Homesickness and Rabindrasangeet

"You appreciate things more when they are not present." Sounds like a sad WhatsApp status from a broken lover? Maybe. But I am talking about something else today.

I never knew how much I missed speaking my mother tongue until I spent two full days at my hostel. Just me, the sole Bengali in my hostel, everyone else from every other state, all choosing to speak commonly in Hindi obviously. Having studied in KV, I can speak Hindi almost flawless, at least well enough that no one suspects me to be Bengali unless I state it myself; thus conversing and getting to know the hostelites wasn't a problem for me, but still, then, I missed speaking Bengali, missed listening to someone speak Bengali. In a new city, even the silence of the night is strange and distant to anything you ever heard, let alone conversing every day in a secondary language. I also never knew how much joy I could get from Rabindrasangeet until the 3rd day when I karaoked them alone in my room. The lyrics of Tagore were the only thing keeping me cheerful even if I was all alone in my room in a new city with people I have never met before. However, it wasn't the case that I had this much fondness for Rabindrasangeet from birth.

Growing up Bengali, I had my phase where I disliked Rabindrasangeet, or any classical music for that matter. "Give me Ben 10. Give me cartoon network" I would cry out whenever my parents or elders tried to switch to old music programs on TV. I was annoying as hell. But was I to blame back then? No friends group of class 1-5 thinks classical music is cool, Rabindrasangeet is some distant concept devoid of any silly cartoon noises or cool action sequences, only to be played during school functions and national holidays. And by middle school logic, when the group decides something is uncool, it becomes uncool by default. But every time I would annoy the hell outta my elders into giving me the TV remote to turn the music channel into Tom & Jerry, I would hear some or the other version of this - "You kids will never learn to appreciate the Bengali culture with the path you are going." (And I am speaking this for my Bengali household here, but I am sure my non-Bengali friends have listened to something similar to this in their own language too.)

But it was not the case that I wasn't listening to any Bengali music at all. Any new hit funky song with dhick-chick-dhick-chick music and slightly catchy lyrics, I would listen to it, be it Bengali, Hindi, or even Brazillian for that matter. Anything that was played on local puja pandals after the puja was completed and elders with heart and hearing diseases gone, I would jam to it. And it so happened that much of those were up funk Bengali songs. And while sitting at pandals and listening to the boom boxes blast at their full sound, I would often wonder, - eh, here I am, listening to Bengali songs, and also enjoying it, then why do my elders keep telling me I don't enjoy Bengali songs or culture? Are these new songs not a part of 'Bengali culture'? Do only boring songs count as 'Bengali culture'?

For me, up to class 8-9, whatever was Bengali, was Bengali culture. I didn't know what a culture is, so I assumed whatever is Bengali, whatever happens in Bengal, must be Bengali culture. But later as my interest in History, Mythology and Anthropology grew, and I started scratching the surface of vast books written on them, I understood a little bit of what those grumpy old elders of mine were trying to mean by 'Bengali culture'. Culture is whatever stays long-lasting enough to let you (or a group of people) form an identity around it. Things have to be long-lasting to let itself get integrated into a culture. A central piece of Bengali culinary culture is fish recipes; but for Kashmir, fish is not a culinary culture. Fish has been available in a long-lasting sense here in Bengal, long enough that people have formed their identity around it, whereas for Kashmir, the availability of fish isn't a long-lasting option. So there you have it - a mantra - it has to last long if it is to be part of a culture. But have the songs that I used to listen to in my pre-teenage years lasted? From that period of 2006-2010 out of all those funky Bengali songs, I only remember one - পরাণ যায় জ্বলিয়া রে. All those songs that blasted those puja pandals have slumbered into obscurity now. However, what hasn't slumbered into obscurity and what is still now the defining feature of Bengali culture - are the Rabindrasangeets. At a slow and steady pace, they still crown every occasion without fail. That is what those elders meant by 'culture', at least that is what I think they meant - Culture is what stays.

