CHITTA BHAI: SIMULACRUM HIMSELF

Ever heard of him? No? Of course he never gained popularity of so-called celebrities. Neither he was that powerful as to command people at his finger-tips! Nevertheless, he honed the tactics of how to harness true power and deserved the caliber to have international repute. 

Meeting and talking to him you would hear him say – 'I am basically a teacher. Wherever I am, my simple job is to teach.' Sometimes, even when you tried to reply his queries he would be saying at once – 'Don't explain to me; I am not your boss. I am not your master asking for an explanation. Just keep to yourself.' This was how such apparently opposite poles of approach wonderfully blended in one personality! 

Here it is - mark his might. He was a freedom fighter, a thinker, a clear-cut major writer – Prof. Chittaranjan Das, popularly known as Chitta Bhai, a young man of 88. He always had the guts to speak face to face and say no even to someone who seemed most powerful to us. People, even the state cared to listen to what he had to say and write. 

As diverse and complex as he was, creating a compact profile of him was no easy task either. Only if you have gone through his books, met and talked to him you could have a glimpse of it. However, he served as a professor in Agra University, as the founder teacher in Jeevan Vidyalaya, as a great promoter of Integral Education in Odisha and as a visiting professor in many foreign countries. He was an all-time multi-level, multi-subject and resourceful expert of wisdom and knowledge. Still he was always down to earth. A multilingual, an exemplary translator he still preferred to write in his typical style of the mother tongue. 

He was never in frantic search of young people – they came to him all the time and were caught in his net. Rather he created young people and also made people young irrespective of their age and gender. Thus under his able leadership grew the group of Suhrud a very firm and flexible state-wide community of aspiring people to study, to work and experiment life together in the light of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother's vision. 

Once you met him his prime concern would be to explore what you really were constantly provoking to evolve and become that. If in spite of the scope you didn't turn up he would mercilessly approach and attack you until you caught his point. But when he introduced you to someone he would be describing you like a VIP before the person. Such was his love for and unfaltering faith on your being and becoming! 

He always led an uncompromising style of life with a divine discontent. His worldwide visits, relationships and extensive studies had only strengthened his ever-evolving world-view. Bhima Bhoi, Gopabandhu Das, Kabir, Sri Ramkrishna, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Khalil Gibran, Spinoza, Martin Buber, Eric Fromm, Karl Marx... all of them found their place in him! But he needed no reference to introduce him. A friend, philosopher and guide, he was his own simulacrum! 

Passing away on January 16, 2011 he only broke his physical limits to reach right into our hearts and grow.

2011

How can I greet you?

What way this time?

Tens of thousands of poems 

Will greet you with words of philosophy,

Of events and anecdotes:

Personal, local and global.

With new ideas, new resolutions

And new promises to keep

With wishes greeting to

Near and far,

Kith and kin.

You will be explored

By all means of wisdom and knowledge

Of old and new.

Why should I repeat the words

Told a thousand times?

Is it because

They don’t sink to the skin?

However, how can I keep quiet?

I’ll still welcome you,

Let only every moment of life

Fill me with you. 

Thanks, wishes and regards to you

2011; – A year all anew! 

Handwriting

I came about one interesting thing after I posted my 1^st blog. It was my reading of a cue about hand-writing by the editor of a leading Oriya monthly. He expressed his concern about how on coming of computers, mobile phones etc. writing by hand is fast receding to the past.

It was really nostalgic to go through the editorial. I felt like introspecting myself to see what I have already done, what I can do later and what balance I can bring about between word-type and hand-writing. In his conclusion, he went to the extent of suggesting about preserving handwritings, handwritten letters and manuscripts of eminent Oriya writers to save they becoming extinct.  

Many ideas and anecdotes related to hand-writing, pen and paper at once peeped up in my mind. My father who was also my primary school teacher was always insisting on to improve hand-writing. He would be regularly checking them too. I realized it was no waste, it showed its result. My handwriting had improved as to have at least compliments from friend circle. Clearly I followed suit when my daughter started writing with pen and paper. But she is gradually getting used to word-typing. This being a worldwide phenomenon, no wonder the new generation will be leading handwriting to its near extinct.

Generally something which is more user-friendly and accessible by all must replace its old versions. We cannot term this is a decadence although initially this may appear like that. Gradually people learn to strike a balance between the old and the new. Because we cannot altogether part with all that is old but having essential validities.

I had a lot of letters of my father sent to me at different times. He had also a good collection of axioms and so many other handwritten documents. I kept them for few years after his expiry; but did not find any sense of preserving them. Today when I realize their utility I feel so much like missing them!  His handwriting was clear, so the axioms could have been brought out into a beautiful book form. Here we can think of bringing out handwritten books and periodicals which is now so easy with help of computer devices. This can generate interest to write with pen and paper at least for the specific purposes & help sustain the culture. I have good experience of it.

