The government in West Bengal just decided that it is time to change the name of the state.  During the sixty-four years of India’s independence, West Bengal has been known as Paschimbanga in Bangla (পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, phonetically Poschimbongo), the native language of most inhabitants. By decree it is soon going to be changed to Paschim Banga or Paschimbanga (and there is still confusion on details) in other languages as well.

Why even consider doing away with West Bengal?

In 1905, the first Partition of Bengal decreed by Lord Curzon created a new province known as “Eastern Bengal and Assam” carved out of a greater Bengal (which contained areas which later became the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa). The colonial government claimed that the large state had become ungovernable. Nevertheless, the Partition ignited the swadeshi movement (arguably more so in the Hindu predominant western province of Bengal). Reunification of the two Bangla-speaking parts occurred in 1912. The province was again partitioned in 1947 with the eastern region becoming East Pakistan, and the western part becoming the state of West Bengal in India. The state expanded to include the district of Purulia in 1956, but the name remained unchanged. Since Independence it has been known as West Bengal in English, Paschim Bangal in Hindi, and Paschimbanga in Bangla, all roughly meaning the western land of Bongo, Banga, or Vanga (depending on your taste for Sanskritisation). In 1971, East Pakistan became an independent nation, Bangladesh.

When the first call for discarding the name “West Bengal” arose decades ago, the idea was to simply do away with the “West” or “Paschim” qualifier. The point made was that since West Bengal was no longer politically associated with East Bengal, which was a sovereign nation, “West” was simply a relic of a pre-Partition province.  I agree with this assertion. I think that if two political entities known as “Punjab” can exist right next to one another – one in India and the other Pakistan without requiring an East or West qualifier then why should the Indian state resulting from the Partition of Bengal retain a vestigial “West” or “Paschim”?

The second “concern” which has only recently become a priority is that the alphabetically West Bengal is last among the list of Indian states. As one Bangla newspaper noted, by the time representatives from West Bengal speak in government institutions in New Delhi, representatives from other states have already spoken. Apparently the esteemed representatives from other states either leave or don’t pay any attention to what is said by the delegation from the last alphabetical state. Ladies and gentlemen, these are the people we elect and this is the exalted level of discourse.

In any case, it is clear from the change to Paschimbanga that the government did not take into any serious consideration the substantive cultural argument to lose “West” or “Paschim”. The gains toward the trivial purpose of moving up in a government agenda are negligible. Instead of being in the fourth position as Banga or Bengal it has only gained marginally in the roll-call and moved to number twenty-one.

That leaves us with the possibility that what the government really wanted to do was to make the name of the state uniform in various languages. After all, it was Paschimbanga in Bangla, West Bengal in English, and Paschim Bangal in Hindi. Wouldn’t making it Paschimbanga standardize the name?

In theory this argument is plausible. Bengalis will continue to pronounce the state Poschimbongo and presumably write Paschimbanga and Paschim Banga, though only one of these three variants will be the official name of the state. Some people just won’t care at all.

I have experienced all of this before. I grew up in a district in West Bengal which was known as Midnapore. Later it became Midnapur. When the district was divided in the last decade, it officially became Paschim Medinipur. Currently, it is called Paschim Medinipur, West Midnapore, Paschim Midnapur, and all other variants depending on preferences. Administrative decrees come with the flourish of a pen. Habits die hard.

However, there are serious concerns in changing the name to Paschim Banga without a thorough consideration of the alternatives.  Changing the name of state without any underlying perceivable change in dynamics should not occur in haste. More unnecessary work for administrative babus does not an efficient government make. There are administrative processes that have to be updated, maps that need to be changed, websites that will need to be created, and textbooks that will have to be tossed out. On a cultural level, those of us who grew accustomed to “West Bengal” will slip up sometimes and say it by force of habit. On a broader level the change will create a time-stamp that will make the culture, literature, and art which we know dated.

Still, if a change reflects the current identity of the inhabitants of the geographic region then it is wholly justified.  Based on cultural identity and aspirations of the inhabitants of the state, Banga or Bengal would have been a defensible change. Paschimbanga is culturally a non-change and nothing more than a cosmetic alteration that unfortunately carries the same work-burden of a serious consideration.

On a broader level, West Bengal in English and Paschimbanga in Bangla had been used side by side for sixty-four years. If West Bengal was unacceptable, what was the pressing need for changing it to Paschimbanga only now? And if as suspected there was no clearly articulated need, why go through the trouble and more importantly force others to go through it too?

What does it matter that representatives from seven alphabetically-challenged states will now be forced by protocol to listen to the prattle emanating from Paschimbanga?

A long time ago it was said, ““What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.” I think we can safely say that what Bengal might have thought yesterday, Paschimbanga isn’t about to imagine tomorrow.

