The essay ‘Bhal Khabor’, originally written in Assamese by literary genius Saurav Kumar Chaliha, is translated into English by Jibon Goswami.
Happy tidings are a rarity these days, a mirage or, what the Bengalis refer to as the ‘dumurer phool,’ something extremely rare. The other day I came across this comment by the American jurist Earl Warren, “I always read the sports page (of a newspaper) first. On the sports page, one comes across tales of success. The first page of a newspaper, by comparison, is full of human failures.” I do not know when he had said this, but the sports page these days is no longer about sports alone, “Sports for sport’s sake’ has become today, ‘Sports for the sake of the international wheeler dealers.’
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In everything, from the costumes of the players to their shoes-caps-balls-rackets, there are only advertisements for liquor-cigarettes-beverages-cars a market for dealers of all sorts. Then there are the scandals, the ‘match-fixing’, the hoaxes, the frauds, the sales and purchases of players, the drugs and stimulants, the bribery, the deprivation, deceit, politics, and violence will Earl Warren find things any different today on the sports page than from the first page? The first page and the sports page have merged into each other, haven’t they?
And in today’s Assam, the first pages are full of poisonous, vitriolic stuff and even without glancing at the first page, one can guess what is printed there : who was killed by whom, or was abducted, raped, cheated; or which politician played foul and tripped someone and demolished the victim’s reign of power; which scoundrel was remembering which rogue and offering obeisance to the rogue’s virtues; where did a bomb go off, where did a train got blown off, or who, in the name of ‘revolution’ or ‘fight for justice’ (meaning, fight for more salary or for ensuring continued support of the vote bank) has given the call for a total ‘bundh’; who has embezzled the funds earmarked for some Government scheme and has sent the scheme down the drain; what were the names of the ‘great men’ who were involved in the new scam reported today.
In the words of Chandra Prasad Saikia, the editor of the magazine Goriyoshi, “If the first page of our Assamese newspaper is xeroxed and sent to a civilized country, then…,” then outsiders will be rendered speechless on realizing that there is, indeed, a country in the world where there is only ‘khank’, as the people of Kamrup refer to the ‘unsatiable hunger’ or rapacious greed, hunger for money, hunger for sexuality, hunger for power, hunger for fame; and to satisfy that hunger anything is fair, no rules and regulations prohibit it , it needs no discipline, no humane consideration
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So, there cannot be any question of going over Assamese newspapers in search of “good news or happy tidings’. Just like the uncontrolled explosion of the population has shattered the golden dreams of so many of us, and given rise to break-neck competition, recriminations and lawlessness, frustration and anarchy, similarly, the unprecedented explosion of newspapers in modern-day Assam has also given rise to bitter quarrels, discrimination and discord, lies, useless utterances, fickleness, sensationalism, and abandonment of all values (incidentally, no other city in the world possibly produces as many newspapers as Guwahati does).
The honest, civilized journalism of Lakshminath Phukan or Haren Barua of yesteryears ended a long time ago. This slippage started from the days of the so-called ‘Assam agitation’, it is these newspapers which brought Assam to the verge of a severe crisis and terrible times, and it was from that time that our newspapers have been engulfed by a shroud of fear on one hand and unbridled greed on the other, without being governed by any journalistic ethics. As a result, almost no Assamese newspaper today is worth reading the news they report is wrong, data are incorrect (or distorted), sentences are wrong, spellings are incorrect, headlines are tasteless (often reeking of rank commercialism), discussions are shallow, translations from English are ludicrous enough to make one laugh; meaningless, boring stuff, devoted only to sensationalism and glitter, no inclination for objective discussions or sincere analyses.
In other words, I have almost stopped reading Assamese newspapers since long (except the occasional news about Assamese movies) ( and at a personal level, ever since these newspapers made me suffer in 1996 by their unnecessary and insensitive excesses concerning me, I have treated them as untouchables, their very sight making me feel disgusted, and as long as these newspapers continue to survive, I do not see any hope for Assam overcoming its crises.)
So, I no longer think of writing anything in Assamese newspapers. (In fact, at the time of the ‘Assam agitation’, I had to get into a bitter fight with the editor of an Assamese newspaper to get one of my letters published, and once, a newspaper had published a distorted version of my letter out of fear for AASU and I had to get a Lawyer’s notice served on them to make them publish the same letter correctly again) but when I tried to take a nap in the afternoon, the phone started ringing incessantly. It was Manoj Goswami, the executive editor of the newspaper Amar Asom, asking me for a write-up by all means, any write-up would do, to be published on the 1st of January. He heard that I had confided in a common friend that on the first of January, my friend would hear a good piece of news about someone he knew. If that was so, it must be good news and together with that he (Manoj) also wanted a write-up from me, and that would also be like a piece of good news for him.
I protested vehemently it was very short notice (it was already 29th December), there was not enough time, I had a lot of work to do, I was very busy, and I did not have a subject to write on either, so it could not be done, sorry. “No, I don’t agree. It can certainly be done, and any subject will do, so, you must do it, you must give something for publication on the 1st of January.” All right, let me see what I can do, but I cannot give my word. Hello, Hello Nothing. The line was disconnected.