As I said earlier, while editing a children’s quarterly magazine (‘Kagajadanga’ - The Paper-boat) I got suggestion to use children’s handwriting in it. It was really a very good introduction which attracted appreciation from all corners. This created extra spaces for children who could not share with or contribute arts and articles to the magazine. This also improved its get-up. The other day one of my friends was also telling about how some people published a complete handwritten children’s magazine elsewhere. We organize a 10-day work-cum-study camp twice every year at different places of Odisha and bring out a wall magazine (Gabaksha - The Window) with legible handwriting and beautiful illustration of campers. Recently I am facilitating and editing children’s wall magazines in three schools where children write with colour pens and draw illustrations to give them a complete shape of hanging on walls. They are quite innovative, inspiring and interesting indeed! Children derive a lot of satisfaction and confidence out of them.

One of our friends Asish Pathy has been sending post cards to friends for years together, even in this age of mobile phones and e-mails. Another Sarat Bhai always insists us in every camp for using post-cards for major communications instead of mobile phones which not only eliminate our handwriting but also deprive us to preserve our good and important ideas. However e-mails, SMS and tweets can carry our ideas but not our hand-writings. One leading Oriya daily has been regularly organizing good hand writing competition to keep the tradition up. So it would be interesting if we willingly keep up some writing activities by hand – then it will neither lose its importance altogether nor prevent us going ahead with word-types too. Maintaining a personal diary can well come to the rescue.

These days I write with pen and paper as well as word-type. Before going through the editorial, I in my previous blog expressed how pen and paper inspire me to write. The feeling is always intimate and that even drove me once to write a poem under the title ’White Paper’. The concluding lines of the poem went like this:

Lekhanies or quills, palm-leaves, cloths as writing materials have become things of the past and are preserved in museums. No wonder if pen-paper handwritings face the same fate soon! But when it comes to sign legal documents and give our signature it cannot go without writing by hand. Because signatures are all unique – they reflect the person concerned and also one’s individual character!

In nutshell, coming to the conclusion, can we resolve that we are not going to altogether eliminate handwriting from the world?

A Great Day Indeed

It's indeed a great day today!

A sudden and strong inducement of my daughter made me start blogging at this moment. She has been blogging since more than a year and thus far ahead of me. She taught me to enter into this new format of creativity that I longed for ever since I knew about what blogging is. I feel very much delighted of the event.

I don't remember when exactly I heard or came to know about computer. I started using a computer just by March 2003 after I changed my job from a corporate sector to a development one. My use of computer is limited to typing with Microsoft word, using internet and visiting/browsing websites. But I am aware of the multitudinous performance of computer. When I took charge of editing and publishing a children's quarterly I came to know how this works wonder in layout and designing of books. It is flexible enough to capture and shape one’s intricate ideas of get-up.  Computers made printing process dead easy.   

I used to write with pen and paper from childhood. Almost all elders did so. But a sheet of white paper always captivated and inspired me a lot. It would take me to the endless world of imagination when I must seek for a good flowing pen to write my ideas. Pen and paper have become a part and parcel of my life ever since I started writing poems in 1971. They still play a vital role in my writing activities even today.

Coming to a PC set I realized the blank word-page and the key-board are no less inspiring to put ideas into words. Some of my poems and articles I entered straight into a computer and created files to save them. It was a great experience to feel the difference and similarity between a PC set and pen-paper mode of expressions. 

When I created this blog today now I thought about who is going to visit and peruse my blog at all! There may be millions of blogs posted till today all over the world. Either I have to let others know about my blog or some people may visit it randomly ever. However it’s a kind of instantly global self-publishing of one’s works which can be accessible to all at once. The best ones must catch the best eyes always. Everyone has a right to express and when you have something new, different, more and better to say you must say that. That will surely contribute the human civilization something or other to march forward. That may stimulate someone to come out of their stupor. After all when I release my ideas I at least feel a sigh of relief. Whatever formats, expressing oneself creatively is a bit of becoming self-fulfilled.

Guessing I am not going to write something right now my daughter told me to post something from my previous writings to start with the blog. But I assured her to write something new and post it as my first blog-work. This is why this article saw its light.

It was indeed a great day today. Sri Aurobindo left his body on December 5. His body remained medically intact for about four days without any sign of decay. The Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram revealed that an aura of light radiated from his body till mahasamadhi on December 9. It was the great sacrifice which caused descent of supramental light, force and consciousness into the world atmosphere. The mother then took charge of the task of supramental change in earth nature & earth consciousness.

World Wide Web, Internet and weblog etc are the words of a new age. They express and reflect both the oneness and the diversity of life and the whole world. This can be realized only when all can access them for the benefit of one and all. Otherwise there is every chance of misuse by ugly hands.

Sri Aurobindo sought for world unity. He dedicated his life for an integral metamorphosis of earth nature by an upward process of evolution and with conscious collaboration of mankind. But ‘belief shall be not till the work is done.’ Done or not done, he will be most remembered and revered for ever as a giant prophet of the time.

Today the December 9, 2010 is a great day indeed!