Wednesday, May 27, 2020

The Testament Of A Xaverian - S.M. Murshed

This one is from the archives of an aunt of mine - Shaiqua Murshed, daughter of the eminent IAS officer Mr. SYed Mushtaque Murshed. The article was penned in 1985 by Mr. Murshed who was a member of the first committee of the old boys association of our school, ALSOC, or Alumnorum Societas, as it is known, and was involved with it for many years till constraints of age took their toll.
He shared the following with some of his fellow Xaverians:

"I am perhaps the seniormost Xaverian in the world today -- Std. 1 to B.A., 1940 to 1952.
I helped organise the 125th. Anniversary of our alma mater in 1985. Fr. Huart was then the Rector.
The Statesman commissioned me to write an article on our great institution. I attach a copy of the resultant magnum opus.

The 125th Anniversary was followed the following year by the visit of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Calcutta. The Catholic community elected me as the Master of Ceremonies for the Holy Father."

I am sharing the article that was published in the Statesman on the occasion of the school's 125th anniversary. 
It will, perhaps, rekindle some very warm memories of an institution that is immortalised in the heart of many a Xaverian.

The Testament Of A Xaverian
-- S.M. Murshed

(Published in The Statesman dated Sunday, 10 February, 1985 on the occasion of the 125th. Anniversary of St. Xaviers College, Calcutta)

St Xaviers College, Calcutta completed 125 years of fruitful existence on the 16th January, 1985. This event is being celebrated with some élan. His Excellency the President of India will inaugurate the celebrations; a special postage stamp will be issued commemorating the anniversary; and Xaverians, including the present Chief Minister of West Bengal and his immediate predecessor, will debate on a public platform issues which are vital in the field of education.

Which school do you go to Sonny, used to be the question; St. Xaviers would be the reply. Thought as much, would be the comment that followed. There is something about St. Xaviers which for more than a hundred years successive generations of students have cherished. There is a certain mystique which the Xaverian has acquired.

It will not be possible, within a restricted perimeter, to explain fully that something or the mystique of the Xaverian. One can therefore at best merely delineate  necessarily with some misgivings  some aspects of the total picture without drawing it either in great detail or in depth.

At the outset a small but pertinent question, which may appear to be one of semantics only, may be disposed of. In common parlance the term College is reserved for the institution where one prepares for a university degree after completing the primary and secondary stages of ones career in school. But the term suffixed to St. Xaviers embraces both the school and the college, and, as a matter of historical record, the school was founded in 1860, the college being appended to it five years later. It is in the school that the true Xaverian of yore spent about eight or nine years of his educational life, reserving three years for the college, if he at all went there. Therefore, if the mystique of the Xaverian is to be explored, attention for the most part will have to be focussed on the school.

Great things would appear to have their origin in fire. The introduction of roast pig to the cuisine of the civilised world (except the part dominated by Islam) is ascribed by Charles Lamb to an accidental act of conflagration in a shepherds cottage in China. It is to certain accidental acts of conflagration that St. Xaviers College, Calcutta owes its origin, at least as far as its mural aspect is concerned.

On July 27, 1826, the celebrated Esther Leach descended on the Chowringhee Theatre in Calcutta and for more than a decade remained its presiding deity. On May 1, 1839, while she was on a short holiday in England, a fire reduced the famous theatre to ashes.

One supposes that Ms. Leach was inconsolable in her grief, but loyal friends helped her to raise funds and on March 8, 1840, she found a new home at the Sans Souci Theatre at 10, Park Street. The Theatre was distinguished by a majestic façade  a portico with magnificent Doric pillars and a grand flight of stairs.

Ms Leach was presumably more suited for a role in a Sophoclean tragedy. Her new found bliss in her new home was short lived. Those were the days of oil lamps, presaging the fate of modern Calcutta, and it was such lamps that served as footlights for the stage. A tongue of flame from one of these lamps licked the petticoat of Ms Leach as she waited in the wings for her cue to go on stage. I do not believe that episode provided the inspiration for Christopher Frys ‘The Lady is not for Burning’. The celebrated Ms. Esther Leach was impelled to the stage engulfed in flames, although the stage directions did not call for this pyrotechnical entry. The flames were soon extinguished; so was the celebrated Ms. Leach. With the presiding deity thus consumed, the altar of Sans Souci was in need of new Gods that would not fail.

By a happy coincidence, at that time, waiting in the wings, as it were, was an astute Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the person of Mgr. Carew.  With considerable foresight he purchased Sans Souci Theatre with the intention of setting up a school for Catholic boys. The school was named St. Johns.

Stones, however, do not deliver sermons. There was a need, therefore, for imparting life to St. Johns at Sans Souci Theatre. An institution called St. Xaviers College was at that time functioning on Chowringhee Road under the aegis of certain English Jesuits. The latter were apparently not making a good job of it. Mgr. Carew felt that perhaps a change of environment would impel them to greater things. Accordingly, on the invitation of Mgr. Carew, the English Jesuits moved to Sans Souci Theatre. Unfortunately, the spirit of the late lamented Esther Leach failed to inspire them. They, therefore, retired from the scene. Mgr. Carew was then summoned by his Maker; and St. Johns College became defunct. Into the void caused by the exit of the English Jesuits walked on the 28th November, 1859, seven of their Belgian confreres under the leadership of the redoubtable Father Henry Depelchin. The calculations of Divinity may sometimes appear strange, but they do have an eternal validity, for who but a Divine Being  could have dared to think, particularly at that stage of Indias history, that where the English had failed, the Belgians could succeed.

Father Depelchin addressed himself to the task of revitalising the defunct school with some zeal and zest. To begin with, he changed its name from St. Johns to St. Xaviers. The name and the institution were destined to endure.

The portals of St. Xaviers College were opened to the first batch of forty students in Standards V, VI and VII on the 16th January, 1860. It was thus the school that first came into existence. The initial years were difficult. By the end of 1863, although affiliation to the Calcutta University had been gained, the number of students on the rolls of the College stood at 90 only and the institution lost money in its running. Students had not come in the numbers that had been expected.