Even when death had not become endemic, quicksand was a perennial problem. Marauding elephants became a concern much later when we cut down the forests.

The Kangsabati, which is also known as the Kasai, has always been my river. I grew up a short bicycle ride away from its sandy banks. On afternoons of oppressively hot summer days, I would ride past the sleepy district court to where the paved road abruptly turns into a dusty red streak.  I would pedal past brick kilns, outstretched shady banyan trees, and red lateritic valleys until I reached the top of a hill overlooking the river. From there I sat and watched cows kick up dust on the way home and laborers slowly file out after the daily shift at the rice mill. As afternoon turned to evening, the hazy sun slowly set while the river glistened metallic. The 5:45 Howrah local train galloped over the rail-bridge adding another fleeting element to the evening panorama.

In the winter months, there would always be picnics on the river bank. We would carry rice, vegetables, spices, large pots and pans, recently-butchered poultry, glasses made of clay, and plates made of sal leaves to the river’s edge. There would invariably be some commotion because someone forgot to bring along something that was needed, tempers would flare up, and the food would either lack some essential ingredient or be exceedingly rich for human consumption. There would be music from either a makeshift loudspeaker setup or more likely from the questionable singing and instrumental talent available, and talk of local politics, music, sports, and movies.

During the rainy season, the Kasai would assume a different form. Fed by the monsoons, it would swell up and engulf livestock, paddy fields, and huts in adjacent low-lying valleys. During these months, I would pedal up to the rail bridge just outside of town expertly holding an umbrella in one hand. I would sit and gaze at the swirling muddy currents below until interrupted by a sudden downpour, which would cause me to furiously fly back home through puddles on my rusty bicycle as I was mowed down by machine-gun pellets of rain.

Getting to the river at certain places was tricky because of quicksand and drifting currents to which, every few months the town lost an inhabitant. Call it the foolishness of youth, but that never prevented me from going to the river’s edge or from wading in the water.

Because the most convenient access to my town involves crossing the Kasai over a bridge, it was the last physical symbol of my home when I left it over a decade ago. After days of sleepless cross-continental flights, it is a still a sight for sore eyes when I return every few years because it means I am nearly home again.

A road parallel to the river traverses the railway lines on the other side of town. Just past the railway level-crossing are picturesque villages typical of rural Bengal, swathes of sal forests, and paddy fields. At Dherua, 25 kilometers west, the Kasai had to be crossed by boat, though in the summer months you could wade across with a bicycle held above your head– quicksand be damned. On the other side of the river, the leafy sal forests turned densely green all the way up to Jhargram, the last major town before the road split and entered Jharkhand.

From time to time, a series of elephant attacks occurred in the region and along the road. It is hard to think of elephants as dangerous, endangered animals. However, wild Indian elephants, which are both, are used to migration routes established over decades: these bulky creatures can go on a rampage when their forests and watering holes are encroached upon. I first heard about herds of wild elephants coming down from the Dolma forest range in Jharkhand and wreaking havoc in villages surrounding my hometown when I was in college. They managed to cause mild panic, but they never made it any closer than Gurguripal, a colorfully-named village four kilometers away on the Dherua road. Some of the elephants were killed; others like the mother and calf I saw at the Arabari Forest Range over a decade ago were captured and placed in large forest enclosures. There is a proverb in Bangla that even “a dead elephant is worth a lakh of rupees”; what fate awaited the surviving elephants, I do not know.

When I visited Dherua in 2006, a newly-built bridge across the Kasai had opened to traffic. The bridge had substantially shortened the time to get from Midnapore to Jhargram, though overcrowding meant the most convenient place to sit on the buses plying the route was on the roof. (The trick to sitting on the roof of a bus is to sit as far from the corners as possible and to keep a watchful eye out for tree branches and electrical wires).  When I had arrived in Dherua, I had noticed that there was a large market near the bridge abuzz with shops selling colorful plastic buckets and toys; cheap used shirts and children’s clothing; and a mishtir dokaan where a friend and I greedily devoured some khasta-gaja and shingaras. It was laid-back village unremarkably like any other in the western edge of the state.

Conflict boiled over in the years following that visit. I read the headlines from afar tinged with disbelief. The deaths began to pile up in places like Dherua, Jhargram, and Lalgarh. Many people I knew fled their homes to the relative security of Midnapore, but even the town was not spared. Everyone knew someone who had fallen prey to extortion, or worse, had been kidnapped. In May of last year, rail tracks were destroyed resulting in two trains colliding near Jhargram. The death toll exceeded more than 100 from that act of terror alone. What had triggered this destructive spiral in region which had at least, outwardly appeared peaceful?

In May, people decided they had had enough and the political party which had ruled the state for over three decades was swept out of power. There is now a fragile peace, but no one is sure what will trigger the next wave of violence.

