I had to sum up a huge amount of courage to translate a few lines from ‘Hansuli Banker Upakotha’ (The Tale of Hansuli Turn) by one of my most favorite novelists, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay. No other novelist has ever depicted the picturesque cohesion of nature, men, animals and other beings-natural or super natural- so beautifully, brilliantly, and vividly.
It has nothing to do with the mother’s day. Nor has
it anything to put forth the undeniable affection of a mother to her babies.
Rather, it’s about the infinite and eternal cravings of a kid for its mother,
portrayed in a clarified, articulated and heart-melting way. However, I’m sure
you won’t even get the 10% of the passion underlined in the original text:
“Karali used
to move around here and there in search of his mother. He would go to
Mahishdari marsh; he would search along the bushes on the bank of river Kupai; under
the red cotton tree; or around the idol of Baba Thakur. Some days he would keep
walking halfway across Chandanpur, along the aisle piercing the crops fields.
He would scream calling “mom… mom”. And then he would become forgetful of other
things after finding something to play with or he would fall asleep after
getting very tired. Sitting near the idol, he would watch the trail of ants in
the wood apple tree under which there were the colonies of white ants. He would
pluck flowers from the bluebellvine trees encircling the wood apple tree. When
the Kahars made offerings to Baba Thakur, he would go there after the puja and
pick up the sweetmeats offered to god as prasad and for which he had to battle
against the ants. Sometimes the Kahars offered milk to the god in a pot and he
would drink that later. Sitting under the red cotton tree, he would watch the playing
parrots. The birds would fly swinging their tails; they would carry sheaf of
rice in-between their lips. Many a times those birds had to fight against the
snakes attempting to take away their chicks. Karali would help the birds; he
would throw brickbats to stop the snakes. He had even a couple of snakes fallen
down from the trees with his aims. Suddenly he would lose his interest in
playing and start searching his mother again…..”
Just a few couple of lines that can make us stand
against two different realities at the same time:
1. The
bonding between human beings and nature has been lost. We are no more a part of
nature; at least we pretend to be. And
to justify our pretension, we tend to rule over the nature.
2. Things, realities, circumstances may change or
stand against one another as binary opposition; but, the emotion of a little
kid for its mother can never change…still today a kid aged about 5 would search
for its mother the same way Karali did about a hundred year ago.
We can demolish the bond of millions of years with
the nature, but the emotion of an innocent mind remains the same forever and it
would always find solace in nature the same way. But whenever the Mother Nature
finds it necessary, it can kick us out to make itself regenerated…We better get
that; the earlier the better.
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