Does it mean I have to give up under compulsion my decision not to write in Assamese newspapers again? Yes, seeing (or rather, hearing) the stance taken by the editor, that seemed to be the case but then, breaking the rule once was nothing to be ashamed of. After all, as the saying goes, the exception proves the rule. But what about the subject? Something good, something that can be called good news? Where does one get good news from? I got a job, I won the lottery, my son has passed exams ??? these would also be good news, but they would be personal, what would be the good news for the public? Be it on the first page or the sports page, do we have the good luck to attract some happy tidings today?
Giving up the efforts to take an afternoon nap, I kept sitting quietly with a dejected look on my face where could I get some good news? If I just think, ‘I will surely get some good news tomorrow’ and do nothing about it other than sitting without any worry, will good news come to me by itself?
Happy tidings are a matter of luck. How does good luck come to us? Is it by wearing a pearl prescribed by some astrologer? By solemnizing a puja of Lord Satyanarayana? By drawing the correct card from a deck of cards? By seeing the face of so and so in the morning? Or seeing a pair of the common myna birds? Who knows?
People in the West believe that keeping a horseshoe fixed inside one’s house brings good luck. We are students of science, we are rationalists, how can we accept that? How can a piece of iron attached under the hoof of a horse bring good luck? Isn’t that irrational? Isn’t it unfounded prejudice? An absurd superstition of the uneducated? Who knows?
But as students of science, we also come across tales about scientists here and there. One day I read that Neils Bohr keeps one such horseshoe fixed on the door of his house. Neils Bohr is a famous physicist from Denmark, a pioneering researcher in the field of quantum theory of atoms, and atomic spectroscopy, and a Nobel laureate to boot, (also the halfback in Denmark’s national soccer team!). One day, one of his guests was surprised to see the horseshoe and asked Bohr, you are such a great scientist, you surely do not accept anything without corroborating data and rigorous proof how come you still believe that a horseshoe attracts good luck?
Bohr laughed and said, No, I also do not believe that a horseshoe brings good luck but the problem is, even if I do not believe it, it does bring good luck, all the same! (The moral of the story is that we, the all-knowing minnows, who have hardly read one or two pages of science, do not hesitate to throw popular beliefs to the winds by treating them as prejudice and superstition, but great scientists, who have delved deep into the mysteries of nature understand that everything cannot be explained only by the reasoning of our tiny minds, that we may not be capable of unravelling the mysteries behind everything in the world).
That means, there is no way of knowing how good luck (or good news) would come to us and if even a lifeless, rugged piece of iron like a horseshoe, found on the street, has some quality, some power to attract good luck, then…? Be that as it may, where does one look for good news? I then remembered that whenever I suddenly get an idea, a feeling, or a plot, I keep it jotted down in a notebook (in the hope that someday I may write something based on these jottings) along with a few scraps of paper cut out from newspapers. Thinking that I may dig up something in that notebook, I hastily opened it and from within its pages one of those newspaper clippings came out and fell to the floor a very old scrap of paper, turning yellow with age. But no, I did not keep this scrap of paper for writing a story or an article based on its contents, but as I remembered it, I had cut out this fragment from a newspaper for a bit of reassurance, for deriving some courage from it.
It was a news item from seven years ago and I had scribbled the date on the piece of paper, it was 25-10-90. That was a time when we all were reeling under severe disappointment, the youth power had degenerated and plummeted to nothingness, and visible everywhere were rapacious greed and the virulence of the cowards, all signs of a value system, of honesty, human considerations, all the finer feelings and sensibilities had all but disappeared, the pages of the newspapers were giving rise to horror and disappointments, just like the newspapers of today, and that was the time when I made it a habit to read this news item at least once every day for several days, just like people read the Gita or the Bhagabat in the early morning out of piousness.
Son commits suicide for father’s misdeeds Missamara, 24 October: Some news has reached us that because of a father’s misdeeds, his son committed suicide inside the village Namghar, the community place of worship, on the night of 11 October last. According to the details of the news, Shri Putul Bharali (28), a lower Division clerk in the DI Office, Golaghat, was the son of Shri Dehiram Bharali, who was accused of involvement in the embezzlement of more than a lakh rupees from the ‘Building grant’ of the same office and had to spend time in the custody of the Jail. It may be mentioned that Shri Dehiram Bharali was an upper division clerk in the Golaghat DI Office, and the embezzlement of funds came to light after his transfer to the Dhansiri sub-division
Reeling under the continuous onslaught of news that drained one of all energy, I had clutched onto that tiny paragraph that day, like a sinking man desperately clutching at a straw and felt that there was still hope, everything was not lost, and there was still hope. That news was one of sorrow, not a piece of auspicious news, it was not an evangel or a piece of good tidings but under the circumstances of the day, it was ‘good news’. If we know how to look, will we not be able to dig out one or two similar ‘good news’ even on the first pages of our Assamese newspapers?