In Father Depelchin, however, resided a spirit that was indomitable. In a grand reversal of proverbial roles, since Mahomet had refused to come, the mountain went to him. Unwittingly, in this process the priest was once again helped by the English. A public transport service that they had tried to run with a number of horse drawn buses ended in disaster for lack of passengers. The zealous priest purchased the buses and sent them out to fetch students. They were vehicles which proclaimed the faith of the Jesuits, provided -- seemingly without design -- valuable publicity for the College and started bringing in students who had eluded the Jesuits during the preceding four years. From that time onwards, S. Xaviers has not looked back.

Great and rapid strides were made in all spheres of human endeavour. The second Rector of the College, the successor of Father Depelchin, was Father E. Lafont, a scientist of considerable eminence. He was one of the founders of the Indian Science Association and he is hailed as the father of Indian Science. Under him, St. Xaviers College came to be accepted as a shrine of scientific knowledge and learning.  And in the fullness of time this great institution produced great scientists, including Sir. J.C Bose. In humanities also the College was not to be outdone: there emerged from its precincts, among others, the poet Rabindranath Tagore.

The peace of the ancient world has often been disturbed by the vandalism of the modern in its quest for progress and development. In defence of such sport the much flogged cliché is used that the old order must change, yielding place to the new. It was thus that in the year 1932 the Doric pillars of Sans Souci Theatre were pulled down along with the grand flight of stairs and the hall of the theatre itself to make room for a larger building and a larger number of students. In extenuation of that painful decision it must be said that, according to contemporary expert opinion, the ravages of time had taken their toll of the venerable pillars and sooner or later they would have to be sacrificed. One cannot but observe with a tinge of regret that there did not then emerge an architects genius who could have saved the venerable pillars. The portico, the stairs and pillars are now preserved in photographs of that era. Bits of property were added from time to time to the premises that emerged from the ruins of Sans Souci till the College attained in the main the proportions which it commands today on Park Street.

It was then to such an institution, already beginning to acquire a certain timeless quality, that in the year of Our Lord 1940 I was taken, not by my parents  -- for that was not considered necessary  but by my cousin and left to my own devices. Such devices operated till I emerged from the College in 1952 with a B.A. degree of sorts and they have operated ever since in my bureaucratic career. That is the essence of the matter: in the course of ones progression along corridors of different floors of the Crohan school building, from one standard to another, one was surely and steadily, if imperceptibly, being moulded in such a way that one was always able, even late in life, to rely on oneself, to study a theme from first principles and to contend with the heaviest of odds against oneself. In school and college there was no need to consult commercial commentaries in order to understand any text, no need to anticipate examination questions through any theory of probability based on questions set in preceding years -- for one was always prepared for any eventuality -- and above all, no need for  parental or tutorial supervision at home. Lessons taught in the classroom were complete; practise at home on ones own was all that was required. Therefore, private tutors at home were not only not necessary, but were discouraged. How different it was elsewhere, and how different it all is now.

It is a matter of singular good fortune that at the time of which I speak  an institution like St. Xaviers was in existence, for my parents were then steeped in onerous public duties, my father as a Civil Servant and my mother as Parliamentary Secretary to the then Premier, the great Fazlul Haq. To make matters worse, my mother was a good cook and Fazlul Huq (who happened to be my grandfather and who was then sans wife) was fond of eating and entertaining. Thus the duties of official hostess devolved on my mother with the result that in the early formative years parental supervision over my studies was not possible; nor was it necessary. In the mid-forties my father was transferred to Dacca (now in Bangladesh). There he showed me St. Gregorys School. A Xaverian neophyte is not easily converted to an alien faith. So I remained in Calcutta and once again my parents were forced to leave me to my own devices.

We may recall some details of life at school in the forties. To begin with, there was what we called Model Copy Writing. It was based on the belief that there was only one way of forming letters of the English alphabet; and it was that way which we soon learnt after assiduous drilling in exercise books containing double narrow lines which regulated the size of the characters and their loops and slants.  I think I shall today be able to forge the handwriting of any Xaverian of my time. Our exercises had to be superscribed by the letters AMDG. We did not comprehend their import till later when we began our Latin studies. It was not for us to reason why; we did as we were told, reposing a strong, if childlike, faith in the mystical abracadabra. In Standard IV, when we started Latin, we learnt that the magical words stood for the Jesuit motto: Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam, which, translated, means for the greater glory of God. The Jesuits believe that whatever one does in life, no matter how big or how small, must be for the glory of God and for nothing else, least of all for ones personal glory. How does one reconcile this to the creed of the atheist or the agnostic? In my submission, it is not necessary to believe in any God to derive meaning and  strength from the motto.

Soon  in standard II or III  we were introduced to parsing and analysis of sentences. Starting from its simplest form, this exercise, over the next few years, assumed rather complex dimensions.  At the end of it all, through daily drilling in the class room and at home, we acquired complete control over the most complex of sentences and we could take each clause, each phrase and each word apart and define its exact position and its relationship to the other components of the structure. I think the late Winston Churchill, writing about his early life, remarked that if he learnt nothing else at school, he learnt at least to write the correct British sentence, which he described as a noble thing. It might have surprised Sir Winston to learn that the early Xaverians could show much nobility.

Then there was the daily writing of an essay in English and readings from the Bible, for which we used the Authorised Version. Since the time of King James, there has been considerable exegesis on the origins of the Bible and there has been much delving into Hebrew texts. Based on such exegesis, various versions of the Bible have been published. I shall not, however, even for my life, part with the Authorised Version.  It is indispensable for a proper study of the English language; if in the process one learns something about the ways of Christ and acquires some of the eternal verities, I see no great harm done. I think it will be appropriate at this juncture to refute the charge sometimes levelled against schools like St. Xaviers that they are intended to serve as proselytising outposts of the Roman Catholic Church. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The word catholic has a meaning in the dictionary which has nothing to do with religion. St. Xaviers produced a catholicity of outlook in us without making Roman Catholics of us.

Finally, there was the teaching of Latin from Standard IV to Standard IX  (or Senior Cambridge, as it used to be called in those days). We began with declining nouns and conjugating verbs. From there Fabulae Faciles and ultimately to Caesar and De Bello Galico. The discipline of Latin was wholesome and invigorating: it chastened the mind without chastising it. Its benefits extended far beyond the immediate one of not having to consult the dictionary for knowing the meaning of worlds like genuflexion. It was not till much later that we fully comprehended those benefits (and, as regards genuflexion, it was not till I joined the Civil Service that I could observe it in practice). It is a great pity that they do not teach Latin any  more.
     