In June, I was back after five years. The unrest had taken a visible toll on the human landscape. The shops I had seen in Dherua were gone as were many of the other establishments. The largest building visible from the Kasai was an outpost for the police. On a certain stretch of the road, I noted that every fourth vehicle was a police jeep. People looked upon strangers with distrust.

The Kasai has been a witness to all the mess we have failed to prevent. I still fondly remember sitting on its banks before the last stand of the elephants; before the men blazed their guns. As long as it flows, it will be twisted into an intricate relationship with us.

I remember when I first found out that malignant cells were spreading inside my grandmother lungs. I didn’t cry or bat an eyelid. I froze.

Over the next few months as my grandmother suffered through small cell lung cancer and coughed up her rapidly dissolving lungs, I refused to acknowledge what was happening to her. I just stared vacantly into the distance until my eyes were red and my vision blurry. Even when her torment finally ended with her passing into the night, like Meursault in Camus’ L’Étranger, I refused to weep. Heaviness set over me as I consigned her body to the flames. I bit my lower lip until I drew blood. But I didn’t feel physical pain. I was cold and lifeless.

Still it comes. It never fails.

A few days later when all the immediate rituals had been performed and all the guests had left, a letter made its way from the U.S. I tore open the envelope and began reading. It was a letter informing me that I’d been admitted into a PhD program that summer. I still clearly remember being unable to finish reading the letter. I broke down and sobbed inconsolably.

And so the waves come crashing down on us. With marriage. With graduation. With a job or a promotion. On buying a house. With the first steps of an infant. With the scaling of every personal Mount Everest.

There is no unalloyed joy in this world, no hope, no freedom, no solace – once you have lost someone you truly love.

Who will pat us on the back when we do the right thing? Who will scold us when we go astray?

As we grow older will we be able to fill the shoes of those who taught us to walk? But how can we ever fill the shoes of those whose footprints remain etched permanently on soles?

And so we age. The furrows form. The hair grays. We wise up just enough to regret the passing of our innocence.

 My muse sees her father in dreams in which she asks if he has taken his medicine. She awakens from such vivid visions disoriented.  Disorientation soon gives way to somber mourning. The punishing ceremony repeats itself without fail. There is no respite.

Whoever said coping got easier with time was a liar.

Every remembrance reinforces a gnawing emptiness. The passing of every loved one brings back the unbearable burden of the loss of the cumulative.

Living in exile feeds into morbid fears easily, because deeply personal tragedies are conveyed through the cruelly impersonal telephone. Over time you begin to fret receiving any phone call from anyone you know. You assume that if no one can touch you, then nothing is disturbed. Everything is as you left it.

On weekends you call relatives up. Just as they state the plain truth that they are getting older, you either bluff your way through the conversation by telling them that nothing will ever happen to them or you berate them for not taking better care of themselves. The deception and the anger are your strange way of compensating for the impotence of not being able to do anything at all.

One day you are speaking to a loved one. The next day he or she is gone forever. You know that tomorrow it could be someone else. And the day after, it will be someone else. And one day it will be you.

And that will be that.

And so you focus on the precise. On the mechanical.

You roll back clocks at the designated hour. You neatly smooth over bed-sheets with your hands and tuck in loose ends. You sort laundry by color and material. You argue over wind chill and heat index. The time it took a certain batsman to score a century in his third test match. The average school-exam score for admission to a college you never attended. The price of onions today compared to what the price was ten years ago.

And in solitude you brace yourself for the next wave and the driftwood it will wash ashore without any sense of when it will strike.

One of the earliest satirical pieces I wrote for this blog was on the subject of formulaic letter-writing in Indian English as prescribed by school teachers. It was a spontaneous act of rebellion against the many times in my life that I’ve been told I didn’t know how to write respectful letters to prescribed proformas. It remains one of the most popular pieces on the blog, though I suspect many readers who arrive from internet search engines are royally disappointed because they want templates for letter-writing.

Anyone following news coming out of India will know that right now the country is in the middle of a vigorous debate over whether or not the “top” Indian science, management, and engineering institutions are “world-class” as defined by one astute politician in the sound-bite “with the similar output of an MIT or a Harvard”. This debate has filtered down to the states as well. Recently, I heard a panel talk about how to make Presidency College, Kolkata as good as MIT and Harvard. The discussions usually don’t focus on how to define parameters for success or metrics, but are loaded with chest-thumping assertions along the lines of the following: “if our former students are good enough to do well abroad, then our institutions deserve credit and by association are already world-class”. Doing well isn’t ever defined or a percentages are never offered.

Still, in the state of West Bengal where for over three decades the morbid state of affairs prompted a mass exodus of the talented and the not-so-talented (including, in the latter category, yours truly), forward-thinking discussions on how to improve educational facilities are, by themselves, a a step in the right direction.

