Despite my birthplace being the land of Bankim and Tagore, their musical language eluded me. My sartorial sense too was at a disadvantage, as it bore no similarity with the elegantly dressed, proud community. The fear of tripping with serious consequences always led me to hide behind my inability to experiment with the three-yard beauty, and yet my identity as a Bengali stayed. My identity, being confused as a Bengali, still remains an unresolved riddle. Could it be my weakness for a mouthful of rasgullas or sandesh? Or perhaps my Bengal-born mother is the key to this riddle. She carried the mannerisms and sensibilities distinct to that identity. She fondly cherished her proud ancestry. She was the repository of the myriad artistic expressions that enabled her to assimilate and execute the cultural idioms exclusive to the land of her birth. The memories of Murshidabad beckoned her. The holy city of Benaras too would catch her imagination. Though Kazi Nazrul Islam was her favourite, she often quoted Nirala and Dinkar with ease. She celebrated Durga Puja with gusto and Teej also figured prominently in her religious calendar. Inheriting that cultural baggage of descent, my engagement with the new cultural milieu where people spoke at a different pitch and tapped their feet to different tunes, scripted a new chapter which my children might consider to be a cause to celebrate. The bold strokes of the new cultural idioms enriched my cultural canvas. Soon I began to grapple with the nuances of those idioms. My artistic leanings surfaced and I began to enjoy the vibrancy that the cultural amalgamation brought along. Far removed from the genre of dirge, my poetry began to capture the pain and agony of the mundane existence. As a metaphor for multi-cultural idioms defying the logic of cultural hierarchies, my poetry embodies the panoramic perspective of culture rooted in the unbroken history of the land that inspired Tagore to dedicate the eternal hymn ‘Jana gana mana’ in its reverence. In my known circles people found those melodious songs that I sang simply intoxicating and the lyrical rendition of my Urdu poetry irresistible. The riddle unwittingly connects me to my cultural roots. The description that links me to the departed soul is a sort of cultural pilgrimage for me, for it validates my inheritance of her cultural sensibilities.