One must not forget certain quaint practices. One could not, for instance, leave the school premises before the scheduled closing hour without producing before the durwan a document signed by the Prefect saying in Latin: EXEAT, meaning Let Him Go Out.  The school durwan, one conjectures, must have had the rudiments of Latin in those days. Similarly, if one had absented oneself from class on any day, one could not gain admission the next day without producing before the Master another document signed by the Prefect and saying  ADMITTATUR, or Let Him Be Admitted. These ingredients in their own way added to the distinctive flavour of St. Xaviers.

Mens sana in corpore sano. This dictum was taken somewhat seriously and the task of translating it, or rather the corpore sano part of it, into practise was entrusted to a British Sergeant Major of a fierce aspect, to wit Sgt. Edwards. His cockney marching refrain still rings in my ears: eff;eff, eff-ight-eigh, eff; eff ....

In school we remained, I think, for the most part untouched by the great upheavals all around us in the country. For us, the only portent of the demise of the British Raj was the departure of Sgt. Edwards with his marching refrain. His place was taken by Sgt Ronny Moore. The latters proficiency in pugilism was well known and that, I think, in some measure helped Tom Humble to maintain a peaceful posture, notwithstanding that he was, by the consent of all men, the largest among us and also British to boot. The fact that Richard Mendietta tried conclusions with Humble is of no relevance now. Sgt. Moore was destined to become Deputy  Commissioner of Police in Calcutta and in that capacity he became quite an institution He is now in retirement in Australia.

Corporal correction could sometimes take a different form also.   A weekly test measured the progress made by us in our studies and every Monday the results of the test would be announced by means of cards of different hues. The gilt card was excellent, the mauve was good, the pink was average, the grey was poor and the white very poor. The two last mentioned cards involved a visit to the office of the Prefect, Father Tant, and brought us there into sharp conflict with his leather strap.

Our class Masters were a dedicated lot: C. Bampton, T.D. Bellety, E. Rebeiro, M.W. Pires, H. Gilbert, Fr. Lepour, C. Deefolts, Fr. Mairlot and Fr. Dobinson. Their mastery over the subjects that they taught was complete and absolute, and their exposition of the subjects in the class was also masterly. There was a virtuosity in their teaching which is rarely seen nowadays. If they made heavy demands on us, they made even heavier demands on themselves.  Their devotion to their profession, and to us, was pure, and there was no mercenary element in it. They were  rightly -- in loco parentis as far as our studies were concerned. And, visually, my remembrance of them is one of sartorial elegance  the priests in their black or white cassock (depending upon the climate) and the lay teachers in their jacket and tie and always immaculately shod and groomed. It was our privilege to have been taught by them.

` Brother Picachy used to be the Sub-Prefect of discipline on our first floor corridor. He is now to be encountered in the person of His Eminence Cardinal Lawrence T. Picachy, Archbishop of Calcutta. I have been in regular touch with him (as with the other priests at St. Xaviers), but every time I meet him I tend to forget, notwithstanding my terrible reputation abroad, that I am no longer in Standard IV.

Nihil Ultra is the motto given to the School by Father O Neil. It is borrowed from the family of St. Francis Xavier. Rendered literally into English, the expression will mean ‘Nothing Beyond’. But by an ellipsis which is peculiar to aphorisms in Latin, the expression means that there is nothing beyond human endeavour, that is to say there is nothing that cannot be achieved by effort and striving. That is the lesson that was taught with thoroughness at school and that was the lesson learnt by us to be remembered throughout our life. But early in our career we interpreted the motto to mean that there was nothing beyond St. Xaviers. I am happy to say that the faith and zeal of the neophyte have not deserted the apostle of later years.

The years at school passed, and with them the procession of Masters. Soon the Senior Cambridge was done. The days of Caesar and De Bello Gallico were left behind. Then came the transition to the college, and all of a sudden everything seemed different. The language and the idiom changed, the mood was more relaxed.

Of course all of us did not join college. For instance, Ashok Bir thought it more prudent to join Messrs. Stewarts and Lloyds. The faith that he reposed in himself was vindicated. He has risen to be the Managing Director of the Company.

College opened a new window for us. To begin with, the coils of school discipline were loosened and one had more liberty and more time to oneself, for one was no longer bound to a rigid 9.30-3.30 routine. During the interludes of freedom, one usually parked oneself near the main gate and observed the passing show. In those days, in ones adolescence, there was much to be observed on Park Street.

Our College Prefect was Father Schepers. He held that office for two decades - from 1939 to 1959. He was a remarkable man. The administration of the College was always firmly in his grip. Years later, if he saw an Old Boy, recognition of name, face and other particulars would be instant. One retains considerable affection for him.  On one occasion, he confiscated my yo-yo, refusing to be impressed by my explanation that with the help of that instrument I was simply trying to investigate the Laws of Gravity.

In college I recall the sudden awakening of a literary spirit. A band of like minded souls got together and we decided to publish a magazine. Father Fallon suggested the name Elans for it. The first mimeographed number was duly circulated. It immediately proved popular. In it, under a chapter entitled Generalities, I recorded my reflections on life, such as they were at that adolescent stage. They included the following definition of lecturing: a process whereby the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the heads of either. The next day there appeared a terse notice on the board of the college: Further publication of Elans stopped  By Order of the Prefect. A promising career in journalism was thus cut short in its incipient stage.

An outstanding personality at the College was Father Goreux. He had a Doctorate in Mathematics and in that branch of learning he was a genius and, though lightly built, he was intellectually a colossus.  It was widely believed in our time that he was one of the six men in the world who fully understood Einstens Theory of Relativity.

One eventually passed out of college and embarked good and proper upon the adventure of life. The Xaverian chapter was  at least in a formal sense  closed.

I feel the time has now come to deal with a question about which there may be lurking suspicions in many minds. I have no hesitation in confessing that in our pursuit of the quintessential Xaverian, we developed inevitably a culture which was peculiar to us and others of our ilk brought up in missionary schools, a certain mannerism in speaking English, a certain shyness about conversing in the vernacular and a tendency to be insular with reference to boys brought up in vernacular schools. It was this culture that in later years meant evening dress for cocktails. I do not now bat an eyelid about going to dinner in my shirtsleeves or in my kalidar kurta and P Lal, the contemporary prophet of Vedic Transcreation, is always seen in diplomatic parties in his flowing kurta.

