Tomorrow the 13th February marks the advent of another Basanata, First Falgun of the Bangla Calendar of the year 1422. And the Valentine's Day commemorating love falls on the next day, the 14th February. The eventful days are happily juxtaposed, so to say.
Basnata is synonymous of new life, love and romance in Bengali life. New budding plants of mango and other fruit bearing varieties add a maddening aroma to Nature. Discerning Bangali mind and soul cannot escape the ubiquitous and ever captivating melody of the doves and the cuckoos. Humming bees are busy spreading love and life to the flowering plants. Mother Nature is busy and bustling with life.
From time immemorial, nature has filled our life with the abundance of spring, with its bountiful beauty, harmony, melody, love and life. Even the most ignorant of minds could not but appreciate such a phenomenal transformation and abundance of nature from a somewhat weary and lackluster wintry laziness and laxity. As if by some magical intonation, nature transforms herself from morbidity to fertility, from drudgery to activity, from tedium to momentum.
Bangla literature is full of praise for spring. From village bards to bauls, from the Nobel Laureate to the Rebel Poet, and from the ancient to the most modern, everyone has eulogized this romantic and beautiful season of Spring. Innumerable songs, poems, stories, paintings have been composed, sung and painted and dwelled upon by one and all.
The Biswa Kabi is by far the most outstanding in welcoming this season of colour, aroma, beauty and melody. One may start with his "Aha Aji E Bosontey, Koto Phool Fute, Koto Pakhi Gai' and proceed onto to drown oneself in the vast sea of his renderings on Spring, from a sense of ecstasy to the very edge of melancholy…. That is typical of the great maestro.
But this spring and this Valentine's Day, bespeaks of sadness and sorrow, of terrors and tears. The natural aroma has been replaced by the unbearable odor of burning flesh, the sweet morning breeze by the suffocating atmosphere of burning petrol, and the melody of the doves and the cuckoos by the obnoxious burst of cocktails. There prevails an uneasy sense of collective sadness and gloom, and yet a nonsensical attitude of intransigence and arrogance exacerbated by a perverted assertion of self-righteousness.
Perhaps, the great Tagore is again relevant here ….. "Tui Re Basanta Samiran, Tor Nohe Shukhero Jibon……".
Muhammad Zakiul Islam
DOHS Baridhara
Dhaka 1206
mzaki_islam@yahoo.com