Some things still haven’t changed. The West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination for entrance into the highly-coveted engineering and medical colleges in the state might have, according to a local news channel, lost much of the “prestige and nobility” associated with making the ranks, since last year many seats in colleges went unfilled. Yet, a cursory glance at all of the Bangla dailies which have full-page color advertisements put out by the coaching centers with successful candidates (along with the mugshots and testimonials) shows that success in the educational system is still measured in terms of rank in high school board, and competitive examinations.

And competition is fiercer than ever. Yesterday, the news making the waves was that the admission cutoff for a bachelors’ program at a New Delhi college was 100%. If a student scored less than perfect, she would fail to be admitted. In the face of this ridiculous competition, coaching centers with ludicrous claims are sprouting like mushrooms on the roof of a thatched hut in Bengali village in early July.

Getting back to the question of learning and memorizing, I noticed that teachers in high schools still offer “suggestions” -  questions and answers for Board examinations which students promptly memorize. In West Bengal, many teachers pride themselves in how well their suggestions match up with the actual questions. Often, this has more to do with how well a teacher is connected with the question-setter or an administrator than actual predictive skill.

English is a particularly burdensome subject for students whose native language is Bangla who learn the language late (and often from inept teachers).Yesterday, I came across a series of letters written by an English teacher in published format which had been provided to students as examples for them to study, memorize, and write in exams to get good marks. The letters struck me as both humorous for the archaic forms and obvious errors that abound and saddening.

I have no ill-will towards whoever drafted these letters. I am sure he had the best of intentions. That does not impact the fact that they are atrocious.

Now, I taught a course on conversational “spoken English” for a summer to a group of college students. They were relatively well-versed in grammar but had little experience in ever speaking in English. For the entire summer, my primary job was to get them out of their shells and to encourage them to say anything. Getting the message across through conversation in any manner possible was the goal.

The fear here is that another generation will read these and similar letters in an unquestioning manner and will use these as templates for correspondence they themselves draft, and in the process propagate and amplify errors.

I used a phrase from one of the letters as the title of this post. I think we all know the answer and what we need to do to improve our educational system from a grassroots level.

“আজি হতে শতবর্ষ পরে কে তুমি পড়িছ বসি আমার কবিতাখানি কৌতুহল ভরে?”
“Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?”- Rabindranath Tagore

It is common knowledge that every young Bengali man dabbles with poetry. If I may be permitted, I’d like to add to the cliché. Every young Bengali man dabbles with poetry, discovers to his chagrin that his emotions have been better expressed by a man who died decades before he was born, writes a tribute to the great man, and moves on to become a clerk, engineer, or professor of comparative literature. It is a tragicomic progression precisely because the great man had warned against this sort of mediocrity and predictability.

Well, predictably, my life also followed this trajectory. I ‘rediscovered’ Tagore on my own after I had been inoculated with his poems, stories, and music almost since birth. I don’t recall my father enjoying any music as much as the songs of Tagore and my mother seemed to know even the most obscure lyrics in his canon of thousands of songs. Of course, back then, I had no appreciation for either the tunes he composed or the deceptively simple lyrics he wrote. It is a different matter today, though I cannot sing his songs as well as others in my family can.

Every Bengali grows up reading Tagore’s Sahaj Path (“Simple Lessions”) as a primer for learning the Bangla language along with Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar’s Barna Parichoy. At the age of six or seven, he or she is exposed to a remarkably lucid thought. (At the outset, I apologize for the audacity of attempting to translate Tagore when I personally belong to the camp which believes he is untranslatable.)

নদীর ঘাটের কাছে
নৌকো বাঁধা আছে,
নাইতে যখন যাই, দেখি সে
জলের ঢেউয়ে নাচে…
কত রাতের শেষে
নৌকো-যে যায় ভেসে;
বাবা কেন আপিসে যায়,
যায় না নতুন দেশে?

Next to the river ghat,
A small boat is tied.
When I go to swim, I see it
Dancing in the waves…
After the end of many a night
The boat floats away;
Why does baba go to an office,
And not to a new country?

Of course, though the poem is thought-provoking, our young Bengali pupil is forced to spend more time on memorizing the poem than in putting any thought into what it means.

Most Bengali girls learn to either sing songs of Tagore accompanied by the harmonium or to dance in the style he perfected to his songs. I remember my sister and many others used to dance to the following song:

“আজ ধানের ক্ষেতে রৌদ্রচায়ায় লুকোচুরি খেলা– লুকোচুরি খেলা”
“Today, the sun and shade play hide-and-seek in the paddy fields. They play hide-and-seek”

The idiom is indicative of Bengal’s strong agrarian bond, but now when I hum the line I recall a pictorial visualization symbolizing a yearning for this bond by the Partition displaced in Ritwik Ghatak’s multilayered masterpiece, Subarnarekha and a shiver runs down my spine. What would Tagore have said of the vivisection of his beloved Bengal had he lived to see the day? Tagore championed for the unification of Bengal after the first partition by Lord Curzon, but as he notes in Ghare Baire (“The Home and The World) he was keenly aware of the grievances of the mostly-poor Muslim populace in the eastern part of the province.

