adventurous paths;
freedom from the anarchy of destiny
whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds,
and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.
Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet’s world,
where movements are started through brainless wires,
repeated through mindless habits,
where figures wait with patience and obedience for the
master of show,
to be stirred into a mimicry of life.

  • Ekla Chalo Re was first recorded by Rabindranath Tagore himself sometime between 1905 and 1908.

     

     

    The song exhorts the listener to continue his or her journey, despite abandonment or lack of support from others. The song is often quoted in the context of political or social change movements.

The essence of India, its diversity, defines the nature of its democracy.

Happy Independence Day to all.

Remembering Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was the best author in Indian writing; a Bengali writer, author, instructor, Nobel Laureate for Literature [1913]. He was awarded a knighthood in 1915, yet he surrendered it in 1919 in dissent against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops executed 400 Indian demonstrators.

Rabindranath Tagore’s 74th demise commemoration was on August 7. He was born on 7 May. [1861-1941]

I recall reading his novel ‘Gora’. Gora is more than a novel; it is an epic of India on the move at a critical time of present-day history, when the social conscience and intellectual awareness of the new intellectuals were in the throes of a great stirring. It is an examination, of complex  Indian social existence, with its abounding disagreements, or of the character of Indian patriotism, which draws its roots from re-developing Hinduism and extends its arms towards all-inclusive humanism.

Tagore is a splendid writer as he puts the reader before issues of India. Everything, even the characters, has a reason, an obscure significance. Gora is a masterpiece and cherished jewel in Bengali Literature. The excellent novel inspects the social life amid The British period in India. It is a mind-boggling story of religion, adoration, patriotism and conviction.

I additionally can’t overlook these motivating lines from his poems

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake 

Endless Time

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.

There is none to count thy minutes.

 

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.

Thou knowest how to wait.

 

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.

 

We have no time to lose,

and having no time we must scramble for a chance.

We are too poor to be late.

 

And thus it is that time goes by

while I give it to every querulous man who claims it,

and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.

 

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut;

but I find that yet there is time.

*/The above post is a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore on his death anniversary /*