A distinctive specie that has purple upper plumage, bill with casque that are deep red, they are also referred to as purple coot, swamphen etc. These birds are found throughout the plains of India preferring swamps and jheels with ample bushes and weeds, generally seen in small groups negotiating thick vegetation with remarkable ease. It has a weak and laboured flight, prefers to run for cover after a short flight. They have a peculiar habit of using their foot to bring the foot to mouth rather than eat it on the ground. The above picture was taken at Gawhati.
Heard about Henry Louis Vivian Derozio?
I bless my nature that i am
Allied to all the bliss,
Which other world we’re told afford,
But which i find in this.
I was walking around Esplanade after a Rasgolla at the famous KC Das, frankly i am not into sweets but make it a point to visit this shop whenever i am in Kolkata as also a cup of tea and some savoury at the alley nearby. The hygiene standards of the street food shops are quite low (think about it how can you have barber shop next to an open eatery?), i always thought it is the duty of government to enforce these and close the shops that don’t adhere. Kolkata (indeed Bengal) despite its pretensions of communism and egalitarian ideals is remarkably feudal place (unlike Kerala...this blogger has written about it few years ago), it is in the nature of feudal societies that elite tend to be complacent (i am sure our PM Mr. Manmohan Singh will agree to that!), and democracy happen to suit the purpose remarkably. Let’s leave it at that, so i was saying i was walking around the place and came across this statue of what looked like a boy holding a book in colonial British attire. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, a long name that one but i do have vague recollection of having read him in school History text book. It was time for rediscovery.
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1831) was born in Kolkata of Anglo-Portuguese descent. He was pulled out from school at the age of fourteen to join a mercantile firm to follow his father’s footstep to be a
clerk. But it didn’t work out for our boy and he was sent to his uncle, an indigo planter in Bihar. The setting suited the lad perfectly he started to write his first few poems and these were published in leading journal’s of the time, two years later he was back in Calcutta as the assistant editor of The India Gazette. Later he was offered a teaching position at Hindu College (founded by none other than social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy), the zeal to reform made him encourage inquiry among students, led them to question superstition and other regressive practices, irrationalities. He was quite a sensation and influenced many young Bengalis-they called themselves Derozions. And their motto was He who will not reason is a bigot, he who cannot reason is a fool, and he who does not reason is a slave. But the powerful orthodox Hindus saw to it that he was removed. Derozio went back to journalism and started the newspaper The East Indian, sadly he got cholera and died the same year. He was only Twenty three. Could you believe that he was just Twenty three!. It saddened me lot when i read that. Since he was a Christian apostate, he was denied burial inside the cemetery instead buried just outside it on the road. There is a Derozio memorial college in Bengal on the outskirts of kolkata.
Underneath the statue it reads “Pioneer of 19th century Indian renaissance”, if only he had lived longer...
This poem by Derozio is very much influenced by English Romantics poets, as you read this charming poem you tend to awaken into awareness with the poet
A Walk by Moonlight
Last night-it was a lovely night,
And i was very blest-
Shall it not be for Memory
A happy spot to rest?Yes; there are in the backward past
Soft hours to which we turn-
Hours which, at distance, mildly shine,
Shine on but never burn.
And some these but yesternight
Across my path were thrown,
Which made my heart so very light,
I think it could have flown.
I had been out to see a friend
With whom i others saw:
Like minds to like minds ever tends-
An universal law.
And when we were returning home,
‘Come who will walk with me,
A little way,’ said and lo!
I straight was joined by three:
Three whom i loved-two had high thoughts
And were, in age my peers;
And one was young, but oh! endeared
As much as youth endears.
The moon stood silent in the sky,
And looked upon our earth;
The clouds divided, passing by,
In homage to her worth.
There was a dance among the leaves
Rejoicing at her power,
Who robes for them of silver weaves
Within one mystic hour.
There was a song among the winds,
Hymning her influence-
That low-breathed minstrelsy which binds
The soul to thought intense.
And there was something in the night
That with its magic wound us;
For we-oh! we not only saw,
But felt the moonlight round us.
How vague are all the mysteries
Which bind us to our earth;
How far they send into the heart
Their tones of holy mirth;
How lovely are phantoms dim
Which bless that better sight,
That man enjoys when proud he stands
In his own spirit’s light;
When, like a thing that is not ours,
This earthliness goes by,
And we behold the spiritualness
Of all that cannot die.
‘Tis then we understand the voice
Which in the night-wind sings,
And feel the mystic melody
Played on the forest strings.
The silken language of the stars
Becomes the tongue we speak,
And then we read the sympathy
That pales the young moon cheek.
The inward eye is open then
To glories, which in dreams
Visit the sleepers couch, in robes
Woven of the rainbow’s beams.
I bless my nature that i am
Allied to all the bliss,
Which other worlds we’re told afford,
But which i find in this.
My heart is bettered when i feel
That even this human heart
To all around is gently bound,
And forms of all a part;
That, cold and lifeless as they seem,
The flowers, the stars, the sky
Have more than common minds may deem
To stir our sympathy.
Oh! in such moments can i crush
The grass beneath my feet?
Ah no; the grass has then a voice,
Its heart-i hear it beat.