Ghare Baire was made into a film by Satyajit Ray. Tagore’s works have been recreated for the silver-screen by Ray, Tapan Sinha, Tarun Majumdar, and other doyens of Bangla cinema. His influence on the art, poetry, music, and culture of Bengal either directly through his work or indirectly through the institution he founded, Visva Bharati, is unmistakable.

At the age of thirteen, I read the first short story that tried to understand how I felt at that time, “Chuti”. It was part of the West Bengal school curriculum at the time, and I’ve read it many times since. I read a translation of it in Hungry Stones – a compilation of short stores translated mostly by CF Andrews, which my father had received in school as an award for academic performance many decades earlier. The power of the story transcends language and I highly recommend reading it for it is indicative of what makes Tagore so endearing: his unmatched ability to find the universal in the specific.

Consider the following passage:

In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental, nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen. The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.

Yet it is at this very age when in his heart of hearts a young lad most craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of any one who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as undue indulgence, and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has lost his master.

Tagore distills the awkwardness and the promise of adolescence into two short paragraphs better than I’ve read anywhere else since.

But I did not fully appreciate Tagore’s brilliance in his full oeuvre until college. The hardened cynic used to be idealistic and naïve; full of hope but unsure of the future; perceptive but impractical; and ready to rush headlong toward the pain of hopeless love. Tagore’s songs defined my joy and my sorrows –the physical seasons and the emotional ones.

I have danced to a campfire singing out of tune to his lines:

আমার স্বপ্ন ঘিরে নাচে মাতাল জুটে–
যত মাতাল জুটে।
যা না চাইবার তাই আজি চাই গো,
যা না পাইবার তাই কোথা পাই গো।
পাব না, পাবনা,
মরি অসম্ভবের পায়ে মাথা কুটে।

In my dreams dance drunk fellows –
A bunch of drunkards
What should not be desired is what I desire today!
What will never be found, where will I found it?
I won’t get it, I won’t get it
Groveling at the feet of the impossible

A few lines from one of his songs perfectly describe my life’s philosophy in better words that I could ever imagine possible:

যে বাতাস নেয় ফুলের গন্ধ, ভুলে যায় দিনশেষে,
তার হাতে দিই আমার ছন্দ–কোথা যায় কে জানে সে।
লক্ষ্যবিহীন স্রোতের ধারায় জেনো জেনো মোর সকলই হারায়,
চিরদিন আমি পথের নেশায় পাথেয় করেছি হেলা।।

The breeze which carries the fragrance of flowers forgets by day’s end
Into its hands, I offer my pulse – who knows which way it will go?
Know this: in the aimless flow of currents, I’m losing everything
Always, for the thrill of the journey, I’ve ignored the price of passage

I have cried to his songs. When my grandmother, who loved me more than she loved anyone else, died, I listened to his songs. When I finished my doctoral dissertation, I dedicated the volume to her with the following line from a Tagore song:

“তুমি জাননা আমি তোমারে পেয়েছি অজানা সাধনে” -
You don’t know, I’ve discovered you through an unknown quest.

But most of all, I have known love and loved my world through his words.

So, is Tagore still relevant today? The noted post-Tagore Bengali poet Bishnu Dey opened one of his poems with the lamentation that we had reduced him to celebrations on specific days of the year – in essence making him irrelevant in the unkindest manner possible:

তুমি কি কেবলই স্মৃতি / শুধু এক উপলক্ষ কবি?
Are you simply a memory, just an excuse, poet?

Tagore’s own poem which prompted the stylistic response from Dey is worth noting as an answer to the question:

তুমি কি কেবলই ছবি, শুধু পটে লিখা।
ওই-যে সুদূর নীহারিকা
যারা করে আছে ভিড় আকাশের নীড়,
ওই যারা দিনরাত্রি
আলো হাতে চলিয়াছে আঁধারের যাত্রী গ্রহ তারা রবি,
তুমি কি তাদের মত সত্য নও।
হায় ছবি, তুমি শুধু ছবি।।
নয়নসমুখে তুমি নাই,
নয়নের মাঝখানে নিয়েছ যে ঠাঁই– আজি তাই
শ্যামলে শ্যামল তুমি, নীলিমায় নীল।
আমার নিখিল তোমাতে পেয়েছে তার অন্তরের মিল।
নাহি জানি, কেহ নাহি জানে–
তব সুর বাজে মোর গানে,
কবির অন্তরে তুমি কবি–
নও ছবি, নও ছবি, নও শুধু ছবি।।

Are you simply an image, only lines on a canvas?
Like those distant galaxies which crowd the night sky?
Like the planets, stars, and the sun–
Travelers transporting light through complete darkness–
Are you as unreal as they are?
Alas, image, you’re only an image!

