Are You Still Alive.....!!!!

অবনী বাড়ি আছো?

দুয়ার এঁটে ঘুমিয়ে আছে পাড়া
কেবল শুনি রাতের কড়ানাড়া
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

বৃষ্টি পড়ে এখানে বারোমাস
এখানে মেঘ গাভীর মতো চরে
পরান্মুখ সবুজ নালিঘাস
দুয়ার চেপে ধরে--
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

আধেকলীন-- হৃদয়ে দূরগামী
ব্যথার মাঝে ঘুমিয় পড়ি আমি
সহসা শুনি রাতের কড়ানাড়া
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

Shakti Chattopadhyay

Remember this poem? Many of us might have read this. But how many lived through it? This was an iconic poem that is said to have influenced the entire school of modern Bengali Poetry as also life that followed in the wake of it.

....................'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'......................

Over the years this one-liner has become as much of a haunting line as an understatement that celebrates the beginning of an end, i.e. the herald of a Dark Age in the History of modern Bengal, the cloud of which still overcast our mindscape, our ignominious life and things we do.

 An entire generation of gifted mind was liquidated almost under the great system of so called Democracy, about which we so proudly brag before the western world and forget that in return of Freedom it has claimed the very essence of our life, i.e. Freedom itself.

It has given us the freedom to cower, to turn a blind eye to our destruction, to live in complete segregation like a toothless lion whose roar is nothing but an artefact to its people and to the rest of the world. We win accolades and honour but actually starving to annihilation.

Day in and day out as we look on with the eyes of an impotent spectator, we find what we have lost, what price we have paid against this phony liberty and claims of development.

It is rightly said that India is a country of gods, beggars and snake charmers not because we find them in plenty but should one be here one is sure to repose faith in God. It is so because if I happen to close my eyes enough with the evils of today and wake up to that of another to trust to tomorrow again, it is a sheer Miracle.

From the massacre of Sai family through the orchestrated genocide of bright young minds in the wake of Naxalbari uprising to our very own Nandigram and Netai, what have we inherited? Complete destruction of Bengali progressive Bourgeoisie if not the deliberate sterilisation of the remaining progressive minds so much that today they make but a marginalised  group of yellers making encouraging noises so much necessary for a great Democracy as ours.

That I am alive and breathing is the greatest Miracle of my life and of our time and as such I can’t help believing God above me for a platter of rice on my table.

‘Are you home, Abani?’ may as well be ‘Are you still alive, Abani....? Are you still breathing?