O what a blessing this poem, what a memorable walk by the moonlight. You could read that last stanza many times, what heightened awareness the poet reached. Brilliant. Aren’t we so very fortunate that we are able to read these lines that were written about two centuries years back?. How much i miss moonlit nights, it’s a luxury these days.
I bless my nature that i am
Allied to all the bliss,
Which other world we’re told afford,
But which i find in this.
I was walking around Esplanade after a Rasgolla at the famous KC Das, frankly i am not into sweets but make it a point to visit this shop whenever i am in Kolkata as also a cup of tea and some savoury at the alley nearby. The hygiene standards of the street food shops are quite low (think about it how can you have barber shop next to an open eatery?), i always thought it is the duty of government to enforce these and close the shops that don’t adhere. Kolkata (indeed Bengal) despite its pretensions of communism and egalitarian ideals is remarkably feudal place (unlike Kerala...this blogger has written about it few years ago), it is in the nature of feudal societies that elite tend to be complacent (i am sure our PM Mr. Manmohan Singh will agree to that!), and democracy happen to suit the purpose remarkably. Let’s leave it at that, so i was saying i was walking around the place and came across this statue of what looked like a boy holding a book in colonial British attire. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, a long name that one but i do have vague recollection of having read him in school History text book. It was time for rediscovery.
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1831) was born in Kolkata of Anglo-Portuguese descent. He was pulled out from school at the age of fourteen to join a mercantile firm to follow his father’s footstep to be a
clerk. But it didn’t work out for our boy and he was sent to his uncle, an indigo planter in Bihar. The setting suited the lad perfectly he started to write his first few poems and these were published in leading journal’s of the time, two years later he was back in Calcutta as the assistant editor of The India Gazette. Later he was offered a teaching position at Hindu College (founded by none other than social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy), the zeal to reform made him encourage inquiry among students, led them to question superstition and other regressive practices, irrationalities. He was quite a sensation and influenced many young Bengalis-they called themselves Derozions. And their motto was He who will not reason is a bigot, he who cannot reason is a fool, and he who does not reason is a slave. But the powerful orthodox Hindus saw to it that he was removed. Derozio went back to journalism and started the newspaper The East Indian, sadly he got cholera and died the same year. He was only Twenty three. Could you believe that he was just Twenty three!. It saddened me lot when i read that. Since he was a Christian apostate, he was denied burial inside the cemetery instead buried just outside it on the road. There is a Derozio memorial college in Bengal on the outskirts of kolkata.Underneath the statue it reads “Pioneer of 19th century Indian renaissance”, if only he had lived longer...
This poem by Derozio is very much influenced by English Romantics poets, as you read this charming poem you tend to awaken into awareness with the poet
A Walk by Moonlight
Last night-it was a lovely night,
And i was very blest-
Shall it not be for Memory
A happy spot to rest?Yes; there are in the backward past
Soft hours to which we turn-
Hours which, at distance, mildly shine,
Shine on but never burn.
And some these but yesternight
Across my path were thrown,
Which made my heart so very light,
I think it could have flown.
I had been out to see a friend
With whom i others saw:
Like minds to like minds ever tends-
An universal law.
And when we were returning home,
‘Come who will walk with me,
A little way,’ said and lo!
I straight was joined by three:
Three whom i loved-two had high thoughts
And were, in age my peers;
And one was young, but oh! endeared
As much as youth endears.
The moon stood silent in the sky,
And looked upon our earth;
The clouds divided, passing by,
In homage to her worth.
There was a dance among the leaves
Rejoicing at her power,
Who robes for them of silver weaves
Within one mystic hour.
There was a song among the winds,
Hymning her influence-
That low-breathed minstrelsy which binds
The soul to thought intense.
And there was something in the night
That with its magic wound us;
For we-oh! we not only saw,
But felt the moonlight round us.
How vague are all the mysteries
Which bind us to our earth;
How far they send into the heart
Their tones of holy mirth;
How lovely are phantoms dim
Which bless that better sight,
That man enjoys when proud he stands
In his own spirit’s light;
When, like a thing that is not ours,
This earthliness goes by,
And we behold the spiritualness
Of all that cannot die.
‘Tis then we understand the voice
Which in the night-wind sings,
And feel the mystic melody
Played on the forest strings.
The silken language of the stars
Becomes the tongue we speak,
And then we read the sympathy
That pales the young moon cheek.
The inward eye is open then
To glories, which in dreams
Visit the sleepers couch, in robes
Woven of the rainbow’s beams.
I bless my nature that i am
Allied to all the bliss,
Which other worlds we’re told afford,
But which i find in this.
My heart is bettered when i feel
That even this human heart
To all around is gently bound,
And forms of all a part;
That, cold and lifeless as they seem,
The flowers, the stars, the sky
Have more than common minds may deem
To stir our sympathy.
Oh! in such moments can i crush
The grass beneath my feet?
Ah no; the grass has then a voice,
Its heart-i hear it beat.
O what a blessing this poem, what a memorable walk by the moonlight. You could read that last stanza many times, what heightened awareness the poet reached. Brilliant. Aren’t we so very fortunate that we are able to read these lines that were written about two centuries years back?. How much i miss moonlit nights, it’s a luxury these days.