You have no presence in front of my eyes
You’ve taken your seat deep inside my eyes –that is why
You’re the blue within the blue, the green inside the green
In my completeness, I have found I am identical to you
I don’t know: no one understands-
Your tune resonates in my songs,
You’re the poet within this poet –
Not an image, not an image, not only an image!

All desis living in North America, regardless of country of origin or current citizenship status, hold one truth to be self-evident. As soon as the prospect of visiting relatives in South Asia begins to materialize, we begin the long-winded process of squirreling away trinkets which will be used for gifting purposes. It is as self-evident as paying federal taxes and trying to use dubious means to get the largest return possible. A percentage of any salary must be put aside for purchasing gifts for friends and family.

For desis on temporary tourist, student, or work visas in the United States, the process of collecting items for gifting purposes begins on the flight itself. In fact, many desis have been know to stuff the small barrels of sharp Swiss cheddar or British toffees served during in-flight meals into their carry-on backpacks.

Once past the immigration officers, one of the top priorities of any desi with plans of returning is to create a list of friends and relatives who will be given gifts from America. In the past, paper notebooks were used, but nowadays the use of electronic spreadsheets has become more common. The list must then be cross-checked with advertisement mailings for clearance sales so that large vats of face cream, discount mp3 players, digital camcorders, and bags of American chocolates (preferably with small individually-wrapped pieces for easy distribution) can be purchased at a pittance.

In more innocent times, a visitor could easily get away with fakes. A Ralph Naren Pollo shirt with a chicken embroidered on the chest could be passed off as the more expensive counterpart to unsuspecting bumpkins who were just dying to get their hands on anything phoren.

Not any more. Due to the proliferation of cable television, onsite projects, and the internet, folks are more knowledgeable these days. As a friend boasted, “India is very advanced now. We wear Abercrombie and Tommy Hilfiger. Often genuine too.” I did not have the heart to tell him that the two brands he mentioned had been fingered for racist advertising tendencies. Had I told him, it would probably have made him an even more loyal customer.

In my case, with a multi-city trip to India planned for later this year, I needed to do what any person genetically identifiable as desi would be compelled to do. Toward that goal, I went to the nearest shopping mall to try to find gifting items.

A word about the North American shopping malls to those who are unfamiliar: they are ginormous. In India, it is advisable for family members to have a unique identifiable family song which the children can learn at an early age in case they are separated during melas. In the United States, such songs might be required prior to visits to malls, which in many cases larger than small towns.

I entered the first department store inside the shopping mall with the goal of buying clothes for friends and family back home. After winding through the gargantuan maze of clothes on offering there, the plan was to next visit the Banana Republic, Gap, Guess, and Benetton stores in the shopping mall.

It seemed like an easy enough task to accomplish, right?

Wrong. I spent over an hour getting progressively frustrated. The problem wasn’t that there was a lack of acceptable clothing. The problem was that none of the clothing that I could find could be purchased.

I started by looking through the Nautica section. I am told by kids these days, that Nautica, which sounds like a raunchy proposition in Bhojpuri, is acceptable for gifting purposes. Every article of clothing that I liked bore the Nautica tag “Made in India” or “Made in Pakistan” or “Made in Bangladesh”. Things got worse when I rummaged through Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, and Tommy Hilfiger. The country of origin of the clothing didn’t vary with the brand at all.

This painterbabu chunapaalish Made in India shirt was retailing for 80 dollars

Now, every desi knows that there is no greater crime than purchasing clothes made back home or in neighboring countries. It is fine for white people to do. They drive nice German cars and eat real Italian food. They can afford to contribute to South Asian economies by providing much-needed foreign currency. We do not have that luxury. We need to buy clothes made elsewhere to be better than the poor people in our crowded countries.

I left the department store disgusted, but with a new plan for the Gap store, which I visited next.

I approached a customer service agent. “Hi. Can you please help me find a couple of shirts in ‘Size Large’?” I asked.

“Sure,” said the customer service agent cheerfully, “did you have any color or fit in mind?”

“No, not really” I replied. “In fact, I don’t really care about the cut or design. I just need to buy a couple shirts that aren’t made in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh.”

The service agent scanned my face expecting me to break out laughing. When it didn’t, he raised his eyebrows. I imagine he must have thought that I was joking. Then he must have thought that I was racist before realizing that I was brown myself. Then he probably gave up and asked again. To which I repeated the request.

