Sunderban Delta Publication

 এমন একটি দেশ , যেথা জীবন কয়েক হাজার বছর ধরিয়া নদীর  বক্ষ জুরিয়া, তেঁনার ইচ্ছায়  মৎস্যরা গান গায় , লাফাইয়া ওঠে জেলেনীর বোনা জালে,  আষাঢ়ের বর্ষণ  ইচ্ছে পাখির ডানায় তাল ঠুকিয়া ঘুরিয়া বেরায় , চাতকের মত বৃষ্টির পূজো করে । #river #rain #fishingfolk #fish

  An ancient ritual of eating fourteen leafy vegetables( the chodda Sag ) on the day of Chaturdashi in the month of Kartika exist among the people of Bengal, residing in the eastern region of South Asia. The day falls ahead of the Amabashya night - when Ma Kali is worshipped The chouda Sag  whose  cooking and serving as a main item in day time main meal has been practised since ages. The name of these vegetables is Helencha ba hinche sak, ooal pata ba sak,mankochu pata, kulekhara ba kule sak, beto sag, sorshe sak, guloncho sag, jayanti sak, ghetu sag ba vhat pata, keu sak, sushni sak,sanji ba santi sag ( another name borma sag) , kalmegh and neem pata. The sags are consumed not for warding off unholy spirits from the home but for improving immunity from various diseases with the arrival of the winter season. The health benefits of these leaves can make you take note of the insight of our ancestors in discovering the benefits of eating certain plants. 1. Blood purifier and mental s

History and evolution of mankind often throw interesting facts that time has the tenacity to add various ritual of different times and all the practices gets into the multiple narratives of the same pagan festivity. On the day preceding the Amabashya night  falls the  Chaturdashi  (14th day) of the  Krishna Paksha  in the  Vikram Samvat Hindu calendar  month of  Kartika and this festivity is celebrated all through the eastern provinces of South Asia - the Hindu families pay obeisance to their ancestors and  Bengali Hindus observe the day as Bhut Chaturdashi.  When we were kids, we heard from the elders that ghosts become active on this night  - the night preceding the day of Amavasya ( preceding day of the no-moon night). So all homes have to light ritualistic fourteen lamps and place it on the key passages of our home, the doors, the windows,  especially the main entrance door.  And the ancillary ritual of mandatory cooking together of the prescribed fourteen types of fresh vegetable

If the wind gets cooler, and the paddy harvest reaches the rural  homes, the people who live in the vast hinterland of mangroved riverine  delta  of  aluvial soil  begin to celebrate the annual festivity of prosperty and wealth ( Kojagori Lokhi  variously known as Laxmi, Mahalaxmi) on the night of full moon, the Purnima as per Hindu calendar Evolving Vedic belief and  Puranaic text revers  Laxmi  as the vedic Goddess  and worshiped as the spouse of Vishnu. However, the discourse on Sri Laxmi over various scriptures, Ramayana and Mahabharata point out that Laxmi has two  other lineages - one with Indra, the first amongst the  Gods mentioned in  the Vedas;Kuber cannot be ignored while worshipping Laxmi. The Purana says that Laxmi came out of the great churning of the sea by the Gods and the Assuras. In period of vedic conquer of forest and hill tribes, Laxmi remained a lucky  daughter of the local tribes, the Asurras.it is interesting part of social engineering that  took place during th

All Riverine civilisations worship  water as  the mother and reservoir of life on this planet. Earth or the soil is the other reservoir of life, when later life evolved on land. No wonder, when a human life ceases to exist, some civilisational ritual like the  Vedic  bestows respect to the leaving soul by merging ashes of mortal remains  into the  flowing river.  We often wonder how rituals of #durgapuja  in Bengal draws its cultural lineage from the human practices of a time period  which has no recorded but only inferred history. #MahaDashami, the last day of festive fervor and floating dreams of madness and desire, and artists shall put pale shades of color on their artworks. Here our eternal mother, Ma Durga, who drew life from river-water and river-bed  shall surrender into the river, while the drums would beat to a crescendo and the children of God chant and cry  'Asche Bochor Abar Hobe' ( Shall celebrate again in the coming year). That is the cycle of life - ashes to ash

https://youtu.be/TlSD2OAbnfQ Come Durga Pujo, Dhaki cannot be far behind. The Dhakis are so intermingled with the blood and sweat of Dugga Pujo craving race, it is often difficult to separate them and keep our focus on DHAK and  DHAKI alone. Here is a rare piece in the domain of DHAKIs, written by late Durga Bhattacharya. Whether it rains or not,will never miss the sound of DHAK, even if one hesitant to go for pandal hopping  in the pandemic. https://youtu.be/TlSD2OAbnfQ #DHAK #Durga #DHAKI #Bengal

Sunderban Delta Short Story Series                                                                             Copyright © 2019 Gautam Maitra Cover Design and Illustration © Jayanti    CONTENTS       Foreword I   Introduction iii 1 Floating Towel Pg 1 2 The Two Strings Pg 8 3 Question Paper Pg 16 4 A Date with the Lost World Pg 20 5 A Bizarre Talking Competition Pg 32 6 The Land of the Blue River Pg 41 7 The Search for Oasis Pg 45 8 Reflections Pg 54 9 Economy Class Traveller Pg 57 10 Just Two Days , More ! Pg 64 11 A Ghetto’s Cab Pg 73 12 Revelation P

  Money is what money does. Money is embedded in human history as the chameleon. From Ox, cowrie, silver, gold to minted coin, paper money, and now in the present avatar of digital money, bitcoin. It has changed too often its contour and usage. Keynes duly observed this behaviour : "Money is a far more ancient institution than we were taught to believe some few years ago. Its origins are lost in the mists when the ice was melting, and may well stretch back into the paradisaic intervals in human history of the inter-glacial periods, when the weather was delightful and the mind free to be fertile of new ideas in the Islands of the Hesperides or Atlantis or some Eden of Central Asia."1 The coinage evolved as a prelude to writing in the three regions of first human habitations, eg.,Lydia in far East, China and undivided India. Anthropologists and historians are divided in their opinion whether the origin and spread of coinage in each region is influenced by the others or were f