Veiled grace and beauty of Hemanta

This year Hemanta, the fourth season on the Bangla calendar, appears to have arrived on time unfolding its misty beauty quite pronouncedly. Even a poet of Rabindranath's stature did not wax lyrical about this season except perhaps his overlapping song making a reference to Hemanta and Basanta (Spring) together. But one poet was in love with this season of sombre gloom punctuated by mist and dew drops gathered on the blades of grass. He is our very own unpretentious Jibananda Das. It is this man who, uttering softly in a style of soliloquy, the mantra of his soul draws our attention to the veiled grace and beauty of Hemanta. Who has ever dared listen to the murmur of dew drops in the innermost reaches of one's heart other than this man from Barisal known for its meandering mighty rivers with exquisitely lovely names and expansive rice fields! John Keats has immortalised the Autumn which in prosaic terms is just the "Fall" because trees in the northern hemisphere start shedding their leaves during this season. What Autumn is to the countries of Europe and North America is in fact Hemanta in this part of the world. Our Autumn is different. Striking similarity marks the changes in Nature across the Pacific and the Atlantic. In Europe and America the Autumn signals the arrival of the Winter with introduction of chill in the air. In those parts of the globe, the season is considered impregnated with melancholy because after a brief summer time, this season once again heralds the unwelcome Winter. No wonder Keats, Irish poet William Butler Yeats and French poet Paul Verlaine have typically harped on the melancholic tune. But Keats in his "To Autumn" has gone well beyond the seasonal transition to celebrate the 'bounteous fecundity' and 'mellow fruitfulness' or roundness or fullness of Nature. This is in effect an extension of the harvest festivals that many cultures developed as their own. Our 'Nabanno' bears definitely an echo of such festivals in Europe and North America and Canada. Artists in the West have found in Nature at this time an attractive subject of painting because the colours of leaves run riot then. Our Hemanta is duller in comparison and few could ever give expression to the intimate feeling in contact with the seasonal bounties before Jibananda. With eyes for the unperceived behind the perceived, Jibananda explored the many layers of innate aesthetics and romance that lay hidden behind the fig leaf or in the dance of Khanjana, a beautiful bird. Even the sunlight transforms from the inanimate to the animate. Yes, crops, paddy in particular, gets mentions many times over. This is only natural. But when the poet mentions the raven, the rat, we are transposed into a world half real and half unreal not free from nostalgia. There is something surreal or ethereal that invades our souls. Indeed, Jibananda prepares us to see things we could not see earlier. Agrahayan and Kartick, the two months, unfold before our eyes both a romanticised and nostalgic Hemanta. Apart from considering Hemanta the season of primary harvest, people traditionally here have been grateful for the wonderful treats like the date juice. They have applied their ingenuity to transform the juice into molasses and together with 'pithas' made from newly harvested rice, people indeed have taken the culinary art to a new level. The Bangalees in particular thus have written their own poetry with the fruits of their toil. In the Anglosphere, notably in North America and Canada, the Halloween season, which owes to a Celtic autumn festival, begins prompting a shopping spree stoked by marketing promotions. This festival, though, has lost steam now. The Nabanno Utsab is certainly a counterpart of that festival here. In the rural Bangladesh, once it was quite popular but with the high-yielding varieties of rice replacing Aman paddy, that tradition is nothing but a dying one too. However, cultural organisations in the capital city are rediscovering the merit of such festivals and they are organising cultural functions marking Nabanno. Sure enough, such functions are more organised and aesthetically pleasing but yet the smell of raw soil is missing. Everything is going capital or town-centred. There is a need for rediscovering our roots and following Satyen Sen's and Waheedul Huq's examples, we would do well to go to the rural folks and together with them hold functions in their own settings before they forget the rituals and rites of such colourful festivals. Devolution of culture rather than concentration in urban centres like other human enterprises is the best guarantee for enrichment of a society. Jibananda has etched permanently the picture of the season Hemanta in sharper outlines on our mental canvas, now we can expand the horizon in our own practical terms.