After searching through the store for what must have been close to 10 minutes and finding only clothes made in South Asia, there were encouraging signs. “I found a shirt made in Lesotho. I don’t know where that is though…” he said, while looking at me again searching for signs of lunacy.

“Lesotho is a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa,” I interrupted. “It is an African country. We’re making progress but Lesotho’s GDP isn’t that great. Let’s keep looking if there are other countries.”

After searching for another five minutes, we found some shirts made in China and Indonesia. I was hesitant to look at those made in China because the Chinese are known back in India primarily for making cheap Wing-Sun fountain pens, umbrellas, and DVD players.

With Indonesia we had a viable option. “ It isn’t a European country, but Indonesia probably has a higher per capita income than India. Even with the Asian Recession, they must be doing well, “ I thought to myself.

I had spent hours and had made very little progress so I found Indonesia to be an acceptable option. I bought a couple of the shirts made there.

Today I failed, but tomorrow, I will return with my shopping list to resume the search for the remaining gifts. It isn’t easy buying in America for desis.

Text: © 2010-2012, Anirban

While Pakistani friends are trying to forget the semifinal match of the 2011 World Cup played between India and Pakistan, I’m having a hard time remembering it.

I was in Anaheim, California for a conference. On Tuesday night, I had a work-related meeting which lasted longer than anticipated. I stumbled into bed and fell asleep, only to be woken up by the alarm a few hours later for the match (which started at 2 A.M.). The rest is a blur partly because I had to rush to Los Angeles airport just after it ended to catch a  flight and partly because I experienced some brain-melting turbulence on my way across the continent.

I remember the match in bits and pieces. Like Aamir Khan’s farcical mustache. Viru hitting a ton of boundaries in one over in Viru-like fashion. Sanjay Manjrekar blabbing nonsense as he is wont to do. Someone saying something about how Sachin Tendulkar is a cat. “They should have taken the Powerplay…”

Full memories of the match never consolidated in my brain.  In fact, when I watched the highlights again yesterday, I was tensed up in expectation of a somewhat different outcome.

Which gives me an idea for a half-baked sequel to Ghajini:

Whatever happens in the final, I hope to be well-rested, so I can remember it.

I first saw the news story this morning in the Times of India mentioning that “postmenopausal women are prone to fractures.” The story highlighted research presented at the European Congress on Osteoporosis & Osteoarthritis. Curiously, the research was also mentioned in a press release by the International Osteoporosis Foundation comparing the prevalence of bone fractures in obese and non-obese women. But this piece is not about the Times of India copying a press release news release nearly word for word: I leave it to you to chew on that revelation. What concerns me is that wrong information is being conveyed to the public.

Osteoporosis is a serious health concern among postmenopausal women, a major segment of the population. So naturally the story interested me. What shocked me was that because of poor math, wrong numbers are being floated to demonstrate the “a high prevalence of obesity in postmenopausal women”.

Consider for a moment the following passage found in both the Times of India story and the original press release from the International Osteoporosis Foundation from which it was copied verbatim:

“A history of fracture after age 45 years was observed in 23 percent of obese and 24 percent of non-obese women. Nearly one in four postmenopausal women with fractures is obese.”

The statement which is being floated is that one out of four (or 25%) postmenopausal women with fractures is obese. That would be abnormally high and a cause for concern. However, you don’t need to know anything about medicine to know the preceding statement that roughly 25% of obese postmenopausal women have absolutely rubbishes it.

Among postmenopausal women, there is only one logical condition which permits the statements that 1) roughly 25% of the obese have fractures and 2) roughly 25% of fractures are in the obese. And that is the number of obese and non-obese people in a population is equal.

Consider what happens if this condition is not met. If there are far fewer obese people in a population, when 25% of those with fractures are obese it means that fractures are much more prevalent in the obese. Really elementary math.

I investigated to see if this was indeed the case. Were there really the same number of obese and non-obese people in Europe? First I found that the definition of obese used by International Osteoporosis Foundation and the World Health Organization were the same (a basal metabolic index of greater than or equal to 30 kg/m2). Next, I looked at a report by the World Health Organization on the percentage of obese women in Europe. Depending on the country in Europe, anywhere from 5% to 20% of women are obese. The number of postmenopausal women in each country varies, but in no European country could the number of obese women approach anywhere near 50% of all those who are postmenopausal.

In fact, if 23% of obese and 24% of non-obese postmenopausal women are afflicted by osteoporosis, the data presented in the study shows that the prevalence is pretty much equal in both groups.

There are many reasons to avoid being obese. Based on the results presented here, however, osteoporosis is NOT one of them.

Of course the wrong headline makes for a better one. Screw the uninformed public.

For nearly a week now I have been watching the tragedy caused by the earthquake and tsunami unfold in Japan. I have also been following the incredible human tales of suffering, heroism, fear-mongering, and apathy widely reported in its aftermath.