The Jesuits were not responsible in any way for this culture. They did nothing to encourage it. In fact, they themselves did not speak the English that we spoke. Our culture was perhaps an inevitable product of the prevailing milieu, a necessary outcome of the intermingling of English and Indian mores. It was a part of a historical and a social process.

Perhaps a part of our Indo-Anglian culture was the only thing to be regretted in retrospect, although it was quite thrilling at the time in question. For instance, speaking for myself, I regret not having acquired my fathers mastery over Persian or my mothers spiritual devotions. Possibly because the blood of the Syeds flows strong in my veins, I was in later years able to  repair to some extent my initial privations. Each of us was able eventually to work out a solution of the problem. Although I cannot quite see Bobby Basu (sometime Secretary of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club) chanting vedic hymns, yet I do feel that his heart is in the right place.

The term elitist was not in vogue in our time. It was not, therefore, used for describing the culture that I speak of  not that it could have been used with any justification; for the cleavage in the scholastic field in those days was not between the patrician and the plebeian or between the haves and the have nots. The cleavage was basically between English and the Vernacular.   Votaries of the latter of course reserved a pejorative epithet for us: tansh. The wheel, however, eventually came a full circle and those who had come to scoff remained to pray. After the departure of the British from India and the recession of the Anglian culture, those who regarded us as tansh themselves began to send their sons and daughters to Missionary schools in the hope that they would lean the things we learnt and speak the English that we spoke. Fate can, however, play cruel tricks. The milieu changed and a new wind began to blow at St. Xaviers and elsewhere.

My son has just completed ten years at St. Xaviers. I perceive in him a tinge of regret as he talks about other pastures, for he has to prosecute further studies under the Delhi Secondary Board and St. Xaviers at that stage is not affiliated to that Board. Twenty-five years hence our common alma mater will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. I wonder in what vein, if called upon to do so, he will record his reflections then. His will certainly not be a nostalgia born of aphorisms in Latin; but there will be some kind of a nostalgia, and a certain wistfulness.

Such then is our great alma mater. My debt to it is great. Whatever I have achieved in life is attributable entirely to the days that I spent at school. The priests who have made what St. Xaviers is today and who continue to guide the destiny of this great institution are, individually and collectively, exceptional men. They have steadfastly lived according to their motto: Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam, for they have all, without exception, surmounting tremendous odds, served a worthy cause in a climate and an environment which, physically and otherwise, has not always been hospitable, sacrificing in the process material prosperity and preferment in their native country. It must be a strong inner spirit which moves them. Many of them have dedicated their entire lives to us without the expectation of any material return; some among them returned home and could have died, if so they wished, peacefully in their own country, but, sensing that death was near, came back to Indian shores to be buried in Indian soil.  

The story of St. Xaviers then is essentially the story of a procession of priests: Father Depelchin, Father Lafont, Father O Niel, Father Crohan, Father Power, Father Van Neste, Father Briot and, closer to our times, Father Antoine. Et. al. Their spirit, though not visible or tangible, pervades the immemorial air of St. Xaviers. It will forever stride the corridors of the venerable institution. Yes, the priests are dead and gone. But who was it who said that to live in hearts that are left behind is not to die?

It is not always that one is given to an effusion of the literary spirit in print. But there is a duty to acknowledge a debt and one must be grateful for an opportunity to attenuate its burden somewhat by recording a personal testament to the greatness and heroism of priests who sacrificed so much for us and to whom so many of us owe so much. Laudamus viros gloriosos: Sing we then in praise of glorious men.

(Courtesy: The Statesman)

Monday, May 18, 2020

Two poems, and a question: Why?

COVID19 has affected almost every country in the world. In India, arguably the biggest group that the tragedy has affected are the migrant labourers and daily wagers. Forget catching the virus, the lockdown has been nearly a death knell for this group. To understand a bit more about this crisis, I would recommend reading this excellent article by Harvard University.


They say a photograph is worth a thousand words. The collage below (sourced from Twitter) is worth a million. The plight of these fellow human beings should make us hang our heads in shame! It is such a lottery where you’re born. You can’t control it and that cruelly decides how life turns out for you. 


“The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, with a sharp pen.” - Aravind Adiga in The White Tiger

The first poem is “Self-sufficiency” by Badri Raina

A call has gone up:
India must learn to be self-sufficient.
It must be a tribute to our sansculottes
That they are first to learn the lesson.

Trudging on foot, they are
No longer dependent on transport,
Sparing the moneys that are
Needed for petrol and power
For urgent national causes elsewhere.

Subsisting on an occasional biscuit
And thin air, their self-sufficiency
In food leaves heaped granaries
Alone for a market that can pay,
Yielding revenues for the rainy day.

Sleeping on highways and rail tracks,
Their gesture precludes the need
For the state to waste resources
On shelter. Just as their resilience
Of body and mind helps spare
Medicines and hospital beds
For citizens whom soft living
Makes first claimants for such care.

Dying along the way, the sansculottes
Do not tax the state with burials
And cremations. They demonstrate
The truth of admonitions
Writ in holy books: once the soul
Departs, body has no meaning.
Their fall by the wayside prevents,
Moreover, danger to “social distancing”
From the prospect of unruly keening.

Altogether, India’s dour migrant
Workers hold the let
To nationalist self-sufficiency.
___

Gulzar Saab has also poignantly captured the plight of the migrant workers through his pen and voice from a human perspective. This is beyond politics!



Translated in English by Rakshanda Jalil, the poem reads like this.

The pandemic raged
The workers and labourers fled to their homes
All the machines ground to a halt in the cities
Only their hands and feet moved
Their lives they had planted back in the villages
The sowing and the harvesting was all back there
Of the jowar, wheat, corn, bajra – all of it
Those divisions with the cousins and brothers
Those fights at the canals and waterways
The strongmen, hired sometimes from their side and sometimes from this
The lawsuits dating back to grandparents and grand uncles
Engagements, marriages, fields
Drought, flood, the fear: will the skies rain or not?
They will go to die there – where there is life
Here, they have only brought their bodies and plugged them in!
They pulled out the plugs
‘Come, let’s go home’ – and they set off
They will go to die there – where there is life.
___





Why?


