Eternal Bangal-Ghoti Tussle

East Bengal defeated Mohun Bagan by 3-0 in today's match. Good. I being a supporter of EB was really overjoyed with this...and there were some leg pulling going on among the friends....teasing the MB fans and all. But suddenly it took a different turn and gave the total aspect a different colour altogether. There were some views, thrown to us.....Kolkata's problems roots from all these East Bengalis who came over from the other side of Bengal and all.

Some questions suddenly occurred to my mind. I discussed the plight of the Mother Language day in this part of Bengal. To be true, negligence that we find is all the same in both the BANGAL and GHOTI camp. But even then, while we dream that we are now Indian Bengalis, the bifurcated, truncated existence still exists !!!

At the stroke of midnight, with the magic wand in their hand the political leaders turned the home land of a huge number of people into a foreign country. India was divided, Bengal partitioned into two, And hundreds and thousands from the eastern part of the divide had fled to this part just for security. Because suddenly their neighbours, who belonged to some other religion turned their foe and the land became a foreign land....where if they wished to visit next time would require a VISA. Can any one feel the pain of the rootlessness? These folks were uprooted and shifted....they had their home, their life, their stories, their culture, their identity buried there in the ruthless turn of history and had to search for a new home. And even if they could not cope up, they had to make themselves believe that the new place, this very Kolkata, so different from Dhaka...was their home. Its is not their fault. Neither it is something that they could do anything to. They were forced to....and then if all the time they were made responsible for all the trouble.....how had they felt can well be understood.

Prof. Krishna Sen, the other day, while discussing Amitava Ghosh's The Shadow Lines was saying..."..its like a fairy tale where the hero is suddenly made into frog or this or that.....some people who were Indian were suddenly made Pakistanis....made "udbastus"....But the fact remains, political history may connote this change of identity....but that can never be true for the man himself.....I mean....its a psychological process and with a signature on the dotted lines how can some one else change me into a completely different self?"

Its true...those people left their land, mansions and all the wealth and were forced into the innumerable shanties that came up.... friends...I belong to such a family and have been nourished by endless such stories.....will you please understand one day that we are Indians too?....these "outsiders" have enriched West Benglal's culture, have added values to its systems, have taken part in the administration and have finally mingled into the mainstream to such an extent that....the way they rejoice in India's glory is no means less than you guys....

East Bengal is just a name...you have a problem with why still east?....do you ever question why our state is still called West?....Its a name...just demarcating a painful history in Bengal...true for both 'you' and 'us'. EB is an Indian team...and we all are Bengalis....dear.....we are you and you are us....