Some experts have loudly proclaimed that the destruction is punishment for some grave “sin” that the Japanese committed. The American media “pundit” Glenn Beck implied that the earthquake was a message from God to follow the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, Tokyo’s governor, Shintaro Ishihara called the earthquake “divine punishment” for the “egoism” of the Japanese people. Although the governor later apologized for his insensitive comment, one thing is clear: as humans, we are such a ridiculously conceited species that every natural disaster has to be a result of something we did or did not do in our insignificant lives.

Soon after the earthquake and tsunami, reports began to come in about “miracles” – lives that had been saved in the midst of overwhelming death: a four-month old baby clinging on to dear life, a 70-year old woman nearly freezing inside her home for four days, a 60-year old man found ten miles out at sea clinging to his rooftop for two days.

In a country of 127 million, when roughly 13,000 or 0.01% of the population perishes it is called “punishment”. When 1 out 13,000, or roughly 0.01% of the dead survives, it is called a “miracle.”

Why is one punishment? Why is the other a miracle?

Why of course, don’t I know! Death is punishment. Life is a miracle. Plain and simple.

Today on television I saw haunting images of a man who just stood there wearing a hard-hat, dumbfounded in the midst of absolute destruction. At the time of the earthquake and tsunami, the man was not at his home: by some stroke of luck, he was at the fire station, although he was not supposed to be there. His wife, son, daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren were at his small home in the town. They were in a home which had now been completely reduced to rubble. The man wandered around refusing to believe that his entire family lay in front of him in a stony grave. Then while the cameras were still rolling, it struck him.

“I can’t take it. I lost everything. Why did I go to the fire station?” he sobbed inconsolably. Even from the comfort of my living room thousands of miles away, I could not meet his gaze or offer myself an answer. Here was a man who wished he had been dead.

Now, my dear friend, tell me with your certitude what “miracle” saved this man? What “sin” condemned his grandchildren?

o·bit·u·ar·y (-bch-r) n. A published notice of a death, sometimes with a brief biography of the deceased.

I must have been no more than thirteen when I last saw my paternal grandfather at our ancestral village, nestled in a corner of eastern India. Generations before me including my grandfather and father had grown up there in quieter times. As is the case with most thatched mud houses, the rooms had small windows and were dark inside, but each was fairly large and would have fetched a fair price as a studio-apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Back then the few possessions that middle-class Indian families had were carefully passed on from generation to generation and I imagined that my grandmother had kept the three rooms that were our share of the larger joint-family, much the way they must have been when my father and my aunts were growing up in them. On the walls were framed examples of my grandmother’s cross-stitch works – “Pati Param Guru (The Husband is the Ultimate Lord)” and “Nama Shivay” undoubtedly shown to my grandfather’s retinue when their marriage was arranged. My grandmother had been an exemplary student and had won many prizes in school. Many of her medals for standing first in academics and recitation were in an old purple velvet jewelry box on a dressing table. She was also the eldest daughter of a Brahmin scholar who had written a book on Sanskrit (which is still used as a reference in West Bengal). My great-grandmother had died at an early age so my grandmother took care of her younger siblings until she was married at the age of sixteen, something not uncommon back then.

During my visits, after lunch which usually consisted of a few vegetable items and fish caught from our ponds every day, I’d open up a straw mat and lie on the floor. The rooms were cool during the oppressive summer months, but there was little to do but to read old moth-eaten books and rummage through tin trunks for curiosities. Some of the books were quite old. One I distinctly remember reading during the visit was Hungry Stones and Other Stories a collection of translated stories originally written by Rabindranath Tagore which my father had won for doing well in English in school. But the one book I took with me as I went back to the sleepy mofussil town I grew up in was a bound edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary published in the Fifties which my grandfather had given to my father when he was in school.

Every Bengali home had a dictionary up on the shelf next to the study desk, usually adorned with a bookcover from a colorful Sunday newspaper. Mine was my faithful companion through high school and college. Back then, words changed infrequently, though every now and then letters to the editor of the Statesman of Calcutta lamented how Americanized English was polluting our proper British spellings. I had that dictionary near my desk until I moved to the United States for graduate school.

I have not owned a dictionary since, and the only one I currently own came preloaded with my Kindle. Like many of you, whenever I need to look up the spelling or the meaning of a particular word, I use Google. Often when there are multiple divergent spellings, I pick the one which has more search results than the others, the rationale being that since language is an evolving democratic form of communication, the crowd defines what is appropriate. But there are certain days such as this one which makes me wistful for easier solutions.

Dictionary, you served me long and well, and I hope there is a quiet place for you where language isn’t constantly shape-shifting through internet memes, infantile acronyms, and the impolite speeches of Grammy-award presenters.