দ্রৌপদীর বস্ত্র হরণ and সীতা হরণ ...two quintessential tales in the Hindu Bengali oral literature . It doesn’t really matter where you are and what position in life you presently occupy, these are moral lessons of utmost significance to all the listeners. Who are all but toddlers, yes indeed the narration is meant for the creepy crawly babies of the household , met out by the elderly grandparents with extreme care in their newfound leisure, a transaction between two invalids of the capitalist structure...but there is no rule that they might not chance upon an adult ear. Indeed it’s entirely a matter of contingency, I mean who would have thaaat time to listen to defunct old myths. Then Upendrakishore Ray Choudhury was of course of the benevolent privileged bourgeoisie who had that leisure. But that is the earliest they hear of the deprivation...as to deciding whether it is met out by Justice or an outrageous lack of it, entirely depends upon where they are crawling. Please ignore my crudeness when I say that the concrete or carpet on which the child crawls probably contributes to the reception of this concept of absence morbidly conceptualized as loss or হরণ . Sure Ram lost his rightful throne and Judhishtira lost his elder sibling Karna...imagine having lost something you were not aware of owning. Possessed by the immense fervour of rights ‘to information, to speak, to education, to religious and cultural practice... to freedom in general'... these would be an opportunity or say need to voice protests, the staged celebration of humane cognitive ability. However nothing quite hits home like the tale of দ্রৌপদী and সীতা ,the roll of vernacular on the tongues of culturally bred communists, the vulnerability of the twin sisters of different tales being constantly made more palpable through the repeated cycles of assault (mental and physical) and the trail of endless abyss full of silence, the veil from ‘Order of Phoenix' behind which Sirius disappeared, a death that does not make allowance for a ghost... leaving an absence consumed in the daily exercise of lives. The right, against exploitation lost on many accounts of everyday. The long candle lit marches after the secretive candlelight dinners. A tale of loss of empathy and gain of cognition.... Which allows us to make an allowance for the contempt in the voice of the domestic help as she questions our sore throat. It is not from the sweat slicked clothes that dried on our body as we slept away our hunger under the heated asbestos corrugated roofs...the noons when we could have been working in open air, but when another monstrosity brought upon by the luxurious travellers on the jostling crowds of local trains and pitch roads had made us prisoners. Jailing us in our own homes, walls made thick with loss of unaffordable time. The sore throat is not even from Corona, since we don’t attempt to sneak in food from overcrowded ration stores ..it’s from the air conditioner that runs a 16° Celsius on pleasantly warm nights and the blanket that skid off our relaxed body as we cuddled into another affordable long sleep. Silence littering the air as spectres of conversations held in eyes , a communication of pity to contempt, yet again transform faulty contingencies to faulty stars.
