Shantiniketan

I cannot say it is a happy time to buy cake, cut it in candle light and decorate a Christmas tree humming some strains from Christmas carol. I cannot say it is a happy time to relax, write and read either.
It is said morning shows the day. When I open pages of morning newspaper, goriest of rape, bullying speeches of netas, raging protests on streets, arson and violence headline before me.
Security of insecurity over existence as a citizen of country and world at large unnerves me as pollution threatens the basic fabric of life; morally, socially and physically.
I am weary, worried and feeling sick.
I cannot but emotionally wander back to the days when I, along with my ageing parents and elder brother, visited Shantiniketan on Baro Din and attended prayer at Upasona Griho ages back.
After the customary gong which solemnly resonated through the rows of stolid trees which were under the grip of looping wintry evening smog, students of Sangeet Bhavan sang out “Akashe dui haate prem bilae”;next followed Christmas carol one after another. The prayer signed off with “Borisho dhora majhe shantir bari.”
In these love-torn times that prayer for scattering of love with both hands sounds drearily distant.
In these times of blazing gunfire, that invocation of rain of peace on earth sounds frustratingly flirtatious.
At a quaint glass house at Shantiniketan, Bolpur, on a snooping evening, students still sing in harmony a chorus of peace and love out to a world mired in blood.
Shantiniketan makes the day Baro (big) in a steadily shrinking world in its own way.