By Amrita Valan
I. The Beginning / Choddopurush
Recalling names of forefathers Time travelling fourteen generations A rollcall of honors Bestowed by birth. For each prior generation Genetic heritage halved, Then quartered. Spliced again, till Beyond the fourteenth, The inheritance dwindles Below decimal percentage. This proves our common pool Of humanity shares One common genome. Barring racial markers, We have common fathers And mothers. Hindus venerate ancestors Sacred identity derived From fourteen forefathers, Choddopurush… They are our backdrop, Context and locus. Lineage lending blind Continuity nuanced meaning Perpetuation of preferred traits. From the personal arises The Universal. And vice versa. Ashoke De Bhaumik, born to Kalipada De Bhaumik In 1937, In a time when, a Second world was brewing. My father and grandfather. Kalipada De Bhaumik, Sub divisional officer Later, a magistrate, born In 1905, period of the Great partition of Bengal, My home state. Sprung from Satish Chandra De Bhaumik Son of Ram Chandra De Bhaumik. One solitary photograph Still exists. Of a great great grandfather Looking over his shoulder, at some Distant time or space. Some grim prospect, dilates charcoal pupils Speaking to me, his future seed. The edges of the photo have curled with time The silver black chemical hazy with passing years. So many! Torso twisted, eloquent eye lock over Two centuries!
II. The Backdrop
1905, Bengal, our undivided home state Partitioned by the British for growing Too powerful, too rich, Too united. Lush lands lilt Tagore’s lyricism sill Fields of green love songs And coquettish village belles in striped Cotton saris, worn without Victorian blouses. Proud arch of unabashed feminine grace, Clay pots poised on their heads. Or a baby slung on their dainty hips, Still slender after many childbirths, Hard work and harmonious syncing With mother nature. Love songs, weave wistful garlands Eulogize palpable divinity trembling Natural beauty, a softness of soil moulds hearts, in my verdant Bengal, Torn apart into shambles. Hard hit by famine and drought. Time and again. Much later when, for war efforts, Churchill diverted all our food grain To Britain, there were deaths, many times More, man-made famines, and cruelty. Dadu’s birth coincides with My state. West Bengal, India, And what would later become Bangladesh. Einstein publishes a paper The Theory of Special Relativity, Wowing few scientists Across the world. Thus, many things of greater Importance overshadows nativity Of unknown men. Time dilates, history gets Up close, personal. The arrow of time loses vector.
III. Personal Anecdotes
I recall hand me down stories Dadu’s scholastic brilliance, The rare phoenix rising from poverty, Passing meritoriously, Rigorous West Bengal Civil Service Examinations. What shining distinction. U M Basu, His father-in-law to be, Inviting his promising young subordinate To tea, setting into motion, a match For his seventeen-year-old daughter. My Thamma. Thamma’s mother served Tea, in an elegant English Silver tea pot to Dadu Conversing fluently in the Language of the Conquerors. Our British masters, We were bound to be Anglophiles. But education breeds awareness, Soon we were freedom fighters too Pursuing Life liberty and happiness Like the Americans, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, Firing our souls, across continents. Dear Dadu, A rural lad, fresh from his village Ghalimpur. Of a philosophical bent Married to a pragmatic approach. He married Thamma, on 11 June 1932. We still have a printed kerchief Detailing the auspicious ceremonies Black ink on muslin. I keep the diary of great granddad U.M Basu, Thamma’s father. Chronicling his birth In 1875, his marriages, Thamma’s Mother was his third and last bride, The other two died early, In childbirth and disease. Their children, our lost kinfolk In Eastern Bengal, Now Bangladesh. Thus, the furious pen strokes Of harassed conquistadors, Cut through a map in frenzy, Decided what is Indian. And what is not.
IV. The World That Was Theirs
Great granddad U.M. Basu Records the ceremonial pageantry King George V’s India visit, 1911, “On April 1, 1912, Bengal turned into a presidency.” He writes in a shaky looping hand. In between handwritten pages Ensconced, sheaves of wafer thin Typewritten transfer orders Fragile transcripts, hollowed by time. They take him to and fro, Back and forth, from Bengal To Assam, Bengal to Orissa And back again, signed by Brisk businesslike British names Rankins, Lyons and Maddox. I imagine diminutive native Indians With names like Das and Chakravarty, Thin flimsy Muslin dhoti-clad, their dark Brown legs, or tanned gold ones, Encased in shiny beige, brown, black Nagrai jootis, our desi leather Moccasins or sandals. Crisp, untucked, white half sleeve Cotton bush shirts, Partial concession to colonialism, Hurrying to take dictations of their British masters. Pink faced white men, Bosses, half their age, towering over Them, ruddy cheeked and light eyed, With terse snappy names like Rankins, Lyons and Maddox. I hold this hefty chunk of history In my hands, my veins carry his blood, Tears of ink run in them, my bones petrify this Crumbling edifice of frozen calcified time.
Amrita Valan is a writer from India, with two published works, Arrivederci Fifty Poems,
(Gloomy Seahorse Press, 2021) and In Between Pauses, (Impspired Press, 2021), a collection
of 17 short stories.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 
An epic saga and a beautifully written family history. Well done, Amrita!!
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