Tuesday, May 12, 2020

The Rakhal Majumdar Story

Rakhal Majumdar was a defender for East Bengal in the 1940s. He played for 16 years for the club from 1937 to 1952. He captained the club in 1943 when East Bengal won the IFA Shield for the first time. Rakhal Majumdar was also my Borda Mama Dadu (grand uncle) – he was my paternal grandmother Namita’s first cousin. I remember meeting him in my childhood at my grandparent’s house in Lake Road, Kolkata. I have memories of him giving me ‘pen pencils’ whenever I met him. I knew he played for East Bengal but had no idea till recently of his illustrious footballing career.

Thanks to the Facebook pages of East Bengal Club and East Bengal Samachar as well as twitter handles such as East Bengal History, I was able to piece together the story of his career. It has everything - treble winning seasons, an ‘invincible’ double winning season, derby battles with Mohun Bagan, rebel leagues and “freedom struggle” vs Nicholas Saheb of IFA, captain courageous in Paritosh Chakraborty and the “Panch Pandav” era when East Bengal played a ridiculous 2-3-5 formation!

Rakhal Mazumdar was the captain of East Bengal when they won their first IFA shield in 1943

With our first Prime Minister 

From the team photographs, Dadu seems to be of short height and slim/average build, it’s hard to imagine he played as a central defender or centre back as they called it in his time - especially in a 2-3-5 formation! Must have been quite an athlete as in the 1949 treble winning season, the team only conceded scored a total of 111 goals and conceded 11 goals in 31 matches in the 3 tournaments they won - IFA Shield, CFL and Rovers Cup. It is difficult to find such a record anywhere in top flight football. In the following year they won the double of IFA Shield and CFL without losing a game - an invincible season!


An article by Dadu himself

In 1948, he was the bedrock in defence of the East Bengal team that defeated the Chinese National team en route to compete in the London Olympics. A day after the historic triumph over the Chinese Olympic side, Amrita Bazar Patrika published a report with the headline “Chinese National Team Defeated By 2-0.” The report describes how East Bengal outplayed the  opposition in every department and also showed superiority in terms of creating chances with the star being Saleh (not be confused with Liverpool’s current star Salah!). It heaped praises on our two full-backs, Rakhal Majumdar and Byomkesh Bose for their effective tackling and immaculate passing.




This is especially incredible as in those days, the clubs hardly paid the footballers. The players played for identity - East Bengal gave the much needed pride to the Bangal refugees from opar Bangla like my grandparents who were looked down upon by the Ghotis of West Bengal.

Here's the Rakhal Mazumdar story:




PS:
1) The articles on East Bengal Samachar page was in Bangla which I can’t read fluently and had to use an online translator, but the archiving is gold! However, there may be the odd typo.
2) The language may seem a bit partisan - but of course, it is written from our East Bengal point of view 💛❤️

Friday, May 8, 2020

Clap for our carers / Art activitism


A new Banksy artwork paying tribute to NHS workers has appeared in a hospital corridor yesterday. The piece, called Game Changer, is on view at Southampton General Hospital and was left with a note for hospital workers. It read: "Thanks for all you're doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if it's only black and white."

While this is for NHS, I think the sentiment holds for all carers and medical professionals (from the doctors to the ward boys) who are selflessly leading the charge against the pandemic.

In football, they say you must be mad to be a goalkeeper. In life, I think you must be mad to be a doctor/nurse/ambulance driver/paramedic/ward boy or ‘ayah’ (attendant) / work at a hospital / work anywhere in the medical care value chain. So much hard work, crazy hours, witness death and disease, not that great money, working conditions not always ideal and worst of all, not usually appreciated by the public. Their true worth has come to the fore in these strange times. I know doctors have the Hippocratic Oath that they need to abide by, but seriously hats off to the commitment and selflessness of the medical warriors!


Girl with Balloon


Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director, active since the 1990s. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. Balloon Girl, or Girl With Balloon, is one of Banksy’s most notable works, demonstrating the graffiti stencil technique Banksy has become renowned for the world over. The work was released as an unsigned and signed print in 2004/2005; its relatively low edition size contributes to its desirability, there are just 150 Girl With Balloon signed prints, and 600 unsigned. It is perhaps the most sought-after image for Banksy collectors, old and new. 


This work, which was accompanied by a quotation that read, ‘there is always hope’ originally appeared in London’s Southbank (photo above); though the city council ordered the work to be painted over. Girl With Balloon has grown to become one of Banksy’s most iconic works, as such Banksy produced it again in a new context – a miniature version appeared on the cardboard backing of a cheap Ikea frame which quickly made its mark on the art market when it realised £73,250 at a sale at Bonhams in 2012.

I have always liked Banksy’s art - I just didn’t know it was him! The first piece I saw was a print of this painting on a wall at the offices TSB has hired at WeWorks Mansion House and thought wow, that decal was quite amazing. A few days after, Banksy burst onto my consciousness with the stunt he pulled at the Sotheby’s auction of the same painting. See the video below.


In 2018, a framed copy of the work spontaneously shredded during an auction, by way of a mechanical device Banksy had hidden in the frame. Banksy authenticated he was responsible for the shredding and gave the altered piece a new name, Love is in The Bin.



Sotheby said it was "the first work in history ever created during a live auction." Love is in the Bin is a 2018 art intervention by Banksy at Sotheby's London, with an unexpected self-destruction of his 2006 painting of Girl with Balloon immediately after it was sold at auction for a record £1,042,000.

Symbol of hope: The original stencil at Southbank was accompanied by a quote that read “There Is Always Hope”. Some people interpret Girl with Balloon as a symbol of lost innocence, whilst others believe the girl is setting the balloon free – either way, Banksy is reminding the viewer to hold on to hope, even when it feels out of reach. No wonder a 2017 poll ranked Girl with Balloon as the United Kingdom's number one favourite artwork.

Symbol of activism: Banksy has created variations of Girl with Balloon to address political issues and to support social campaigns. In 2014, he created a version featuring the girl wearing a headscarf, to support victims of the Syria conflict.






Two years later, the artist reworked the design to feature a Union Jack balloon and offered a free print of it to Bristol locals who voted against the Conservative government, which he had to backtrack when the Election Commission sent him a notice.





