Bong, with a gong

The Bengali love for all kinds of sound and food

- SANCHARI MOOKHERJEE

MY CHILDHOOD HAD the unique soundscape of clanking, crashing and clattering Metro railway machines. Our house was on the main road and a station was coming up right in front. As a result, we all became slightly deaf, and everybody's vocal projection became quite strong. It was quite embarrassing, but as I grew older, I found that speaking loudly (and turning deaf while somebody else is speaking) is a common trait for Bengalis. It is a shame to be a Bengali and not believe that my speech is the most important one in the present sociocultural context.

Bengalis love criticising Bengalis and continuously label themselves as malicious, lazy and insipid, but they are up in arms as soon as a non-Bengali utters the same about them. There is a huge uproar the moment anybody calls Kolkata a dead or a dying city, or equates Bannerjee/Chatterjee to lethargy. But Bengalis don't use their vocal cords only to argue and contradict, or to hurl slogans and slang, but also to sing, especially when the world is devoid of electricity. When I was growing up, load-shedding (our name for power outage) was a constant presence in our lives. The moment it descended in the evenings, all children thanked the divine (or governmental) intervention from the bottom of their hearts, because studying was immediately terminated. Within minutes, the whole family gathered with their hand fans and different degrees of sighs and lamentations, and that get-together soon transgressed to a delicious game of antakhshari, where film songs and Rabindrasangeet, Kishore Kumar and Kishori Amonkar were summoned with equal fervour.