The first time I hummed along a Rabindrasangeet was in maybe in class 7 or 8. I was browsing around my dad's laptop when I found a Rabindrasangeet folder in the music section. I don't remember which song I had played but I remember starting to hum a little. Soon after I noticed my mom had popped her head into my room, "Oh dear, it must an opposite day today if you have started listening to good music after all". Embarrassed a little and following the logic of middle school that if your mom thinks it's cool, it probably isn't cool, I quickly exited the song. 

But now that I have grown up a bit, lived to see 20 summers in my life, and currently, almost 600km away from Bengal, my homeland, through many twists and turns, I actually do have grown to appreciate Rabindrasangeet and classical music much more in general. What I think is wrong with adults shaming kids into listening to classical music is that you must possess a certain depth of your soul to just understand classical music; to appreciate it however one additionally requires to have a certain distance from reality. You certainly won't enjoy 'Aaj jane ki zid na karo' by Farida Khanum if you have actually never felt that desperate want to spend just 5 more minutes with your favorite person before. Similary you won't enjoy "প্রাণ চায় চক্ষু না চায়, মরি একি তোর দুস্তরলজ্জা। সুন্দর এসে ফিরে যায়, তবে কার লাগি মিথ্যা এ সজ্জা। প্রাণ চায় চক্ষু না চায়" at the age of 12. Even just understanding what those words mean will take time and probably help from an elder or music teacher.

না থাকে অন্ধকার,   না থাকে মোহপাপ,

          না থাকে শোকপরিতাপ।

(Let the darkness end, let the lust and sin end

Let the sorrows and woes end)

These are the lines from বরিষ ধরা-মাঝে শান্তির বারি, now tell me, a kid of class 8-10, whose greatest sorrow in life perhaps has been failing a school test or getting rejected by a girl, what depth will he find in these lines. Tagore wrote these lines amidst the violence that was going on just a few years before 1947, the sorrow he witnessed, people dying, communal riots, food scarcity, etc made his mention the অন্ধকার (darkness) in his song. This a darkness that exists only in the adult world; only when you get to know the different horrors people have inflicted upon each other from the holocaust by Hitler to creating food scarcity by Churchill, only then you get to see the "darkness" that is mentioned in the poem for what it is. And only after you know the darkness can you pray for it not to exist, thus the line - না থাকে অন্ধকার (Let the darkness end) in the song. What will a kid understand of this? In his blissful world, darkness is not dark enough. 

My understanding of classics started when after that initial day of my humming, my mother slowly started humming those songs too. Nothing explicit at first. Perhaps after lunch, we would be sitting at the sunny verandah, peeling pomegranates, when she would start humming, I would ask which song it is, and she would hum out some lines then explain the meaning of those lines. That's how it started. Slowly my vocab was expanding and before I knew it, I could understand new old Rabindrasangeets, and then I would try listening to them on my own. That's how the ball rolled. And looking back now, I feel that was the only correct way to introduce someone to the classical genre of music. You don't force them, you lure them in. Let the youngling's mind come to little maturity, wait till he can hold his thoughts in a coherent way, and then start introducing drop by drop, rhythm by rhythm. Don't shame someone into listening to classics, just gently let them know that classics are there to be listened to, whenever he/she is ready for it. Classical music as I said earlier is a part of Culture, whatever culture that might be, Bengali, Gujrati, Maharashtrian, does not matter and because it is a part of the culture, classical music is here to stay. Culture is what stays. The depth of the lyrics is here to stay. When life will slap someone with its harsh reality, he or she will inevitably turn to classics, for classics are about the everlasting sorrows and happiness of life.

It is a shame that so many people will never appreciate the beauty of their own language because they had grown a stigma towards it, towards its music, towards its art, towards its literature. Surely the language will be a bit difficult if you haven't practiced it much, but there is a certain beauty in enjoying old and sometimes untouched things, isn't it?. Especially things that either age like fine wine or things that don't age at all, the timeless things. There is a joy in humming a song knowing in the mass of people you are the only person to understand it, or yet better, you are the only one to enjoy it. And that joy is unparalleled. Sitting at the campus of BHU, or strolling around the gullies of this ancient city Varanasi, I smilingly listen to একলা চলো রে, knowing no one else is enjoying, or can enjoy, what I am enjoying.

So TLDR- If you are homesick, according to me, jamming to classical music in your mother tongue is a remedy you can try.