“Kh***ir Chele, Tor Maa ke Ch**i” (SOB, s***w your mom) yelled the conductor to the Taxi driver. “Tor Maa ke” (s***w your mom) retorted the nonchalant taxi driver with an exaggerated movement of the hand that left nothing to the imagination as he drove away equally unperturbed. The passengers in the bus, many ladies included, did not even take notice (forget about flinching in disgust) as the rickety bus, well past its retirement age, continued across the potholed, water-logged, and perpetually jammed, chaotic streets of Kolkata. The conductor, Rupee notes held between his fingers the way only bus conductors can, while perilously hanging from the gate, continued to shepherd the chosen ones to board his Arc, even as he shooed away those that dared to come between him and his herd with the choicest expletives about the loose morals of their mothers engaged in the oldest profession known to mankind.
The same words of wisdom were exchanged with the policeman on duty when the bus rambled through the traffic light and when a cyclist, barely in his teens, with his cell phone held between the ear and shoulder, came precariously before the bus, forcing the driver to apply the brakes. Everyone made it clear to everyone else as to what they intend to do to the offending party’s mother, before going their respective ways. No ears went red with shock or shame and the crowd in the bus, used to the Bengali Bhadrolok’s penchant for invoking the Mother for every malady, did not even bat an eyelid – Curses involving the Mother being more common in the Bengal of today, than swear words that violate the chastity of sisters in Punjab! Tempers were not lost, fisticuffs were not drawn, blows were not exchanged as Bengalis “let abused Mothers be” and went their respective ways as they have been doing, like, forever.
Yet, this is the same crowd that makes the ritual Saturday pilgrimage to Kalighat, the seat of Mother worship and don their finest threads to celebrate the coming of the Mother Durga in what is perhaps the world’s biggest annual festival of its kind. Yes, this is also the same city that has made an Albanian born Roman Catholic sister their “Mother” Teresa – the Saint of the Gutters, a term oozing of poetic justice and typical Bengali detached warmth. This is also a part of the same electorate that created history not so long ago by booting out the world’s longest serving, democratically elected Communist Government in the name of mankind, motherland, and …. Mother (Maa, mati, manush)!
Can a people that does not honour its own mother (leave alone that of others) really make the claims about superiority that we Bengalis habitually boast of? Stamped effeminate, a male condemned to eternal domination (and even damnation) by the Mother, is this, the same Bengali Bhadrolok whose repertoire consists of expletives involving the Mother that is capable of tongue lashing the most vulgar to silent, even abject surrender? Is this Bengali the one bearing the genes of Ishwar Chandra Bidyasagar, whose mother worship is stuff legends are made of? Or of Ramkrishna Paramhangsha who had worshiped even his wife as a Mother figure? Are we Bengalis the proud sons of the innumerable young men and women who had laughed their way to the gallows in the name of the Mother and the Motherland? Are we are the proud progeny who sing “ekbar bidai de Ma, ghure ashi” (bid me adieu, my Mother as I sacrifice my life) and also say “tor Maa ke” in the same breath? Surely, something somewhere does not add up.
Even if one were to “expunge” the “non-parliamentary language” and turn our collective back to the reality by claiming that such expletives are the staple of the uncouth – the riffraff, the underbelly of society where the light of enlightenment has not yet breached, can we really absolve ourselves of all sins? Can the Nobel Prize in literature and noble words that send the Mother to the Red light area as a habit really co-exist in sinful peace? If that be the case, then, will the eternal words of Rabindanath “Boro Asha Kore Ashechi go, Kache deke lao / Firayo na jononi…” (With the high hope, I have come up to you, hold out your hands/ O Mother don’t you send me back) have two different meanings? One for the educated, intellectually superior Bengali that we think we are, and the other for the uncouth, uneducated mass who view every female form merely as an object of repression with obvious undertones of sexual gratification that we, unfortunately, are?
Rape, molestation, eve teasing, crimes against women … all seem to be burning issues of the time, with rarely a day passing without some incident or the other being reported in the media. “Earlier, our women were neither so brave in reporting sexual offences nor was the media so activist” was one political response, whose very callousness speaks volumes about the moral degradation that our society is facing. A society that is embracing materialism with a vengeance and is teaching its children to celebrate the carnal in the pursuit of instant gratification as they worship Mammon cannot, in all fairness expect that the same children will also bear the value system of yore. The corrosion is not only all pervasive, the malice is much more deep rooted than what is manifested in the swear words that have gained acceptance in mainstream vocabulary. The line between good and bad, right and wrong, home maker and streetwalker have blurred to such an extent that abusing a woman – verbally or physically – is often not even understood with the gravity it deserves by the perpetrators. Unfortunate as it may be, the truth is indeed bitter and saddening. “What else can be expected, when the fringe becomes mainstream” asked one psychologist I talked to, rhetorically?
A woman of “loose morals”, “provocatively / suggestively” dressed, “easily available”, “promiscuous in nature”, “fast” … the terms run quick and thick. Raped women have people (and responsible ones at that) question about their intentions, while other equally important pillars of our society seek to caste aspersion on the character of the victim, while even others seek to pass off the incidents as cases of a bargain (as between a buyer and seller of flesh) going wrong. If these self righteous “moral custodians” of our society are not wrong in capitals, then the skeptics ask, how can you blame the boy at the bottom of the pyramid verbally tongue lashing all Mothers? “If deeds are so common, can words be far behind” asked the psychologist? “What will you say of our obsession to add political colour to all criminal activities? Even outright straightforward crimes against women are given political tints which results in two conflicting political parties flexing their muscles which ultimately end in the shifting the attention away from the crime and providing the guilty with escape routes. In the process, criminal elements have perfected the art of using politics as a shield which in turn is making them bolder by the day – the cruelty and viciousness that women are subjected to repeatedly these days also point out this fact.”
“Leave the SOB’s mother alone and give me my ticket” yelled a passenger from the back of the bus, breaking my reverie. As the conductor started shoving is way towards the back to collect the tickets I way laid him: “don’t you feel offended when people abuse your mother?” He looked at me as if I was some alien from a distant galaxy. What he told me was equally startling “Dada, if you have to be on the streets, you have to keep your Mother and Sisters in the safe deposit vault of the Reserve Bank. It is everybody’s right to screw them. We are a democratic country, after all!”
He then went on to deliver the Coup de grace – “the rich are beyond your grasp, the politicians have the muscle power, the bureaucrats and mighty are above the law, above reproach. Besides they have the country to screw together. Who else can the poor vent their anger on, except the Mother”?
“Aiyee Kh**ki’r Chele… age bar. Jaa dhuke, thakbi sukhe, berobi kaali pujor mukhe” (Move on, you son of a bitch, keep moving till the Mother arrives in the guise of Kali!) he yelled, egging on the driver as he went about collecting tickets. Mother abusing Bengalis continued with detached demeanor even as the Mother looked down from the garlanded frame, dejection writ large on her divine face .
PS. Sorry for the expletives. Like the bard said, “O Ma tomar choron duti bokkhe amar dhori / amar ei deshetei jonmo jeno ei deshetei mori” ( roughly translated, “O Mother, let me hold your feet on my heart / may i die in this land, where I was born”)- Chawm Ganguly
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