Monday, May 4, 2020

Goyenda profiles: Arjun

About the author
One of the most popular novelists in the recent history of Bangla literature, Samaresh Majumdar holds a special place in the hearts of thousands of Bengali readers. Born in the idyllic district of Jalpaiguri, India in 1944 he is best known for his Animesh series of novels, the second of which won the Sahitya Akademi prize in 1984. Animesh Mitra, the protagonist of the trilogy, is one of the few literary characters that have been deeply etched into the minds of the readers. Readers have also found traces of its creator in the character, though Majumdar does not confirm it. Like Animesh, some other characters created by Majumdar such as Dipaboli of Saatkahon and detective Arjun who features in a number of novels have also earned a permanent place in readers’ hearts.



The main characters
Arjun is a fictional young detective character based in the north Bengal small town of Jalpaiguri. Samaresh Majumdar created this goyenda (investigator) / adventurer in 1983. Samaresh babu uses the enchanting north Bengal terrain as a backdrop in his novels, bases Arjun in his hometown of Jalpaiguri - this gives his detective fiction a kind of charm that is missing in most city-centric writing.

Here's Samaresh Majumdar talking about Arjun:

Arjun is intelligent and athletic but he's not the finished product i.e. a polished private investigator yet - he definitely doesn't have the gravitas of Feluda, Byomkesh or even Deep Kaku. Rather, he is unassuming and has a certain innocence about him that makes him endearing. As the series evolves, Arjun matures, very similar to Feluda but Arjun has started even younger. Arjun doesn't come from an affluent background - when he first starts off as an adventurer-detective he is unemployed looking unsuccessfully for a job having just graduated with a BA degree. Further, unlike other detective characters, Arjun has a strong relationship with his mother and neighbours like Joguda who works at a bank in Malbazaar.

Courtesy: Arko Chakraborty

Of course, Arjun doesn't have an assistant but he has a mentor named Amal Shome who is an established, senior private investigator getting on in years. Arjun and his mentor Amol Shome are distinctly different from many fictional detectives with their Himalayan hill town charm. They are a pair of self professed satya sandhanis (truth seekers). Arjun is a young adult who is the adventurer-detective hero - he is not a sidekick of the older detective. 

He is a small-town boy from North Bengal. Buying a red bike is one of the highlights of his career. There are numerous references to the era gone by such as Arjun never smokes in front of elders especially Amal Shome. However, for a small town boy with limited means, Arjun is remarkably well travelled overseas to USA (Lighter Rahasya), the UK (Jutoy Rakter Daag), and even to neighbouring Bangladesh in his adventures.

The third recurring character in the series is Major. He brings in much needed comic relief. I found Major to be very similar to Captain Haddock of Tintin series. Major is introduced in Lighter as an eccentric, cheroot smoking, globe trotting, nature loving adventurer who is also bachelor like Amal Shome. Major is related to Amal Shome’s friend, Bishnu saheb (Bishnucharan Patranabis). Major is his sister’s husband’s brother. Bishnu Saheb is from Kalimpong and features in a couple of early stories.

Habu, Amal Shome’s servant also appears as a recurring but peripheral character in several stories. Habu is deaf and dumb, but exceptionally strong. He is loyal and has a deep sense of responsibility - Amal Shome trusts Habu to look after his house in Hakimpara in Jalpaiguri when he’s away for months on end. However, Habu is a terrible cook!

What are the stories like
Arjun stories are not really goyenda golpo - they often read like adventure laden travelogues or even historical fiction. Samaresh Majumdar’s simple lucid writing make these stories a true ‘time capsule’ of life in moffusil towns in the 1990s. The stories set in the foothills of the Himalayas, especially in the forests there are my favourites including Khutimari Range and Joyontir Jongole as they seem to have the special local touch.

 

Some Arjun stories have rather outlandish premises like time travel in Arjun Beriye EloThe range is wide: from looking for lost treasure in Kalapaharquest for a mysterious flower with lethal smell in Phule Bisher Gondho, helping village of self-exiled Britons hidden in the hills of north Bengal get the better of middle Asian warriors in search of their reincarnated spiritual leader and in the process finding a Stegosaurus in Hisbebe Bhul Chilo, apprehending an orangutan that is trained to be a cat burglar in Salt Lake neighbourhood of Kolkata in Labonhrad Landobhando, to searching for the abominable snowman in Yetir Atiyo.

However I must say that Samaresh Babu showed wonderful futuristic vision in Arjun Beriye Elo to predict T20 cricket, video calling and self driven cars. It was wonderful serendipity to hear about T20 cricket player 174 years in the future from 1994 at Lords and being projected holographically in Jalpaiguri, while I was actually on a bus and passing Lords! Thank God, we didn’t have to wait that long to see T20 cricket as it became a reality in early 2000s! As did video calling thanks to Skype initially and later WhatsApp, and now post COVID19, Zoom. Self driving cars are not that far away with Google being amongst those who have started testing the concept.



Samaresh babu has been prolific with the Arjun series with nearly 50 stories being published since the first one in 1983. I have read that he started writing Arjun stories at the request of a person called Nirendranath Chakrabarti and the first story was published in Anadalok.


Again, like Mitin Mashi and Deep Kaku, Arjun stories were published in Pujabarshiki magazines (the annual magazines that comes out before Durga Puja) - Anandamela and sometimes in Anandalok. Most of the stories in Arjun series are also available as anthologies in 6 volumes titled Arjun Samagra:



Film and Radio adaptions
There was an excellent series of radio natok (drama) adaptations by Amit Chakraborty called 'Ami Arjun' on 91.9 Friends FM that was quite popular. They adapted around 10 stories - you can find these on YouTube by clicking the link below. It was through these stories that I got introduced to the series and discovered Arjun.
  1. Ami Arjun
  2. Khutimari Range
  3. Khunkharapi
  4. Lighter
  5. Derdin
  6. Rotnogorbha
  7. Arjun Ebaar Kolkata e
  8. Macsaheber Natni
  9. Berosik
  10. Arjun Hotobombho and Arjun O Aditi

Since then, several other channels have also narrated Arjun books.

The only Arjun film, ‘Kalimpong E Sitaharan’ directed by Prem Modi, had an unflattering debut in 2013. The film an adaptation of two early stories of Arjun -  stories — Khunkharapi and Kalimpongey Sitaharan.



Goyenda profiles: Mitin Mashi stories

Suchitra Bhattacharya, known mainly for her perceptive writing about the urban middle-class Indian condition, stepped into the world of detective fiction for young adults with her Mitin Mashi series.

About the author
Suchitra Bhattacharya (10 January 1950 – 2015) was a hugely popular and well respected Bengali writer, who passed away at the 65. Her writing focuses on contemporary social issues. She was a perceptive observer of the changing urban milieu and her writing closely examines the contemporary Bengali middle class. She continues to be a household name for her modern stories of family fault lines, but her woman detective is truly unique. Mitin Mashi evokes a sense of nostalgia among many as she was someone who used to be a rage in Puja Barshiki magazines. There are only a few female detective characters in Bengali literature (Mitin, Gargi, Kalabati) and Mitin Mashi is arguably the ‘Miss Marple’ of Bengal. 




The main characters
Pragyaparamita Mukherjee, who, like all good Bengalis, is known by her pet name, Mitin. Mitin lives in Dhakuria in South Kolkata, with her husband, Partho and son, Boomboom. (That makes her from our para - neighbourhood.) She works as a private detective and has her own agency called Third Eye. Her husband Partho, runs a printing press. Mitin is the 21st century, educated, confident Kolkata woman in her mid-30s – a person many of her readers know and identify with.  And like many eminent detectives, Mitin has an assistant: her niece, Oindrilla, or as she's called at home, Tupur.

Courtesy: Arko Chakraborty

Tupur is still in school. Tupur’s mother is Mitin’s elder sister. Tupur and her family live in Hatibagan in north Kolkata. Since we have an aunt and niece detective team, our detective is Mitin Mashi or Aunt Mitin. Not surprising, since Bhattacharya’s target readership comprises young adults and through Tupur’s eyes we see the world unfolding before them. This is very similar to Feluda and Topshe relationship, the difference being that they were cousins instead. Tupur and her uncle, Partho Mesho, bond over their love of food. Partho is the essential gourmand and regularly patronises Kolkata’s many eateries for their delicious, unhealthy offerings.

DC DD Asnischay Majumdar is another recurring character. A senior police officer of Kolkata Police based in Laz Bazaar who helps Mitin with vital police support helping her to solve her cases and get to the criminal. He has great respect for Mitin but often engages in friendly banter that stems from underlying healthy professional rivalry at some level. This element of a policeman helping a private investigator is a familiar theme in Bangla goyenda kahini (detective stories) with similar instances seen in Byomkesh (whom Inspector Rakhal Babu helps) and Deep Kaku stories (whom his college friend Ranjan who’s based in Lal Bazaar Control Room helps). In case of Feluda, there is no single recurring friendly police character but several police officers who help him myriad cases across the years.

Mitin Mashi is the perfect amalgamation of an edgy professional sleuth and an adept homemaker. You might find some vignettes of Agatha Christie’s Mrs Marple in her activities. She is a working mother who knows how to balancing her work inside and outside home. A lot of the balance is thanks to Aroti. We see also Aroti - an efficient, dependable worker who takes care of the household chores and looks after Boomboom but remains a peripheral character like Puntiram in Byomkesh stories, Srinath in Feluda stories and Habu in Arjun stories. 

Kolkata plays a big role in the stories. Mitin Mashi lives in “modern” Dhakuria, whereas, Tupur and her parents live in Hatibagan in north Kolkata, an older part of the city. There are frequent comings and goings between Dhakuria and Hatibagan and comments on the distinctiveness of life in the older part. There is perhaps, also, a regret for the days of yore. Mitin and Tupur also travel with their extended families and we see them on holiday in different locales – needless to say, these holidays also become the backdrop for Mitin Mashi’s search for truth.

What are the stories like
In all, there are 20 Mitin Mashi stories published - a mix of chotoder and boroder golpo. Mitin Mashi’s stories are an amalgamation of the familiar and the unfamiliar, the every day and the exotic. Through Mitin Mashi’s adventures, we are introduced to the histories and cultures of the many communities who have made Calcutta their home – the Marwaris, the Parsis, the Chinese, the Jews. But there is no wallowing in nostalgia – Mitin Mashi drives a car, uses a computer and always has her smartphone handy. However, we are often reminded by Mitin that as a detective, she is not merely interested in solving a mystery but has a higher calling of searching for the truth. Shades of Satyaneshi Byomkesh, did you say?  The tone and content of the stories are similar to Feluda than Byomkesh though, especially for the 14 chotoder golpo. The 6 boroder golpo are almost Byomkesh mashed up with urban themes archetypical to Suchitra Bhattacharya.

Chotoder golpo: Most of the stories of Mitin Mashi were published in Anandamela Pujabarshiki magazine (annual magazine Anandamela that comes out before Durga Puja). These are:
  1. Saranday Shoytan (not the best version - the better version has been removed from YouTube)
  2. Jonathaner Barir Bhoot (not the best version - the better version has been removed from YouTube)
  3. Keralay Kistimaat
  4. Sarpa Rahasya Sundarbone (not the best version - the better version has been removed from YouTube)
  5. Jhao Jhiyen Hatya Rahasya
  6. Chhokta Sudoku'r
  7. Arakiyeler Hire
  8. Guptadhaner Gujab
  9. Hate Matro Tinte Din
  10. Kurie Paoa Pendrive
  11. Marquis Strete Mirtyufand
  12. Tikorparay Gharial
  13. Duswapno Barbar
  14. Sanders Saheber Pnuthi
Chotoder Mitin

The Mitin Mashi books have the thrill of adventure and detection – why does Shalini have a recurrent nightmare; does the old house in Badridas Temple Street have a vast storehouse of buried treasure; will Ronnie’s kidnappers get caught; why was Rachel Joshua murdered? It is indeed exhilarating for the young Tupur to partner her aunt in such adventures. I came across Mitin Mashi stories via various YouTube channels. The first one I heard was Keralay Kistimaat - I was attracted by the setting in my sasur bari. All stories have been covered there - click on the names about for links to the best version of these stories.

Boroder goplpo: In the Mitin Mashi series, there are also 6 ‘boroder golpo’ - stories meant for adult readers. Of course, Tupur doesn’t feature in these stories. This is a distinct feature of the Mitin Mashi series compared to other popular goyenda series - Byomkesh and Kiriti are mainly targeted for adult readers whereas Feluda and Deep Kaku are mainly for young adults, even though they are universally enjoyed. The only other character (who I know of) that has featured in both young adult stories and adult stories, is Colonel Niladri Sarkar. The 6 stories for adults are:
  1. Maron Batash (this was the first story adult story)
  2. Bish
  3. Trishna Mara Geche
  4. Megher Pore Megh
  5. Palabar Path Nei
  6. Ekta Shudu Wrong Number
Boroder Mitin

The first time I came across a Mitin Mashi ‘boroder golpo’, it was amazing and unexpected - I had been listening to the 'chotoder golpo' thus far. It was almost as if Feluda was solving a complex Byomkesh case... think Feluda going solo and solving Admin Ripu

Film adaptation
The first Mitin Mashi film has already been released during Durga Puja on 2 Oct 2019. It is based on the story Hate Matro Tintey Din. Koel Mallick starred as Mitin Mashi in this screen adaptation directed by Arindam Sil. 


With no dearth of fictional detective characters to choose from the literature of Bengal, filmmaker Arindam Sil seems to have carved out a niche for himself by making as many as seven film adaptations on such characters. I am yet to see the movie and hope one of the OTT platforms stream it soon. In a Pre-Covid world, Arindam had planned to make the next film of Mitin Mashi franchise and released during Puja 2020. The second film was to be based on Keralay Kistimaat.


Sources: 1: Scroll 2: Wikipedia 3: News articles

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Feluda in the times of Corona

That we are in strange times, is the understatement of the year. The world is reeling from the COVID-19 crisis and the vulnerable segments of our society are the most at risk. However, in these strange times, Feluda remains a source of joy - both in the worlds of fact and fiction. Yesterday kicked of Satyajit Ray's birth centenary year (2nd May 2020, guru turned 99!) and it felt like the appropriate time to share these stories I came across on social media and on the internet.

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FACT: On 18th April 2020, Indian scientists announced that they developed an affordable and easy to use test for COVID-19 and have named it after Feluda

Scientists at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) in New Delhi have come up with a low-cost coronavirus test that will not require any expensive machines for the detection of the pathogen. CSIR is a department under the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.

Named after ''Feluda'', the detective character in legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray's stories, the test has been developed by Dr. Debojyoti Chakraborty and Dr. Souvik Maiti as a simpler way of detecting SARS-coV2 presence in clinical samples, IGIB Director Anurag Agarwal said. 



L2R: Dr. Debojyoti Chakraborty, Dr. Souvik Maiti, and the team.  


Just like in Ray's stories, Feluda is accompanied by his long term companion Jatayu in the IGIB laboratory as well. The IGIB duo created a web tool required for the test and named it after the popular crime thriller writer (Jatayu alias Lal Mohan Ganguly) who accompanied Feluda in most of his adventures. Feluda with a tad bit of help from Jatayu is capable of cracking the Covid-19 mystery from the saliva samples of suspected patients. The scientists prefer saliva over blood because it was easy to collect even from elderly patients or babies.

On a prosaic note, both Feluda and Jatayu are scientific acronyms. 'Feluda' is an acronym for FnCas9 Editor Linked Uniform Detection Assay, and is a paper-based test strip detects the new coronavirus infection within an hour and can potentially be the solution for India’s urgent need for rapid-testing. The team was originally developing such a test for the 'sickle cell disease'. The test uses the cutting-edge gene-editing tool- Crispr-Cas9 to target and identify the genomic sequences of the novel coronavirus in the samples of suspected individuals. One of the most difficult parts of this pandemic is detecting people who could possibly have the disease. The machinery is expensive and uncommon, and individual tests can prove to be expensive too. This innovation will undoubtedly help many doctors and patients worldwide.

“We have been working on this tool for around two years. But, in late January, when the outbreak hit its peak in China, we began testing it to see if it can work for COVID-19. It took us around two months to come up with these results," Dr. Debjyoti Chakraborty, told LiveMint.

It starts the same way as a normal real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which is the extraction of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and its conversion to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), Agarwal said. It then differs by using a specifically designed PCR reaction to amplify a part of the viral nucleic acid sequence. Then a highly specific CRISPR, FnCAS9, developed at IGIB, binds to that sequence, he added.

Using the innovative chemistry on a paper strip, the CRISPR complex, bound to that specific sequence, can be visualised as a positive band - like one sees in simple pregnancy tests. The total time required for the test is less than one hour.




“This strip will be similar to a pregnancy test strip, and will not require any specialised skill and machines to perform, as is the case with other PCR-based tests. This strip will just change colour, and can be used in a simple pathological lab. The most important part is it will be 100 percent accurate. In the laboratory, one test cost Rs 500-600. It takes about an hour out of which nearly 45 minutes are needed for sample preparations. We have already done 50 tests and carrying out more tests after obtaining samples from different recognised testing centres.,” CSIR Director-General Shekhar C. Mande told The Print.

Therefore the Feluda testing kit could also be a game-changer for costs and accessibility  — the real-time polymerase chain reaction test (RT-PCR) used currently requires machinery worth lakhs of rupees and its price is capped at Rs 4,500 in private labs, but the ‘Feluda’ test could cost as little as Rs 500 and potentially sold over the counter at chemists, thereby made widely available.

"If successfully commercialised, which depends upon all its components being available at scale and the commercial product being successfully validated by regulatory agencies, it would allow the test to be done in local path-labs that do not have expensive real-time PCR machines, but simple cheap thermo-blocks used for conventional PCR," Mr. Agarwal said.

When asked why the test was named after Feluda, Agarwal said the researchers at  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  and University of California, Berkeley also use CRISPR, but different technologies. They have named the tests as ''Detector'' and ''Sherlock'', so Feluda was an Indian version, said Mr. Agarwal. 

While scientists in other countries like Stanford University and MIT have been testing this approach, this is the first of its kind to be developed in India. It's a true tribute to Satyajit Ray, whose centenary birth anniversary is next year, that something so vital was named after one of his characters. The fact that the scientists chose to name the test after Feluda, clearly gives an idea of the impact his literature had on the collective psyche of Indians.

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And here's the FICTION: Corona Rahasya by Jayabrata Das 
(click on the images to see larger view)






This image is by the super talent Saikat Sarkar @ The Canvas

Needless to add, none of this is my original writing and I don’t the copyright for this material.